Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1897 — Banking Methods in French Banks. [ARTICLE]

Banking Methods in French Banks.

We had to make our way through a crowd occupying a large room or small hall in which business was conducted. This hall was filled with people, some of whom were there to look after their own or other people’s affairs, and others who had obviously dropped in or a casual chat. Almost all were smoking cigarettes, an amusement which they shared with a good many of the. bank clerks. When we got through this crowd my friend and host presented his check at a gulchet. The man behind the gulchet gave him a metal disk stamped’ with a number. Armed with this my friend made his way to another gulchet, behind, which.stood not a clerk bj.it an ordinary porter, wearing the livery of the bank. This porter has his hands full of similar metal disks. After a weary waiting he called out the number—say, three hundred and two—on my friend’s disk. Then my friend advanced, identified his check by another number obtained at the £rst gulchet and then received his money, not in the currency or form which he had wished for, but in such ' shape as the porter had at hand to dispense from the authorities above him. Then some of the notes being only locally negotiable, my friend had to go to a third gulchet to see if they could bo changed Into negotiable notes. On occasions this is impossible, and the unfortunate holder of the check has either to leave part of the money he has come for until a favorable opportunity or accept what he can get on .he chance of paying it away, or getting it changed, or both, with some of his tradespeople. Beyond this there is no clearing house system; each bank makes a charge for flashing a check on another bank, and these charges practically 'swallow up the tiny amount of interest nomina.iy allowed on a constant balance. And thia is how the daily routine of banking is conducted in the first bank of Marseilles.