GIPE-PUNE-OIIOI2 - DSpace@GIPE

;136 THE BANK CAPITALISM OF YOUNG BENGAL
the D.C. has contributed to loans and the increase of
capital. Altogether this item accounts for 19·7 million
M in the place of 22·6 million M in 1924.
Three Directions oj Growth
The balance sheets of German banks exhibit policies.
and business methods such as lie far beyond the ken of
the Bengali loan offices. But these latter have filled a
void in financial Bengal by enabling the middle class men
to develop their deposit habit on the one hand and the
landed classes to maintain their solvency on the strength.
of their land-credit on the other . To what extent,
however, these inst~tutions are distributing their resources
along genuinely and in the long run productive channels.
may not fail to be an appropriate theme for technical discussion
in business circles.
For the present, that issue may be avoided, especially
because actual statistics in this regard are not available.
It is evident, however, that to us in Bengal, not only to
the business men but also to the students of the theory
and practice of banking, nothing is more val:uable as a
discipline in economic statesmanship than the comparative
statistics of Ame~ica, England, France and Germany,
from. say, 1850 to 1875 and that of Italy and Japan between
1875 an:d 1905. The defects of our banking situation
will be visualized by everybody as soon as one looks
to the figures of these periods bearing on the great powers:
It is perfectly clear that num~rcialIy, i.e., in point of banking
facilities, bank capital or deposits per head of the
population. Bengal has quite a long distance to make up.
Along this direction the possibilities' of growth are
.immense. Secondly. in point of bank functions Bengali