Page 91 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER IX.
The Making of the Bank.

Banking and Working Men^The Co-operative Banking Movement—The Loan
and Deposit Departments—The Industrial Bank—The Agitation for
Separation—The Beginning of a Controversy—Years 1868-78.
AT first sight—if at first sight only—banking is a business
far removed from working men. In popular tradition the
banker is especially the man of property. He stands apart as a
master of abstruse and intricate things; he makes or unmakes other
men. The whispered rumour of the presence of a banker in any
meeting where a cause is to be promoted safely may be counted upon
to provoke a thrill. His very clerks are not as other clerks. His
business is carried on palatially his hours of attendance are aristo-
;
cratic. Even in ruin the banker is superlative. The shopkeeper
may be gazetted, the doctor go out of practice, the merchant meet
his creditors, the Cabinet Minister resign, but which of these things
will excite the pubUc hke the failure of a bank ? Yet, as Ludlow told
the Lancashire co-operators in 1870: "Banking has grown out of
ordinary trade. The earhest EngHsh bankers were goldsmiths.
Most country bankers have begun by being brewers or
. . .
millers." The word " bank " preserves the memory of nothing
more than the bench or table of the original money-changer's stall.
In the day of its origin banking was humble enough.
The need of a central bank for the co-operative movement
grew steadily from the first. Many small societies in their early
years were slow to open accounts with private banks. How to
treasure surplus cash was then a problem. A treasurer for the
Hazel Grove Society took up a board of the bedroom floor and hid
the money as far underneath as he could reach. The transmission
of money was a perennial difficulty. In 1857 the Compstall
"
committee resolved that the shopman goes to pay what bills are
due, and if the parties won't come for their money he is to buy the
goods from persons who will come. The committee are not agreeable
for him to go to Manchester with any large sums of money." With
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