BANKS AND BANK MANAGERS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 279, 11 July 1874, Page 4

BANKS AND BANK MANAGERS.

Banking estabiishmenits are. fVery; much," the same all the world over. ' institutions they are,, without which commerce could not be , carried on, „ but; hitherto managed after a .somewhat ex-, elusive principle, which it is /occasionally' difficult to understand. Sir James Mack-/ lntosh, in speaking of Nccker, describedthe bankers as guided by routine. And there must be a good deal of routine in all such large and important affairs. Still, we believe, we are only stating a fact when we say (always conceding exceptions) that the bona fide bills of the honest tradesman, who is fighting bravely to psiy his twenty shillings in the pound, and who seeks accommodation to enable him to carry on his business steadily and securely, are regarded with a certain degree, if not of disfavor at least of suspicion either expressed or implied, while those. of the specnlator, who can cut a dash and talk fluently, are readily negotiated for large sums. The former has come to be treated in the bank parlor, as if he were receiving a boon, instead of transacting a piece of business which is mutually advantageous ; the latter meets with due courtesy We daresay the manager is hardly couscious it is so! he is acting according to immemorial usage and precedent ; and certainly means no harm.

A. trader is not necessarily honest because he does a small business with a bank, and it is unquestionably a banker's, duty to investigate the real resources if every one asking discount at his hands, but the remarkable thing is the patronising scrupulosity with which some of these financiers treat a hard-working small trader in the matter of money-lending, compared with the readiness, on the ether hand, with which they meet the proposals of the man who not unfrequently seema to use his business merely as a convenient instrument for raising cash. There are bank managers who appear to have studied poor Richard, old and threadbare as he is, to some purpose. They take care of the pence and leave the pounds to take care of themselves, but the pounds some - times don't do it. The moral of all this briefly is, that bank managers might do something more than is now done to advance a solid and substantial prosperity, if they would receive modest applications from tradesmen for a reasonable amount of accommodotion with more liberality than is generally done, while at the same time they might decline to hold out temptations to those forward people who are in haste to be rich at all hazards. At the

present, moment everybody is passing rich; —-this is ;an.exceptional period,,—and our remarks: have! not the application they would have in other circumstances, but men; carrying on a lair business have been | atraightened for ready,.. money .before how, and it.isjnst possible may-be. so again, and the Colonial Bank; will; lead; the way in a little-heeded.but really use-ful-reform," should its managers" start with ;Bu'ch!a programme-'-to :guide them;as. we have indicated.—' Wellington Tribune.'