For instance, in one service it is usual to send old men and others who, for some reason or another, have been reduced, to a large branch, where, after a few months have elapsed, they are given a small sum of money and quietly pushed into the street. This procedure is adopted because a man at a small branch is acquainted with the accounts of all the customers thereat, and might, should he be dismissed while there, hold forth in every public-house in the town; but the expedient is unspeakably mean, and surely a bank which counts its deposits by millions can afford to temper justice with mercy. The directors know the fate that awaits these men, more especially when they are past forty, and it is simply cruel to weed them out in this brutal fashion. To my mind it is little short of murder. The system, of course, is bad. The banks place one man in authority and to that man they pay a good salary. He, in his turn, has to hold down the rest, with the result that we have already seen. At the branch in question the manager, who was an old man, received £1,500 a year, and the accountant, who was a man of about forty-two, got £300. The disparity between these two sums is most marked, for the accountant was quite as able a man as his chief, and if he were only worth £300 a year, then the manager was not worth more than £500 at the outside. Were a bank to pay each man a fair salary, and to reduce the manager’s rate of pay, it would increase its expenses considerably, but at the same time it would add to the efficiency of its staff, for most of the men are dissatisfied, and the work, as a rule, is not done willingly, while the directors are looked upon as task-masters. Nor is this at all surprising, for of sympathy they display but little, and their humanity is unquestionably not superior to that of the Zulu. I have weighed my words carefully, and am writing without the slightest heat, my only aim being to state my facts plainly, and I think that, if the facts are unchallenged, the deductions are as indisputable as they are discreditable to the directors and shareholders of certain of the joint-stock banks. Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. Transcriber's Note =Bold= and _italic_ words in the original text have been marked in this version with equals signs and underscores respectively. A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected. End of Project Gutenberg's Banks and Their Customers, by Henry Warren