Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/161

Rh which the boxes are open to receive checks; and at a few minutes before that time, some signs of increased activity begin to appear in this previously quiet and business-like scene. Numerous clerks then arrive, anxious to distribute, up to the latest possible moment, the checks which have been paid into the houses of their employers.

At four o'clock all the boxes are removed, and each clerk adds up the amount of the checks put into his box and payable by his own to other houses. He also receives another book from his own house, containing the amounts of the checks which their distributing clerk has put into the box of every other banker. Having compared these, he writes out the balances due to or from his own house, opposite the name of each of the other banks; and having verified this statement by a comparison with the similar list made by the clerks of those houses, he sends to his own bank the general balance resulting from this sheet, the amount of which, if it is due from that to other houses, is sent back in bank notes.

At five o'clock the Inspector takes his seat; when each clerk, who has upon the result of all the transactions a balance to pay to various other houses, pays it to the inspector, who gives a ticket for the amount. The clerks of those houses to whom money is due, then receive the several sums from the inspector, who takes from them a ticket for the amount. Thus the whole of these payments are made by a double system of balance, a very small amount of bank notes passing from hand to hand, and scarcely any coin.

(174.) It is difficult to form a satisfactory esti-