8. Light Weight Coin

In receiving coin, and especially gold coin, tellers are sometimes neglectful concerning its weight. The law permits an amount for loss by natural abrasion. This amount in gold coins is one half of one per cent after a circulation of twenty years, and a proportional amount on coins of lesser age. As all coins are dated, there is no difficulty in applying the rule. When a gold coin is reduced by abrasion more than one half of one per cent, it is recoined. Coins therefore twenty years old may be one half per cent below standard weight and still be current. On the other hand, there are many coins be-low the limit of tolerance which have become so by honest use. A coin of light weight, unlike a counterfeit note, can not be stamped "light weight" except by the officers of the Treasury Department, as the true value of such a coin can be ascertained only at the mints and assay offices.

9. Instructions To Depositors

When the receiving teller has counted the money, checks, etc., of a depositor, the amount is entered in his pass book. The following instructions have been suggested by an experienced cashier for the benefit of depositors: -

1. If you wish to open an account with a bank, provide yourself with a proper introduction. Well-managed banks do not open accounts with strangers.

2. Do not draw a check unless you have the money in the bank or in your possession to deposit. Do not test the courage or generosity of your bank by presenting or allowing to be presented your check for a' larger sum than your balance.

3. Do not draw a check or send it to a person out of the city, expecting to make it good before it can possibly get back. Sometimes telegraphic advice is asked about such checks.

4. Do not exchange checks with anybody. This is soon discovered by your bank; it does your friend no good, and discredits you.

5. Do not give your check to a friend with the condition that he is not to use it until a certain time. He is sure to take an out-of-town check from a neighbor, pass it through your bank without charge, and give him your check for it. You are sure to get caught. Discount no accommodation note; in the meaning of a bank it is a note for which no value has passed from the indorser to the drawer.

6. Do not give your check to a stranger. This is an open door for fraud, and if your bank loses through you it will not feel kindly toward you.

7. When you send your check out of the city to pay bills write the name and residence of your payee, thus, "Pay to John Smith & Co. of Boston." This will put your bank on its guard if the check is presented at the counter.

8. Do not think that because you trust the bank with your money it ought to trust you by paying your overdrafts.

9. Do not suppose you can behave badly in one bank and stand well with the others.

10. Do not quarrel with your bank. If you are not treated well go somewhere else; but do not go and leave your discount line unprotected.

11. If you want an accommodation note discounted, tell the bank frankly that it is not in their definition a business note. If you take a note from a debtor with an agreement, verbal or written, that it is to be renewed in whole or in part, and if you get that note discounted and then ask to have a new one discounted to take up the old one, tell the bank about it.

12. Do not say that you will guarantee the payment of a note which you have already indorsed.

13. Give your bank credit for being intelligent generally and understanding its own business particularly.

14. Do not try to convince your bank that the paper or security which has already been declined is better than the bank supposes. This is only chaff.

10. Balancing Pass Books

The. books of depositors should be written up as often as once a month. The reason for doing this is obvious. Mistakes, alterations, and forgeries are more likely to be di covered when the transactions are freshest in the minds of the depositors than at a later period. Furthermore, this should be done, it possible, by some other person than the receiving teller, in order to test the accuracy of the receiving teller's work.