336 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
The room is filled with wide tables where the clerical work
connected with the clearance is done, and at 7 p.m. the clerks
are usually in their places working on the clearance sheets
which have already arrived. The whole work must be com-
pleted each night, and thus the volume of sales that day, as
well as the errors which may have crept into the auditing of
them, determines the hour, whether 10 P.M. Or far later into
the night, at which the clerks can go home. A corps of special
clerks is kept in reserve, to run down and eliminate any errors
which may be made in the clearance. Of course, the fact that
a final balance is obtained is practically proof that the clearance
has been made without error.
Separation and Distribution of the Tickets.— The clear-
ance sheet of each clearing member, which by 7 p.m. is de-
livered by his messenger through one of the windows in the
back of the Night Branch office is, as we have seen, accom-
panied by a receive or a deliver ticket of another firm for each
item on the sheet, the statements of stock balances to receive
and deliver, and a check or draft, as the case may require.
Clerks at these windows first separate the clearance sheets from
the accompanying tickets and credit instruments. The ex-
change receive and deliver tickets are distributed in the respec-
tive boxes of the firms whence they have originated. For
example, Wilkins’ receive ticket for 100 Steel, which comes in
attached to Jenkins’ sheet, is detached and placed in Wilkins’
box; and Jenkins’ deliver ticket for the same stock, attached to
Wilkins’ sheet, is detached and placed in Jenkins’ box.
Next, the stock balance tickets to receive and to deliver
which accompany each sheet are checked by a teller against the
balance items as they appear on the sheet, and are then turned
over to another set of clerks who place each one with the par-
ticular allotment sheet (whose function will be considered pres-
ently) for the stock in which it is made out. For example,
Jenkins & Co.'s two stock balance tickets for the balance of
200 Steel to deliver and the balance of 200 Reading to receive,
