The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8, 24 August 1907, Page 25

The Club Smoking Ro om

By

HAVANA

PROFESSIONAL fees,” said the cynic, “are matters of mystery to the ordinary mortal. It is supposed to be very vulgar to haggle with a professional man ever such mundane things as pounds, shillings, and pence. I remember when I was a little boy being sent to consult a celebrated doctor. I was given two guineas neatly wrapped up in paper, and told to leave them furtively on the (doctor’s table. I was so nervous that I dropped them, and one of the shillings rolled under the table. 1 scrambled after it, and, having recovered it, I laid my offering on the writing desk in a shamefaced manner. The great man had worn an abstracted air during the whole performance, and quietly covered up the four guilty-looking coins with a sheet of notepaper, as if to shut out from his gaze the sight of mere worldly dross. But how times are changed. We have now* the spectacle of a medical man suing for his fees like any other common mortal, and entering into details of his professional charges. Tire plebeian dollar has replaced the lordly guinea. In a recent case some objection was taken to the fact that the man who performed an operation received less than the man who looked on. This is manifestly absurd, as we aH know an old proverb tells us that lookers bn see .most of the gains. By the way, doctor, I see that your profession has as strong an objection as ever to the free lance, judging by the charge of three .guineas for lancing a boil. The charge, as one professional man said, Was large but not exorbitant. What fee Would a doctor consider exorbitant?” © © © “No fee,” replied the medico, “is exorbitant if you get it. An exorbitant charge is when you charge more than you have any hope of obtaining. We doctors have an enormous amount of expense, which patients do not always take into consideration. The cost of our education alone often runs into the thousands. Then we must keep a motor car and horses and traps and men to look after them. We have to keep up a good establishment, and be ready to turn out at all hours. Also many people think nothing of not paying their doctor. The butcher and baker and candlestick maker all get paid before the medical man. Then a doctor often has a very anxious time of waiting while he is building up a practice. It is all money going out and nothing coming in. The habit to which you allude, of people furtively hiding the.ir fee somewhere in your room, certainly, had its funny side. 1A celebrated London physician told me he often spent quite a considerable time, after his patients' had gone, hunting all over the place- for liis fees like a retriever dog.” © © © “Talking of fees.” remarked the parson, “reminds me of a curious but wholly excellent custom that used to prevail amongst the old evangelical families at home. A pastoral visit was a very formal affair. All the servants would lx* summoned into the diningroom, and the clergyman would be requested to read a chapter of the Bible and say prayers. For this he would receive a guinea, which was generally put into an envelope and slipped inside the book. He would transfer it. to his pocket in as quiet and unobtrusive a way as possible. Sometimes the hostess would leave it in his hat, sometimes it would lie delicately and thoughtfully slipped into the pocket of his overcoat. Wo live in an age when all these pretty customs are extinct, and a democratic House of Representatives actually wants to contest a paltry thirty shillings a day travelling •kpenses for a Customs expert.

“He was probably,” commented the journalist, “an expert in the hallowed customs to which you allude. The fee had been unostentatiously given and as unostentatiously received. And now, after some twenty years of courteous and well-bred reticence it is dragged before the vulgar gaze of the public. A complaint on the score of travelling expenses comes with an ill grace from a Ministry accustomed to holiday jaunts among the islands of the. Pacific and the Southern Sounds. I think, personally, that all public servants who have to travel much should receive a fixed sum per annum. To give a man a few shillings a day and expect him to account for it does not seem very dignified. The allowance made for travelling to school inspectors and others is often totally inadequate, and the more fact that a man has to travel about entails a lot of expenses that cannot easily be made to figure in accounts. It would be far more satisfactory to make a rough estimate of the amount of journeying a man is likely to be called upon to undertake and then give him a fairly generous yearly allowance. © © © “Why is it,” asked the business man, “that no system of book-keeping has yet been devised that shall be an absolute safeguard against fraud? We pay the most highly trained experts to audit our accounts; they spend days over the books and present a pretty stiff bill of costs, and yet it would seem that a clever rogue can swindle you under their very nose. For all 1 know', my bookkeeper may be making more out of my business than I am. The auditors certify everything as being all correct, and I am of course bound to take their word for it, but I would like to feel absolutely certain of things. When we hear of municipal bodies being robbed of thousands of pounds, in spite of the yearly audit, and when we see large business firms suffering in a similar way, it makes the average man uneasy.” © © © “I am glad you mentioned the subject,” replied the accountant. The generality o people do * not realise the difference between an audit and a scrut- : iny. A scrutiny is bound to detect any attempt at fraud, but then it involves an enormous cost. Perhaps I can make myself dear by giving a few illustra- . tions free ■ from any technicalities. The great difficulty, is to keep check on the incoming money. Suppose Jones owes the firm £lO. • He comes in and pays this amount to the book-keeper. The book-keeper receipts' the bill and puts the money in his pocket. In the ledger Jones still figures as owing the £ 10, but unless an .account for this sum is posted to him. he is not likely to trouble his head further in the matter. If there is likely to be any inquiry the money is replaced from later sums received from others. Now all an auditor can do is this. He can see that Jones owes this amount for goods received, and be can see from the cash book that the money had apparently not been paid, but how can he discover from tin- books that the money has been misappropriated? You can only go on what is before you.” © © © “A scrutiny,” he went on, “ is a different affair, and means something like this. You take the stock sheets ot twelve months ago, and see that all items are in the stock-book. For instance, you find, say, s°o tins of jam in stock at that date. You then find that in the course of the year another lOOti tins were purchased, and that the stock in hand is 450. You trace each one of these 1050 tins through cash sales •r customers’ accounts. And so for all

stock. Then you take all receipts for money paid out, and call personally to get the receipt initialled by the person to whom the money was paid. You then take the acounts owing to the firm, and call eprsonally on every’ customer to get them initialled as being correct. As you can well imagine, such a course involves great expense and labour, but I do not know’ of any other absolute safeguard against fraud. And I have only taken a very simple case. Many other elements enter into our modern complicated commercial system. A fairly efficient check can he kept on money paid out, but where long credits are given 1 do not see how it is possible to guaru against fraud by’ mere book-ke ping. © © © “ I maney,” said the banker, “ that much could be done by employers noting the style of living adopted by their employees. When aman in receipt of three or four pounds a week is living at the rate of some hundreds a year, it is safe to suspect a screw loose somewbeie. In most businesses there is bound to be some small leakage, perhaps without any conscious fraud, but it ought to b? impossible for any man to defraud a firm of thousands. It is no aff: ir of mine how the Bank’s customers get their money, as long as their accounts are not overdrawn, but I fancy an inspection of one or two ledger accounts would cans? some heads of business houses in the colony to make inquiries into -the habits of certain people they employ.