UNCOMMON SENSE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 16021, 6 January 1923, Page 11

UNCOMMON SENSE.

CKEDIT. Credit is capital. Like capital it can be made to produce dividends. Also like capital it can be easily destroyed. Credit in business is the coniidence that the business world reposes in a man’s ability to conduct a commercial enterprise. If the business world is sure that he can take a sum of money, pay interest on it for'a certain term, and pay back the principal when it is due, he can get the money. In every city the banks know to whom they can safely extend credit, and they very rarely extend it to anybody else. . 1 'They know to whom to extend credit because it is their business to study men and the businesses that the men conduct, and 'the conditions that make for success Or failure in those pa tieular businesses. And inasmuch as it is not the banker’s,money, but the money of the. bank’s depositors that is loaned, the 1 banks have to. be extremely careful about extending; credit. But all credit is not ‘mpney credit. Every trust that is reposed in aiy worker is a form of credit. The employer who sends an agent into a distant city to conduct a' business enterprise,, credits that man for his brains and his industry.

And the .money the man draws in salary is the money he makes on the credit he receives—which'is his'capital. . .. ■. . ..;.' .

Wo choose our friends on credit, raid keep theni as long as they keep that credit intact'.

When'they fail to do that, they lose us as friends, and their loss is the value that our esteem was to them, whatever it may be. The whole world, business and social, is conduced on credit. Men are elected to public office because "of the credit that is'given them by the electors.- . . .'.,'/

When they are defeated, it means that, this'credit iff withdrawn. ' , The maintenance of credit is essehi'cil to business, as. every man in business knows.. But it's maintenance is just as essential in' political. life, j and in personal relations.

Credit, the late J. P. Morgan used to say, is founded on character. - And' upon one's character depends his standing .with the ..other men—his credit with th'ein. * Ho' must pa;."- interest on, that credit with honesty . and ability.' ; %»' ".&* .-".'-:■:. :■,>-■' . '.- ' ..