Tw: letter signed "Shipper" which we print in another column will seem to most of our readers to put a question to which there can only be one answer. We received, indeed, a somewhat similar letter last year, but we did not insert it, because it seemed to us to involve a too elementary principle of commercial morality. The banker who grants a credit enabling the shipper to draw "for 90 per cent. of invoice cost," intends that the invoice cost shall be the true market value at date of shipment, and he has the margin of 10 per cent. left to protect himself against market fluctuations after shipment, When the credit is sent to be used by the shipper for consignments on third parties' account, the grantor of the credit relies on the kuowledgeof the market possessed by the shipper to guard him against too much being advanced to the third party and if the shipper makes out the invoice at from 7 to 10 per cent. above the highest offer that the owner of the produce has had, and then draws 90 per cent. of that invoice, he commits an actual fraud on the buyer of the draft and on the grantor of the credit. Such frauds are committed, we know, and have been committed from time to time ever since credits were invented, but it has. always been known that they were not honest, and we are astonished to find any one defending them. "Shipper" says that. his fence would be thatit isnot purchase, but a shipment on another's account, and so far as the above mentioned. credit. is concerned (90 per-cent, of invoice cost) I am within its reading." This defence, of course, is merely.specious; by putting-his name to the draft and the invoice, " Shipper" tees, their ae an he makes himself responsible if his third party has overvalued. The terms of the credit ma; be too: lax,. because the grantor. of it
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.