There are some features in our deposit business which may be interesting to Americans. There are perhaps not half a dozen savings banks, as the term is understood in North America, in the whole of Canada, and those only in the largest cities, and there is really little need for the existence of any. The Government carries on the Post Office Savings Bank system, copied in some respects from Great Britain. The safeguards always necessary when a government undertakes to carry on a regular business are so many and so tedious that the leading banks do not find it necessary to allow as high a rate of interest as the Government.

In addition to the Government we have as competitors for deposits the companies authorized to lend on real estate. Most of those companies, however, now borrow only on debentures at fixed periods. Some of this money is borrowed in Great Britain, but much of it is obtained at home. I may say here that while, as with you, banks have fortunately no power to lend on real estate, the restriction is perhaps no longer necessary, as land banking and mercantile banking are clearly separated in the minds of every intelligent man of business in Canada. And as the banks do not buy paper made for the purpose of obtaining money, as you do in the United States, but loan only to their own customers, supplying their entire wants, and seeing that the money is to make or move some product about to be sold, we do not so often discover that we have unwittingly been booming a corner lot, building a mill, or helping to float a company.