It cannot be said that bank-directors, when considering the question of remuneration, err on the side of generosity; but nobody would dream of accusing them of that crime, and if the bank-clerk is not paid lavishly, his salary, as a rule, is appreciably above the wages paid for clerical labour in the open market. Nor can it be affirmed that the country private banker was one whit more generous than a board of directors. Indeed, the evidence points in quite an opposite direction, for the clerks of those firms which have been absorbed by the companies generally profited by the change; so it must be allowed that the joint-stock system has raised the standard of comfort of the bank-clerk. Certain of the London private bankers were more liberal, and others, again, had the commercial instinct strongly developed, but we shall see the salary scales of the joint-stock banks are not calculated to excite envy in the mind of the multitude, unless we except the unemployed and the hungry.

The following scale is that of a large London and provincial banking company:—

At the head-office in London, where there is a special scale, the city-manager would receive from £1,000 to £1,500 a year, and the chiefs of departments from £300 to £1,000, according to the importance of the department, while the salaries of the ledger-clerks would be raised £10 each year until the maximum, £300, had been reached. The maximum for clerks is £180. At the metropolitan and suburban branches however, the salaries are the same as those set out in the foregoing list, and the managers would receive from £300 to £800 or so a year in proportion to the business done at the branch. Very few of the joint-stock banks would pay a higher scale of wages than this, and the great majority of them, especially the purely provincial companies, would pay considerably less, while the Scotch banks are niggardly in the extreme—a little national characteristic. It is on record that a clerk in a certain Scottish banking company, whose head-office is at Aberdeen, was receiving £30 a year at the end of five years’ service. In a fit of unaccountable generosity his salary was then raised to £50 per annum, but the recipient remarks that he showed his gratitude by promptly moving to London.

Adverting to our list, we can see that a youngster entering this bank at the age of, say, seventeen, gets £30 a year, out of which he has to pay certain subscriptions. At the age of twenty his salary would be increased to £80, and £10 at the end of each year’s service would be added until the maximum for clerks, £160, were reached. He would then be twenty-eight, and there he would have to wait for the bank to make him either a cashier or an accountant before he could proceed to the next step. A few men remain clerks all their lives, but the percentage would be a very small one, and in every probability the clerk might count upon being promoted at the age of thirty-three or thirty-four. With good luck, or should he chance to have a friend at “court,” he might gain this step at thirty.

Assuming that he were made a cashier at thirty-one, he would start with a salary of £170, and, rising £10 a year, would reach the maximum of this class, £210, when he was thirty-five years of age. The percentage of men who remain in this class all their lives is appreciable, and the average man probably would not get a small branch before he was forty-five or forty-eight. Of course, if he successfully accomplished some such feat as marrying the plain daughter of a general manager, or should he be distantly related to a director or a Lord Mayor, he might get a branch at forty. But the prizes are for the very few, and those men who do really well, after having managed a small branch to the satisfaction of the board, are sent to a larger office upon a salary of £400 a year rising to about £600. At this rate a clerk would be from forty-eight to fifty-two or three before his salary was £400 a year, and it must be remembered that these are the fortunate ones; so it is evident that the majority of clerks in a bank simply eke out an existence.

On the other hand, they are better paid than the average merchant and solicitor’s clerk, while their employment is constant, and, as a rule, they are entitled to a pension, should they survive the monotony of their surroundings, after having attained the age of sixty. Seeing that these young men are drawn from the same class as the merchant’s clerk, and that the demand for their berths is greatly in excess of the supply, it appears at first sight that £160 a year is a fair wage for a person whose principal accomplishments are a bold round hand and the ability to add up long columns of figures with accuracy and despatch. However, it seems improbable that a father, after having carefully considered the chances, will choose a banking career for a son who can pass examinations successfully.

Then, again, the average youngster has more chances in business; for while a few hundred pounds will establish him as a trader, as many thousands will not enable him to become a banker. The banks, so to speak, take their men right off the market, and give them a special training, which fits them for banking alone, but which, as a rule, totally unfits them for any other business; consequently, when a bank-clerk suddenly find himself flung back on the market, he at first usually feels as helpless as a bird which suddenly turned out of the cage in which it was bred, is compelled to sustain life after the manner of its kind. As the bank-clerk generally enters a bank for life, he has a right to expect that the shareholders and directors will at least recognize this fact, and, therefore, pay him a salary based, not only upon the market price of clerical labour, but also upon the assumption that he will pass his days in the service of a company in which he will always be a servant. In other words, as the directors practically hire these men for life, it is their duty to make their circumstances fairly easy, but this is an obligation which the majority of them quite fail to recognize.

The smaller banks have a much lower scale than that given in these pages; and certain of those companies which are pushing out small suburban tentacles in every direction pay the managers of these offices from £80 to £120 a year, and the clerks in proportion. Moreover, some boards have passed resolutions to the effect that no clerk in their service shall marry until his salary be such-and-such a sum; and it seems intolerable that a body of men, who are merely traders, be the resolution good or bad, should be allowed to interfere with the liberty of the subject in this arbitrary fashion. Mr. Punch’s advice is doubtless excellent; but who are these men, in their astounding consequence, to override the law of the land? The whole nation should indignantly protest against their impudence, for a mere trading company, whose only object is gain, is unfit to govern the sons of men. Possibly, if these banks were to publish their salary scales their sham philanthropy would be instantly apparent.

Perhaps a few illustrations of the relations between the banks and their clerks may prove interesting. I have in my mind the case of a man who sat by my side at a large branch bank in the North. From being a chief-clerk or accountant in the service, he had been reduced to £160 a year, and sent to the branch in question. The cost of living being expensive in a large city, he was compelled to send his children to the Board schools. In fact, he was so hard up that he wrote to the general managers telling them that he could not live on the salary, and asking them to increase it. He was told that, if he were not satisfied, he could take a year’s salary (I think it was) and go. The bank, however, ultimately succeeded in getting rid of him more cheaply. The man, who was a tailor’s tout and an insurance agent in his spare moments, did all in his power to add to his income; but at last he fell so low that he actually descended to taking money from the men’s coats. Then followed detection and dismissal.

Now, who was the more to blame, the clerk or the bank? The clerk had informed the directors that he could not live upon his salary, and the directors made him an impossible offer, for the man, who must have been getting on for fifty, had been in the service from a boy, and was therefore not worth thirty shillings a week outside. Knowing this, the offer of the directors was frankly brutal, and losing hope the clerk became a petty thief. My ethics may be somewhat shaky, but were I on my trial for a harp and a halo I would rather stand in the thief’s place than in that of those directors.

Another man in the same office, although single, could not acquire the art of living upon £160 a year, and after some few years of unsuccessful striving and vain endeavour, he was dismissed for drink and debt. He then became a traveller in the wine trade, and terminated his not uninteresting career by getting drunk on his samples. A third man, who was a married cashier, took two sovereigns from his till, intending to return them upon the following day, but his till-money was counted the very next morning by the accountant, who was probably suspicious, and the man had to go. Out of a staff of twenty-eight men, five, I think, were cashiered within five years; it seems to me that were a kinder spirit manifested by those in authority much of this misery and suffering might be spared.

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.