PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 



were sympathetic ; for they wisely perceived that co-operative banks are 

 allies of and not rivals of the joint stock banks, and they accepted the 

 Provincial Bank as the link necessary to complete the chain between 

 the small and distant village society and the great money markets. 

 The Provincial Bank has a strong Board of Directors with whom the 

 Registrar works in close consultation. But at the request of the share- 

 holders themselves, the Registrar has been exercising and must, for 

 some considerable time to come, exercise certain executive powers which 

 are essential to the prompt disposal of business. Here again, it may 

 be noted that the Directors of the Provincial Bank are being brought 

 face to face with numerous problems with which, but for the Provincial 

 Bank, they would not have had any chance of becoming acquainted. 

 Education in co-operation is leading them along fresh and broader 

 paths of knowledge and thought. With the opening of the Provin- 

 cial Bank to deposits (an event which has quite recently occurred) and 

 the strengthening of its connection with the money market we shall 

 probably be able, before long, to organize co-operative mortgage credit 

 societies for our landed proprietors, many of whom are complaining 

 that co-operation has left them out in the cold. Whether they will co- 

 operate or not remains, of course, to be WH. 



Before the Provincial Bank started work it was difficult and indeed 

 almost impossible for the Central Banks to accept deposits with safety. 

 Term deposits, if accepted, carry with them the necessity of meeting 

 all obligations to depositors exactly on the due dates. Anybody who 

 has had actual experience of co-operative banking must be aware that 

 the requirements of societies cannot be made to fit in with a bank's 

 liabilities to its depositors. The provision of ample cash reserves or of 

 resources from which cash can at once be obtained to meet withdrawals 

 has to be made before deposit banking can be undertaken. Such pro- 

 vision the Provincial Bank has been able to make ; and so it has been 

 possible for our Central Banks to turn their attention to deposit bank- 

 ing. The results have been surprisingly good ; and Central Blinks 

 have been able to prove that they have the confidence of the public 

 and can obtain large amounts in deposits. Much of the money depo- 

 sited was lying idle before it was entrusted to Central Banks ; and I 

 cannot but point to this introduction of deposit banking as yet another 

 most valuable result of popular education in co-operation. Not only- 

 do Central Banks receive deposits ; but societies also accept deposits 

 from their own members. Certain minimum annual deposits have to 



