The consequent reduction in competition which is causing some concern among the trading community has not, as it seems to me, gone far enough yet to be a serious danger.  The idea that the big banks with offices in London give scant consideration to the needs of their local customers seems to be so contrary to the interests of the banks that they would be extraordinarily bad men of business if those who were responsible for their management allowed it to be the fact.  It is probably nearer the truth that banking competition in the provinces is still so keen that the London management is very careful not to allow anything like bureaucratic stiffness to get into the methods by which their business is managed.  By the appointment of local committees they are careful to do all they can to see that the local interests get all the credit that is good for them.  That local interests get as much credit as they want is probably very seldom the case, because it is a natural instinct on the part of an eager business man to want rather more credit than he ought to have, from a banking point of view.  Business interests, as long as they exist in private hands, will always want rather more credit than there is available, and it will always be the duty of the banker to ensure that the country’s industry is kept on a sound basis by checking the tendency of the eager business man to undertake rather more than is good for him.  From the sentimental point of view it is certainly a pity to have seen many of the picturesque old private banks extinguished, the partners in which were in close personal touch with their customers, and entered into the lives of the local communities in a manner which their modern counterpart is perhaps unable to do.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to get away from the fact that if these institutions had been as efficient and as well managed as their admirers depict them to have been they would hardly have been driven out of existence by the stress of modern developments and competition.  Whatever we may think of modern competition, in certain of its aspects, we may at least be sure of this—­that it does not destroy an institution which is really wanted by the business community.  And if the complaint of local interests is true, that they are swamped by the cosmopolitan aspirations of the great London offices, they always have it in their power to create an institution of the kind that they want, and by giving it their business to ensure for it a prosperous career.  As long as no such tendency is visible in the banking world we may be pretty sure that the views expressed concerning the neglect of local interests by the enormous banks which have grown up with London centres in the last thirty years is to a great extent a myth.  It has now announced, however, that the whole problem involved by the amalgamation process is to be sifted by a committee to be appointed for this purpose.