Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1899 — PROFIT BY LOSS [ARTICLE]

PROFIT BY LOSS

Th* Bank of Englaad Make* Money in Thl* Way. It is a fact, that tn many minds, no doubt must be very curious, that the Bank of England has always had a pretty steady source of profit in the loss and destruction of its bank notes. What it has gained of late years in this way we are unable to say, but during a period of forty years pr-ceding 1832, the bank had made a clear profit of £1,330,000 from outstanding paper never likely to be presented for payment. When the destruction or the irrecoverable Joss of a note can be proved, as In the event of a fire or a wreck It can, the bank, of course, will always pay the money it represents; and even when there is doubt about it, the cash is paid on security being given for indemnifying the bank should the note ever be presented.

Many years ago a bank director lost a note for £30,0C0. But being a man of credit, and as there was no doubt about the loss of the bill, he gave the usual Indemnity and got the money. Many years after, when the man had long been dead, the paper was presented. It Was payable on demand, and had come from abroad in the ordinary way of business, and the sum it represented had to be handed over, and as the indemnity that had been given was repudiated by the heirs of the man who had given it, and for some reason could not be enforced, the bank on that occasion had to put £30.000 on the debit side of the account. For once In a way they paid double honor to a bit of their own paper. There isanother story of a sum of £20,000 which the bank in its early days for a short rime refused to Land over in exchange for its own notes. They were presented by a Jew, whose assertion that he had bought them was not disputed, and whose personal integrity was above suspicion. They had, however, undoubtedly been stolen, and on that ground the bank refused to pay the money. The Jew went out into the city, and began to spread it abroad that the bank was shaky, and couldn’t cash its notes, and as he backed his assertion by displaying his indisputable paper, the assertion would in all probability soon have caused a run on the bank, and In a few minutes a messenger came to say that the notes would be cashed If he would present them again.—London News.

Wealth of U-H- ge Secret Societies. The rapid growth of the wealth of college Greek letter fraternities was emphasized by the statement that the Kappa Alpha lodge at Cornell, which was recently burned, was valued at $45,000 and that the total value of the fraternity property at that institution amounts to nearly a million dollars. One fraternity lodge alone at Cornell is worth nearly SIOO,OOO. Williams College comes next to Cornell in the value of its fraternity property, and then Yale, Amherst. Wesleyan and Harvard in the order mentioned, according to a recently published estimate. Since Columbia moved into her new building the mord prosperous fraternities have each made plans for expensive chapter houses. These houses are not owned by the fraternity at large, but by each individual chapter, and some of them are excellent illustrations of the work of our best-known architects. It has been estimated that there are 8,000 to 9,000 college fraternity men in New York.—New York Sun.