TENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X 627 



property, either real or personal, to liquidate a debt when it becomes due. 

 If you desire to borrow, go to the bank and inform them of your needs; 

 the bank has your statement and knows whether or not your credit is 

 good for the amount needed, give them your note for two, three or six 

 months as you choose, and place the amount to your credit on a checking 

 account in the bank. If you buy stock, grain, machinery or supplies of 

 any kind, give in payment your check on the bank, this makes you a 

 cash man no matter with whom you deal, and you are soon placed on the 

 list of cash payers by all business men with whom you come in contact, 

 and you in this way get the very best prices obtainable, and very often 

 drop onto opportunities which you would otherwise not obtain if you did 

 not pay cash, and let me say right here — that whatever you owe, owe to 

 your banker, and only one banker, and unless you tell it yourself, no one 

 will ever know that you are indebted in. any way, as your business with 

 your banker is as confidential as your business with your doctor or your 

 lawyer. But, you will say, "I can get money at a less rate of interest 

 from my neighbor," and that may be true, but if you borrow fifty dollars 

 from your neighbor Smith, fifty dollars from your neighbor Brown, and 

 fifty dollars from your neighbor Johnson, it will be necessary that you give 

 notes running not less than six months and generally a year; you are 

 perhaps making one per cent on your interest charge, but do not forget 

 that your neighbor Brown has gone to neighbor Smith and asked him 

 whether your note is good and the same way with neighbor Johnson, and 

 the three have found out that you owe each of them, and this creates a 

 suspicion in the minds of these three neighbors that you owe a great 

 many other men various amounts, many times magnified, and do not for- 

 get that your neighbor Smith, Brown and Johnson are not at all backward 

 about telling these suspicions, and this has hurt your credit more in that 

 vicinity than ten times the amount borrowed of your banker on a note 

 which you can pay at any time you get the money and stop interest on 

 any amount which you pay. 



If you borrow what small sums you need from time to time from Tom, 

 Dick and Harry, simply because you can get it cheap, you must not- feel 

 that your banker is under obligations to you to furnish you money in 

 times of panic or stress, when you are unable to get it from anyone else. 

 If you will be wise you would be very plain and outspoken with your 

 banker and not try to conceal many little things that perhaps you would 

 not want him to know, but at the same time if he did know he would 

 not consider of much importance, and the chances are he knows anyway, 

 as there is very little going on among the finances of a country town that 

 the banker does not know about, and you would feather your own nest 

 if you would make a confidant of him, and he be permitted to advise you 

 and understand that you are depending upon him to carry you through 

 when times are hard just as when they are good. While you perhaps 

 think you are paying a comparatively high rate of interest, you are in the 

 long run getting more than one hundred cents in advice, accommodation 

 and good will for every dollar paid. 



Let me caution you in this one thing — do not give your note promiscu- 

 ously for things purchased from the merchant. If you buy a piece of ma- 



