of practically the whole conduct of the business to what may be called ’disinterested management’—­that is to say, management by trained, professional officers serving for salaries, whose remuneration bears no relation to the profit made on each piece of business transacted.  The part played in the business by the directors themselves seems to be, with every increase in the magnitude and scope of the concern, steadily diminishing; and these directors, moreover, come to be chosen, more and more, not because of their large holdings of shares, or because of their ancestral or personal connection with banking, but because of their reputation or influence, commercial, social or political.  The result is that, along with the process of amalgamation, there has been going on a transfer of the whole management of banking to the hierarchy of salaried officials; whilst the supreme decisions on financial policy are in the hands, in practice, of a very small group of salaried general managers, only partially in consultation with an equally small group of chairmen of boards of directors, themselves usually drawing not inconsiderable salaries.”

It seems to me that Mr Webb exaggerates in rather a dangerous degree the reduction, through amalgamation, of the necessity which obliges a bank to keep a considerable reserve of cash.  It is quite true that under normal circumstances cash withdrawn from one bank finds its way in due course to another, and that with regard to these mere “till money” transfers there might be a considerable reduction in the amount of cash required if all the banking of the country were in the hands of one business, so that what was withdrawn from one branch would be paid into another.  But this fact would not alter the need which compels a bank to keep considerable reserves in cash in order to provide against the possibility of a run.  A State bank, if the public takes it into its head that it prefers to have a larger proportion of currency in its own pocket rather than in its bank, may find itself pulled at for cash just as vigorously as a bank managed by private enterprise.  This was shown in August, 1914, when very large sums were withdrawn from the Post Office Savings Bank during the crisis which then impelled many members of the public to hoard money, or compelled them to take it out of their banks because they did not find that the ordinary system of payment by cheques was working with its usual ease.

Moreover, Mr Webb’s point about what he calls disinterested management—­that is to say, the management of banks by officers whose remuneration bears no relation to the profit made on each piece of business transacted—­is one of the matters in which English banking seems likely at least to be modified.  Sir Charles Addis, in the article already referred to, calls attention in a very striking passage to the efficiency of the administration of German and English banks, and makes a comparison between the remuneration given to the banking boards of the two countries.  The passage is as follows:—­