Having considered the securities which constitute the “liquid assets” of bankers, we will now briefly turn our attention to the manner in which the remainder of bankers’ funds are usually utilised. As we have already seen, this remainder is used mainly in discount operations and advances to customers, while a certain amount is generally sunk in premises, etc. These three items have been classified together in our table, as the necessary information is not given in some of the published balance sheets to enable us to specify them separately. As regards “premises,” it may be repeated that though they form a valuable asset, yet they are not an available one, and would, generally speaking, only be realised in the event of a winding-up. The bills held under discount comprise bills which are discounted for the customers in the ordinary course of business, and also bills bought from bill-brokers; and they constitute a fairly available asset. The “Advances” to customers is a security of a very fixed nature. In times of trouble it is the asset most difficult of realisation, and it is the rock on which the majority of banks which have come to grief have struck. No information respecting this asset is vouchsafed in any balance sheet beyond the bare total. It is a known fact that banks are lenders on practically any kind of security which has a fairly steady value, and in which there is a “market”; stocks, shares, produce, houses, lands—all are offered as security, and all are accepted under various conditions. But it is of the utmost importance that bankers should closely watch and scrutinise the aggregate of advances which they may make upon any one kind of security, so as to keep the amount within due limits. If too large a sum is advanced on one kind of security, and that security should become much depressed in value, the banker may be caught between two fires: on the one hand, the customers who have deposited this security will, from its fall in value, have become financially weakened, and perhaps not be in a position to repay the advances; and on the other hand, if the banker wish to repay himself by realising the securities, he may find that the margin of value has run off, and what can be obtained by selling the securities in the market will not cover the advances, or possibly, for the time being, they will prove to be unsaleable. Thus he will be left in the dangerous position of having a considerable proportion of his assets indefinitely locked up, and a certain number of his customers in a weak and reduced condition financially.