Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

These figures show the fresh life1867 TO 1901 129and vigour which had beeninfused into the organization of the bank under Mr. Walker'smanagement.As a result of the increase in the number of branches ofThe Canadian Bank of Commerce during this period, theextension of the territory it covered, and the growth in thevolume of Canadian production and trade which took placeabout this time, the business of the bank had expanded rapidly.The increase of almost $5,000,000 in total assets during 1898was followed by increases of over $5,400,000 in 1899 and of over$3,000,000 in 1900. Thus in the three years the assets of thebank had grown by nearly fifty per cent. Naturally the profitsalso began to assume larger proportions. In 1899 they were$542,802, permitting an appropriation of $100,000 for writingdown Bank Premises Account, after provision had been madefor the dividend of seven per cent. In the next year, 1900,they reached $766,582, an amount sufficient to pay the dividend,provide $250,000 for the Rest, and $100,000 for Bank PremisesAccount. The Rest had now reached $1,250,000, a triflemore than twenty per cent, of the paid-up capital of $6,000,000.The slowness in the growth of this fund since 1887, when itwas reduced to $500,000, was not due, as some thought, toan over-sanguine estimate of the bank's position by the newmanagement, or to the occurrence of greater losses than wereestimated when the reduction took place. The profits indeedsuffered from the poor quality of much of the older business,but the main reason for slow progress in building up the Restwas the fact that the capital was absurdly large in proportionto the deposits and note circulation. The history of the earlybanks in Canada shows that the chief reason for their existencewas the service they performed by exchanging their own creditobligations in the form of bank-notes for the credit obligationsof their customers, which, however good they might be, wereprevented by their very form from passing current as money.There were almost no savings from which deposits could bederived, and the main object of a bank in seeking a charter