Growth Of Financial Banking

They undertake considerably more of what is called financial banking than they did formerly. Loans to Stock Exchange houses, investments in stocks and bonds have grown to large proportions, and the connection with new flotations of securities has increased. They engage freely in business offered by the principal mining centres; they assist the manufacturing interests, not only to turn out and distribute goods for home consumption, but also to ship stuff abroad, and to collect payment therefor. They have drawn to themselves practically the whole of the new deposit and savings bank business of the country, and they have done valuable service, with their loans made in the new towns of the West, in helping to build up that part of the Dominion.

Various People, Various Methods

To learn the general methods of banking in any country it is necessary to study the forms in which the energies of its people find expression. In Canada these forms of activity are many and varied. Nearly every province is strong in agricultural products. On the Atlantic seaboard, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the principal special occupations, apart from the professions and the general distribution of goods, are: the fisheries, coal mining, iron and steel manufacturing, lumbering, trade with the West Indies, with Europe, and the United States. In Ontario and Quebec they are general manufacturing, mining of various kinds, the inland lake traffic, fruit culture, dairying, lumbering, and -centred in Montreal and Toronto-is the trade with foreign countries, and the heart of the transportation and financial business. Manitoba's great specialty is wheat. It also has important fisheries, and, just now, railroad construction is active. Winnipeg is the great distributing centre for Western Canada. Alberta and Saskatchewan also are strong in wheat and agriculture. Ranching and coal mining have considerable importance, and railroad construction is much in evidence, and will be for many years.

All three provinces are quickly filling up with settlers. Their arrival, purchases of land, and farming operations, have an important influence on the banking business of the West. British Columbia has mining, fisheries, fruit, lumbering and Oriental and Antipodean trade. And, far to the north, the Yukon finds its sustenance altogether in gold mining. How the banks deal with these interests, how they give their assistance, the terms they exact, and the conditions they impose will be taken up after a few of the features of Canadian banking that contrast sharply with banking in other countries have been lightly touched upon.

United States Similarity

Taking the United States first, it will be observed that in the northern half the people are engaged in much the same forms of activity as in the Dominion. The greater density of the population introduces some additional occupations, and varies the form of some others; and there is, of course, a greater concentration of financial, transportation, and other business in New York and Chicago. But, taken on the whole, there is a great similarity in the occupations of the two peoples. Also, they are of the same blood, and their numbers are being recruited from much the same sources. But their banking business is transacted on widely different lines. The main difference is in the form of the banks, the United States banks being single-office concerns, each office having its president, directorate, and complete paraphernalia of independent existence. There were in the United States in 1912, according to the report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 25,195 banks of all kinds, exclusive of non-reporting institutions. At the same time in Canada there were but 27 "going" chartered banks, with 2,759 branches. In the one case, 2,759 banking offices were operated by 27 executives; in the other, some 25,000 executives were necessary to oeprate a like number of offices.