COMPARISON AND SECURITY CLEARANCE 335
one deliver balance ticket for 300 Steel, and one receive balance
ticket for 200 Reading.
Final Delivery of Clearing Member’s Sheet and Tickets.
—It is a rule of the Stock Clearing Corporation that all these
clearance sheets, deliver and receive tickets, and statements of
balances of stocks to receive or to deliver, as well as each firm’s
check or its draft on the Corporation, must be turned in by the
clearing member at the Night Branch by 7 P.M. This rule is
sometimes relaxed by the Corporation during large markets,
when the preparation of clearance sheets takes more time than
usual. But if there has been a delay which in the judgment of
the Corporation is unreasonable, the offending firm is subject
to fine. Fines are also imposed by the Corporation for clerical
errors or omissions in either tickets or clearance sheets. The
neglect or failure of a member or firm to exchange tickets, in
the manner described above, constitutes a default in delivery.
Headquarters of the Night Branch.— Thus far the chief
stage setting of our typical daily clearance has been the broker-
age office of Jenkins & Co. at 500 Wall Street. But after the
clearance sheet, with the appropriate check or draft, tickets,
and statements, has been prepared and sent to the Stock Clear-
ing Corporation, the part played by the brokerage office in the
clearance is over for the day, and the scene shifts to the Night
Branch of the Stock Clearing Corporation at 55 New Street.
The back wall of the Night Branch main room is penetrated
by four small windows, not unlike those of a ticket office,
through which brokers’ clerks deliver the clearance sheets, etc.,
already described. In the N ight Branch an official is constantly
in attendance, day and night, to answer questions, settle dis-
putes, etc. During the day a special day force is employed to
run down and eliminate errors, etc., in the previous clearance.
But by 7 p.m. a much larger force of clerks arrives and their
primarily nocturnal labors begin.
