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to handle accurately and promptly the almost infinite detail of
the day’s business.
Since, therefore, the broker’s bookkeeper is so fundamental
in the machinery of the Stock Exchange system, it were well
to inspect a typical piece of his handiwork. Brokerage houses
at stated intervals render statements to their customers of their
accounts, as well as at any time when the latter demand them.
These statements of the customer’s account must not, of course,
be confused with the confirmation of each particular transac-
tion which, as has been noted, is sent to the customer as soon
as possible after the execution of the order which it reports.
Commission houses also make it a practice promptly to send
notices to their customers of any dividend paid on stocks in
their accounts, with a credit if it is long stock and a debit if it
is short stock.
THE COMMISSION HOUSE
The Customer’s Statement.—In practice, there is consider-
able diversity in the exact form of the statements which stock-
brokers render their customers, although most firms today have
succumbed to the superior efficiency of the moré modern book-
keeping machines. The precise form of the statement employed
by a given Stock Exchange firm also depends to a considerable
extent upon the particular sort of business it does—whether
for many or few customers, or whether localized or nation-
wide. The example of the customer’s statement intrqduced
here (Figure 56) was selected not so much because it was
typical (for it probably is not), as because it sets forth the
facts completely and in a manner more readily understood by
the layman. )
Customers care so little for the detailed interest statement
composing the right-hand side of the illustration, that brokers
often send this only when requested to do so; f requently, there-
fore, this interest statement is made out on a perforated slip
which is detached from the statement, and sometimes on an
entirely separate form. Leaving this matter of interest in
abeyance for the time being, let us first glance at the statement
