It is evident, then, that the small broker's path is bestrewn with almost insuperable difficulties, and that it is extremely hard for him to attract safe business. But the banking companies do not arrest the flow of speculative orders to his books. The banks, which have a horror of speculation, confine their attention to the buying and selling of stocks and shares through their brokers. Were they to encourage gambling in securities they are fully aware that the result would be disastrous to the business of banking, for a certain number of their customers would be sure to neglect their business in the hope of snatching differences on the Stock Exchange, and such a policy would end in a crisis that would bring the country to the verge of ruin. For this reason alone the banks firmly and wisely refuse to foster speculation among their clients. Capital, we all know, is the savings of labour; consequently the greater the profits made in trade during any one year, the larger is the fund awaiting investment. Now, if the banks were to incite the gambling fever among their customers, this fund would tend to diminish each year, and, seeing that the prosperity of the country is entirely dependent upon its trade, bankers, customers, and stockbrokers would speedily become involved in common ruin. Small wonder, then, that our large banking companies, which are responsible to the public for millions of money--a large proportion of which they must be prepared to return at any moment--decline to open speculative accounts for their clients. It would be madness on the part of such institutions to divert their customers' attention from trade to speculation in securities; and for this reason the bank clerk as amateur commission agent seems a step in the wrong direction. Moreover, in this respect the policy of the banks appears contradictory. Recognising the temptations to which their clerks are exposed, it is their practice to instantly dismiss those men who indulge a passion for betting; yet some of them deliberately encourage their servants to tout for investment orders, apparently unconscious of the fact that once their attention is drawn to the markets, some of the clerks are almost certain to end by gambling for differences on their own account. Helping themselves to the money of the banks is probably the next step. Were not the question so serious, the fact that directors cannot make so palpable a deduction would be positively humorous, for it is evidently quite as undesirable, from their point of view, that a clerk should bet upon a stock as upon a horse.