2. Per procuration clerks, who are authorized by the direc tors to sign mail, drafts, and other items on behalf of the bank, and who as a matter of convenience have their desks in the departments where they are most needed.
3. Assistant clerks, who help the chief clerk to devise methods and routings for handling regular items, to determine and direct the procedure in handling irregu lar items, and to locate mistakes and errors, devising a better system if they find errors to be due to faulty organization, and training the clerk at fault or finding a more competent employee if the mistake is due to the personnel of the department.
4. A special reports clerk, who, under the direction of the chief clerk, prepares special reports on a variety of subjects pertaining to the foreign division for the use of the officers of the bank.
5. An information clerk, in charge of the public information desk and the bench boys who fetch and deliver all sorts of messages throughout the bank.
The executive of the foreign division is an assistant cashier. To him all questions on foreign exchange or other operations arising in any of the departments are directly referred by the department head. He is presumably an expert in the subject of foreign exchange in all its bearings. His training has been largely acquired in actual operations in the traders' and other departments. He is the ultimate determiner and adjuster of any question on these subjects, and he bears the responsibility for the successful execution of the policy of the management. In certain banks the heavy responsibility of the traders' department has made it expedient to put that department, along with the credit, new business, service, publicity, and special representa tives' departments, directly under the management of one or more vice-presidents. In such an organization the assistant cashier works under the immediate direction of one or more vice-presidents who are expert in foreign exchange.
The Vice-Presidents The managerial side of the administration of the foreign divi sion is in charge of several vice-presidents and consists of two divisions, one geographical and the other functional. The foreign
world is divided geographically on the basis of contiguity or general likeness of business, and one vice-president is given ex clusive charge of an area. Each of these officers specializes in the social, political, fiscal, financial, and commercial affairs of the region assigned to him and becomes an authoritative analyst and interpreter of banking conditions in that part of the world. Because it is within the power of the traders' department to make or lose considerable sums of money and because the traders need the advice of the vice-presidents in control of their respective areas, the traders' department may fittingly be made directly subject to those vice-presidents rather than to the assistant cashier.
The vice-president in charge of an area has two organizations under him, the one at the bank and the one abroad. The internal organization, probably in immediate charge of an assistant vice president or other officer, handl-es the sections of the credit, new business, service, publicity, and special representatives' depart ments that pertain to its respective area. The foreign organiza tion embraces the foreign traveling or resident representatives and the branch banks. The character of the work and organiza tion of branch banks has been described in Volume II, Chapter XVI, and the collection of foreign trade data and credit informa tion in Volumes III, Chapter XXXVIII, and IV, Chapter XLVII, respectively.
Certain of the vice-presidents have functional duties of an administrative kind. One of them meets the foreign customers when they visit the home office, either in person or through their representatives or friends. He is necessarily a linguist, and a part of his aim is to win customers and good-will for the bank. To another vice-president may be delegated the liability inspec tion work; he travels abroad in the territories where business originates and investigates the credit risks of the bank's present and prospective customers and correspondents. To other vice presidents may be delegated similar specialized services.