2. A monthly summary of foreign trade. This summary, which is prepared from original data and appears before the re port put out by the government, gives the bank and its friends advance information about the course of trade.
3. A daily digest or index of the contents of a number of daily papers. This is distributed early in the morning throughout the bank for the convenience and information of employees.
4. Any item of information which the statistician finds and knows to be of immediate importance to an officer or other employee of the bank is despatched forthwith to him.
5. The statistician makes considerable use of the financial library, which is likewise a source of information on all sorts of economic subjects both for officers and employees of the bank and for clients and prospective clients, particularly of the home city.
The Industrial Service Department One of the latest forms of service performed by a bank is that afforded by the industrial service department. The first bank to offer this service and to create a special department to perform it did so in 1916. Since that date several other banks have provided similar service.
One of the objects of this department is to act as a supplement to the credit department and correlate more closely the com mercial bank with industrial interests. Professional bankers have steadily insisted that commerical and industrial concerns make their quick and current assets bear certain fixed ratios to their current liabilities. On the other hand, our great industrial managers have felt that the bankers do not fairly interpret their statement of resources and liabilities and do not take sufficient cognizance of or give due weight to certain industrial factors, such as management, prospects of the industry, the co-operation of employees, etc., which are of very great importance and possi bly outweigh deviations from the rule of the ratio between cur rent assets and liabilities. The industrial managers insist that loan extensions be based more upon an interpretation of "plant and equipment," "personnel of officers," "labor conditions in the factory," "type and quality of product," "profit and loss based on scientific cost," and such other factors, and less upon rigid rule of-thumb methods of calculation.
The industrial service department aims at increasing the use fulness of the bank's facilities to business by increasing its means of recognizing and crediting merit where it is due and by bringing about a more constructive co-operation between banker and client. By advice and counsel it strives to emphasize better methods of doing business, scientific cost accounting, efficient management, etc., thereby creating more determinable bases for loans and discounts. It supplements the present credit informa tion with facts and angles on the condition of prospective cus tomers which should be of the greatest value to the officers of the bank in deciding upon credit extensions. These data are searched out by the industrial engineers. An industry which today is prosperous, shows a favorable balance sheet, and enjoys a high esteem, may a few years hence fail utterly because of some inherent defect in the organization, management, operations, market, or source of supplies.
The industrial engineer understands these factors and he sharpens and deepens the probe of the credit investigator. But he also is in a position to furnish remedial advice to industries that are temporarily in a difficult position and to help them to a better financial standing, putting them ultimately in such a profitable condition as will warrant extensions of credit. The bank may well take a keen interest in the sound and able conduct of the family of enterprises which are its steady customers; its prosperity is intimately interlocked with their prosperity. The bank's efforts in these lines must be co-operative and not dicta torial, reciprocal and not selfish. The industrial service depart ment strives to gather permanently from its industries and friends many valuable facts and suggestions, and in turn to pass the information on to other customers who are in need of special advice and helpful programs. It works along co-operative and educational lines, and acts as a clearing house for the latest and best information on industrial management and kindred sub jects, gathering such information from all possible sources and disbursing it by booklets, pamphlets, magazine articles, speeches, letters, and conferences.