Gem City Business College - Yearbook (Quincy, IL)

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ID Actual Business and Banking Department The Largest, Best Equipped, and Most Suc- cessful Department of the Kind Conducted by any Business College in America PROFESSOR J. H. CRAFTON, who pre- sides over this department, has been an instructor of this school for over thirty years. He is also a director of the Illinois State Bank and of the Gem City Building and Loan Association both of this city. He endeavors at all times to keep his department thoroughly practical and up to date, and with his long and successful experi- ence in this work, together with his practical experience in the business world, he has built up a great actual business department. There is nothing in the country quite equal to this department and it is necessary for one to take the work to appreciate its scope and magnitude. Two able assistants, besides the principal, devote their whole time to this department. Here the student puts into actual practice the knowledge acquired from his text books and class instruction, and after com- pleting the required work he is qualified to fill acceptably any bookkeeping position. The Actual Business department presents an interesting and lively scene to the visitor. It is a veritable bee hive of industry. Here the students are conducting on their own account and with each other the various lines of business embraced in the course. Whole- sale dealers are filling orders from retail merchants. They in turn are selling to their customer ' s or, learning of a better market elsewhere, are shipping goods away to a conj-; : mission merchant, who sells them and returns the proceeds. The transportation company is busy hurrying shipments to purchasers; insur- ance agents are writing policies on property; real estate dealers are effecting sales; bank tellers are receiving deposits or paying checks; merchants are borrowing money at bank, or discounting the notes received from their customers; bank clerks are collecting notes and drafts; stenographers are taking dictation — and all the business activities of a great city are here going on at once, each student striving to make a success of his own work. This department is a miniature business world in itself. It is fitted up in regular counting-house style, no expense having been spared in providing modern equipment, and it is certainly the most elegant and best appointed Actual Business and Banking de- partment in America. There are four large banks, two commission houses, two wholesale houses, a real estate office, insurance office, express office, and freight office — each elegantly furnished and conveniently situated for the transaction of business, together with desks for two hundred retail merchants, located throughout the body of the room, each representing a separate business in a different town. The lines of business followed embrace wholesaling, retailing, commission, insurance, transportation, banking, etc. The Actual Busi- ness Course is carefully graded. The student first begins as a single proprietor, and after advancing sufficiently in the work he admits a partner, and the business is conducted in this form for another period, when he finally incor- porates the business and conducts it on this plan until the course is completed. Each student, on entering the department, is furnished by the principal with his capital in college currency, when he at once leases a store, pays a month ' s rent, and proceeds with 1 business as in the great outside world. He deposits his money in the bank; buys and sells goods; draws checks, notes, and . ..drafts; discounts notes at the banks; opens % ' and closes his books at regular periods, and in this way he not only learns to transact business correctly, but he also keeps his own books, which are made up entirely from his own transactions with the other members of the department. Merchant and Bookkeeper. Each student is thus both merchant and bookkeeper, and as he passes through the several grades of this department he receives a thorough, practical knowledge of business transactions and book- keeping that would require many months of practice in every-day life to obtain; and when he has finished his course he is competent to transact any general business, or to keep any set of business books. Our banks are conducted on the modern plan, and are fitted up in first-class style with every convenience necessary for properly systematizing and filing the details of a regular banking business. The system of bookkeeping adopted conforms to that used by the best national and private banks. The volume of business transacted in these banks is as great as that of any well-regulated bank in the great business world. The Variety and character of the transactions correspond to those of the best banks, and the student who successively fills the office of messenger, collection and discount clerk, teller, cashier, and general bookkeeper, is qualified to perform the same duties in any banking house of the country without further practice or appren- ticeship. Practice in Dictating Letters. Each stu- dent who takes the Business Course gets a very beneficial and practical drill in dictating his business letters to a stenographer, who transcribes them on the typewriter and re- turns them for the student ' s signature. Stu- dents in this department also learn to use the adding machine and other practical office de- vices. The Actual Business and Banking depart- ment belongs to, and is a part of the Business Cou rse of this institution, and the students are therefore entitled to its advantages without -payment of additional tuition: it is included in the Life Scholarship.

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Actual Business and Banking Department G. C. B. C. from a Photograph WE PRESENT herewith a photographic view of a section of the the department as it looks in working order. The banks and other offices Actual Business and Banking Department of the Gem City situated in the back part of the room do not show very clearly, on account Business College, taken while in session. The picture does not of the distance from the camera. Many of the offices do not show at all, do justice to the room, yet it will give the reader a general impression of being located in the section of the room not shown in the photograph. —

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Views in the Actual Business and Banking Department G. C. B. C. 20