August 29, 1908]	THE CHICAGO BANKER	17
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(Department of Chicago Banker )
An Open Forum Dedicated to the Associated Chapters A. I. of B. in Which to Advance the Great Movement for Independent Action and Universal Membership
Banking Salaries in the United States and Canada
clerks photographed and measured as a means of preventing fraud. Commenting on it one bank president in New York said: “I wouldn’t subject the clerks in my bank to the indignity.” Another president said: “No clerk who would submit to such a thing would be a man I would want in my bank.”
An altogether different state prevails in this country. Here it is the bank that claims the service and loyalty of all the men. Neither a general manager nor a president would speak of “my bank” or “my employees.” The former officer, who conducts the active management, is himself a servant of “the bank,” like the men under him, and the president is merely the chairman of the board of directors and one of the larger stockholders.
In all countries bank clerks’ salaries are much influenced by the ordinary rule of supply and demand. One manager of a New York bank, replying to a query as to salaries, said of the large number of young men constantly applying for employment in banks : “They seek light, genteel work. That’s just the kind anybody can do. The broker’s clerk or bank clerk in Wall Street who could not be replaced in half an hour is a rare article. So what can they expect?”
Once a man gets taken on the staff of a Canadian bank he is regarded as belonging to the brotherhood; he may be a future general manager. And his salary is not regulated by the fact that he might be replaced at a certain figure from outside. Instead, he is regarded as being entitled to regular increase, almost annually, so long as he attends faithfully to his duties and strives to fit himself for higher positions. If he has fair capacity he need not consider that when he gets up to $1,000 or $1,200 a year he is at the maximum. One of the chief advantages enjoyed by Canadian bank clerks is the variety and number of honorable and well paid places open to be won by any and all of them. Another is the steady upward movement of their salaries, year in and year out.
Are (hey adequate (o the services performed and
comparable with like services in other professions— From a Canadian point of view
age salary in the larger banks, excluding the officers, is somewhere from $900 to $1,000 per year.”
These conditions, it should be noted, apply only to the best banks in the very largest centers. In the cases of institutions in smaller places, or having smaller businesses, the scale would be considerably lower.
One important difference seen at once when comparison is made between the two countries is that promotion to the higher positions is freer and quicker in the Dominion. Take a typical banking office in a moderate sized town in the States ; it will be found that the president, vice-president, and cashier, are steady, almost permanent fixtures—retaining their places in many cases till they die. Promotion is, therefore, blocked at the teller’s post. And if the large city offices be taken there may be 300 or 400 men, only a few of whom can hope to be heads of department.
In Canada, owing to the branch system, the circulation is much better. At the country branches promotion is not blocked at any post. Good clerks get their upward moves sometimes probably before they are ready for them. A Canadian bank is a great training school— juniors and minor clerks are taken on all over the country, trained as quickly as possible and pushed forward to higher positions.
Another respect wherein a considerable difference exists is in the individual character of the control and ownership of many American banks. A large number are dominated and owned by one man or one interest. So it is quite common to hear a bank spoken of in the United States as being “So and So’s bank.” The clerks in those cases naturally come to regard themselves as being in the employment of the president, individually, almost as much as in that of the bank. It was proposed in Pittsburgh a few months ago to have bank
Montreal, Can., Aug. 25.—A short time ago the suicide of a New York bank teller, because he could not make ends meet on his salary of $1,500 a year, occasioned a good deal of discussion in the United States press as to whether the salaries of bank clerks were sufficient or not. The subject is one that crops up periodically in Canada, also, whenever a notable case of a bank clerk getting into trouble occurs.
Several of the leading bankers of New York City gave their views on the matter. No Canadian banker, says a writer in the Financial Post, could read these statements without being struck by several important differences in condition of the United States bank clerk, as compared with his brother bank man in this country. In the first place, it is not surprising that tellers in the first-class banks in New York, Chicago, and the biggest cities get larger salaries than are received by bank tellers in Toronto or Montreal. Instances were quoted of New York tellers in receipt of salaries of $4,500 and $5,000, which is considerably better than our best banks can afford to pay at their principal offices. In accounting for the difference it is to be remembered that the New York banks referred to do an enormous business, highly specialized, profitable, and concentrated under one roof. Also that their other clerks are not paid in anything like the same proportion as their tellers. Regarding the general run of clerks the following is taken from an article by Will Payne on his investigating conditions for a well known Philadelphia weekly magazine:
“The Wall Street bank clerk’s pay ranges along with that of the broker’s clerk. Beginning as a messenger, he gets twenty-five dollars a month; but if he gets fifty dollars he must have had experience. A man anywhere from twenty-five to thirty years old may reasonably expect to be an assistant bookkeeper (ledger-keeper) at seven to eight hundred dollars a year; or, perhaps, a ledger man at $1,000. As a rule, the banks take in a man for any position he may be qualified to fill. .	.	. The aver-
Chicago Chapter Prize Paper on Currency Reform
not the most useful part of the currency as they ought to be, but the very worst and most dangerous.
Gold, then, being the standard money of all the more civilized countries, it has to bear the weight alike of the other metallic currency and of the paper issues; not only so, but bank deposits subject to check are in effect only another kind of paper money and so, also, certificates of deposit, cashier’s checks, bank drafts, etc. Besides these there are all the lines of commercial and general credits which are largely dependent on the different forms of bank currency and bank credits, so that we have the whole financial and funding system resting on gold.
Now, the touch stone of all subsidiary issues and of all credit is the ease and certainty with which the nominal value of the token can be
By J. C. Shirley, First National, Chicago
coin; and paper money tends to drive out specie. Only by a careful adjustment of the comparative weights and values of the different coins in the system of currency and by safeguarding them from wear, counterfeit, debasement, and other deteriorating influences can the metallic currency be kept in existence and up to the proper degree of efficiency. It is the same way with a paper currency. The denominations of the bills, their genuineness, their relations as units to the units of the coinage, the relation of their nominal value to their actual value as assets, as well as the customs, prejudices and interests of the people. These things must all be carefully considered, else in place of supplementing the real money of the country they will drive it out, and so become
The word currency means the same as circulation or money. The currency, then, of our country and of all the more civilized countries, is a mixed currency, consisting of one or more standard coins, and a subsidiary currency, consisting of both coin and paper money. The standard money passes at its real or metallic value and the subsidiary coinage and the subsidiary paper money at their token or nominal value, that is their current or legal value in terms of the standard coin.
Now, there is one law that applies to all currency of whatever sort, namely, the Gresham Law, which states that in every kind of circulation the money of less value tends to displace the money of greater value. The worn, clipped, debased or counterfeit coin tends to drive out the perfect coin; the subsidiary coin tends to displace the standard