BUYING DRAFTS
If I wanted to pay a bill for $150 to Albert Holt, living at Wallace, Kansas, and did not wish to trouble him with a check, how would I go about it?
1. I might express the cash, which would be expensive.
2. I might send it in postal order, not always certain.
3. I might send it by a trusted hand, but might have long to wait before I found a friend going out to Wallace.
I am living in New York City, and am familiar enough with banking to know that New York is a great financial center and is in constant communication with nearly all the outside banks.
The outside banks keep money in deposit here, and the New York banks, particularly in the spring and autumn, keep deposits with their correspondents. With my $150 and a small extra sum to pay my bank for drawing the draft, I go thither and buy a draft for the sum I owe Mr. Holt. I mail this draft to my creditor and he can cash it without loss
in his home bank. Here is the form:
No. 101.
Madison National Bank of New York.
Pay to the order of Albert Holt,
One hundred and fifty dollars ($150.)...
.......... L. N. Jones,
Cashier.
To Prairie National Bank,
Wallace, Kansas.
A GOOD PLAN
When you buy a draft which you mean to send off in payment of a debt, a good plan is to have it made payable to yourself. Let us suppose it is the case of Albert Holt. You transfer the draft to him by writing across the back, "Pay to the order of Albert Holt," and add your signature. Now as all drafts are returned, as payment vouchers, to the banks
from which they were issued, and as Mr. Holt must have signed the draft to get his money, it follows that there is a record of his having received it, and this has all the force of a receipt.
Do not endorse a draft with just your name, for in that case, anyone into whose hands it falls may collect. First write "Pay to the order of" the person for whom it is intended.
GOOD AS CASH
A draft made payable to yourself is as good as cash, and far safer to carry.
If you are identified at any bank between the Atlantic and Pacific, you can have your draft cashed.
All banks furnish blank drafts.
Never endorse a draft made payable to yourself, and this applies to a check, until you are about to use it.
It is a good plan never to sign your name until it is actuallynecessary.
Some people have the foolish habit of signing their names on stray bits of paper. Do not get into this habit, even if there is no space to fill out a note or order above the signature.
