Sinking Funds and Trust Accounts.-This includes sinking fund installments paid, accretions to sinking funds, and other trust liabilities. Current Liabilities.-This includes accounts payable, pay rolls unpaid, bills payable, due individuals and corporations, past due and accruing interest on bonds, unpaid dividends, rental, other current liabilities. Income Account. However, if the income account represents a loss instead of a profit, then this balance would appear on the debit side of the balance sheet. CHAPTER I. THINGS OF A GENERAL AND SPECIAL NATURE. The administrative affairs of railroads have had little interest for the public or the mass of railroad men. Because of this, great changes that have occurred in their methods have remained unnoticed. They have, however, been none the less real. Railway men particularly are more often interested in these changes than they suppose. Methods and practices connected with the payment of wages of railway men (the subject of this book) may be cited as an instance. The inception and growth of great enterprises are always attended with administrative crudities. Railways are no exception. In the government of corporations, public and private, correct methods prevail wherever order and responsibility are intelligently sought. The incidental and highly beneficial purposes that the act of paying wages may be made to serve are neither generally known nor appreciated. The mechanical act only is thought of, while the effect is overlooked. The subject is not one of general interest, but forms an important link in the chain of railway administration and as such is entitled to careful consideration. In reference to the manner of paying, it would at first glance seem as if payment by check or draft to be cashed at a central office or designated agency would be a decided advance over the method of paying each man in person in currency. We are accustomed to associate safety with the use of the bank check. It is a thing payable to a specific person and apparently no one else can use it. In ascribing to it this virtue, however, we forget that wherever there is a dishonest man, a check in his hands is no more secure than a bag of gold, if he possesses avenues through which he may dispose of it. But experts in such matters will reply that if forgery is committed, if improper use is made of a check, that the bank honoring it is responsible and not the maker. This is true to the extent that forgery can be proven. But how can it be proven in the case of large bodies of men? To be sure, if the wages due to a particular person are not received by him, he will complain, and thus the theft of his check and its improper use will be discovered. This is simple enough, and so far the check system serves the purpose. But suppose the roll contains fictitous names. Suppose that the person in whose name the check is drawn has no existence save in the brain of the timekeeper or the person making the roll? An indorsement on the back of such a document is not a forgery, and neither the bank nor the agent cashing it can be held responsible. A person obtaining money on it is undoubtedly responsi |