There is no interchange bureau in operation among the banks; their only interchange is the direct interchange by letter or through a personal investigator. Banks seek to establish friendly relations with other banks in their city to the end of freer recipro cation in granting credit information, and they reciprocate with their correspondent banks. Credit men from some 219 banks in the United States are members of the Robert Morris Club, affiliated with the National Association of Credit Men, and they probably represent the most advanced order of credit man.
At a meeting in 1916, on the subject of credit interchange among themselves, this club proposed the following eight rules: I. That the first and cardinal principle of credit investiga tion is the sacredness of the replies, and any violation of this principle places the violator beyond the pale of consideration of the honest credit man.
2. That every letter of inquiry should indicate in some definite and conspicuous manner the object of that inquiry.
3. That when more than one inquiry on the same subject is simultaneously sent to the banks in the same city, the fact should be plainly set forth in the inquiries.
4. That individual consideration, by the recipient of a credit inquiry, of the distinguishing marks therein will in crease the efficiency of credit investigation.
S. That indiscriminate revision of files regardless of the presence of the name's note in the market is unnecessary, wasteful, and undesirable.
6. That the continued observance of high ethical principles in the conduct of credit departments of banks and banking institutions insures the best results and co operation in safeguarding banking credits.
7. That it is not permissible nor the part of good faith in soliciting accounts from a competitor to seek informa tion from the competitor without frankly stating the object of the inquiry.
8. That in answering inquiries it is advisable to disclose all material facts bearing on the credit of the borrower to the end that the paper offered in the open market be of the same description as that held by the borrower's own bank.
5. Other Sources of Information The bank credit man makes use of various odds and ends of information to complete and check his data. The bank sub scribes to the leading newspapers and the financial and commer cial publications. The columns containing business troubles, legal judgments, changes in the affairs of firms, corporations, and banks, and mercantile, financial, and crop conditions, are care fully scanned, clipped, and filed. Trade reference books facilitate the routing of credit investigations and also contain much useful information. The "Textile Trade Directory," for example, contains a list of all cotton goods and woolen goods manufac turers of the country, and gives a brief description of the mill property of each, the names of the president, treasurer, manager, and selling agent, a list of houses handling the various raw materi als consumed by the manufacturers, and a list of all the wholesale dry goods and jobbing houses. The "Fertilizer Trade Handbook" gives not only the names of all concerns engaged in the manu facture of fertilizers, but also those which manufacture cottonseed oil and the houses handling supplies used by these manufacturers. The "Cotton Shipper's Handbook" lists by states and cities all the cotton exporters of this country.