The toll taken by the bank upon such transactions as simple buying and selling is practically nil; its profit is indirect.  But besides the indirect profit there is the direct speculation of making advances at high interest, discounting bills, and similar business.  It might almost be said that the crops are really the property of the local banks, so large in the aggregate are the advances made upon them.  The bank has, in fact, to study the seasons, the weather, the probable market prices, the import of grain and cattle, and to keep an eye upon the agriculture of the world.  The harvest and the prices concern it quite as much as the actual farmer who tills the soil.  In good seasons, with a crop above the average, the business of the bank expands in corresponding ratio.  The manager and directors feel that they can advance with confidence; the farmer has the means to pay.  In bad seasons and with short crops the farmer is more anxious than ever to borrow; but the bank is obliged to contract its sphere of operations.

It usually happens that one or more of the directors of a country bank are themselves farmers in a large way—­gentlemen farmers, but with practical knowledge.  They are men whose entire lives have been spent in the locality, and who have a very wide circle of acquaintances and friends among agriculturists.  Their forefathers were stationed there before them, and thus there has been an accumulation of local knowledge.  They not only thoroughly understand the soil of the neighbourhood, and can forecast the effect of particular seasons with certainty, but they possess an intimate knowledge of family history, what farmer is in a bad way, who is doubtful, or who has always had a sterling reputation.  An old-established country bank has almost always one or more such confidential advisers.  Their assistance is invaluable.

Since agriculture became in this way, through the adoption of banking, so intimately connected with commerce, it has responded, like other businesses, to the fluctuations of trade.  The value of money in Threadneedle Street affects the farmer in an obscure hamlet a hundred miles away, whose fathers knew nothing of money except as a coin, a token of value, and understood nothing of the export or import of gold.  The farmer’s business is conducted through the bank, but, on the other hand, the bank cannot restrict its operations to the mere countryside.  It is bound up in every possible manner with the vast institutions of the metropolis.  Its private profits depend upon the rate of discount and the tone of the money market exactly in the same way as with those vast institutions.  A difficulty, a crisis there is immediately felt by the country bank, whose dealings with its farmer customers are in turn affected.