ng me
more. Then I knew I could pay it back when I liked. When you come to
figure it all out, isn't that exactly what the banks do with the
people's deposits?"

As the train wound its way along gorges and through tunnels eastward
from Vancouver, Henty and Evan were silent. Evan was thinking of what
Watson had done, and said. It was a fact that banks gave three per
cent. interest on deposits, which they used on speculations in Wall
Street and elsewhere; those speculations netting them such high
dividends that great buildings had to be erected to conceal them. And
how was the customer treated who wanted to borrow a few hundred dollars
in an emergency? Even though he had been a depositor for years,
getting three per cent., what sort of accommodation was the bank
willing to give him when he was temporarily up against it? Evan knew.
He remembered too well the old excuse handed out to the customer, year
after year: "We have to cut down our loans." Why did they _have_ to?
Why _do_ they have to? Who makes them, who wants them to do it? The
eternal answer is "Head Office." But who is Head Office?--the bank.
The bank commands the bank to cut down its loans, just as it commands
the bank to do many things detrimental to the country's good. And why
not? Don't the people of Canada stand for it? Don't they give their
money and sons to the banks, according to the traditions and idolatries
of their fathers?

Evan's mind dwelt upon High Finance. He pondered and pondered on the
thing Watson had done, and, in the light of common business morality,
could find no fault with it; but in his heart he knew it was wrong.
The argument he found against it was a trite one, but true: "The wrongs
of others are no palliation of ours." If the banks did wrong in using
depositors' money to earn dividends for the rich, that was not the
clerk's business--that was the _public's business_.

What then was the clerk's business? It was the clerk's business to see
that he received a decent salary. He did real work, oh very real! and
he was entitled to a salary upon which he could both live and, at a
reasonable age, support a wife. Why didn't he get it? Because the
bank could, by intimidation and repression, by promising and bluffing,
get him for less than a living wage. But "why" was not so much to the
point as "how." _How_ was he going to get it? How had other workers
of every description obtained a bread-and-butter wage? By making