Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

188 HISTORY OF THE BANKbusiness hours. This action of the bank was greatly appreciatedby the miners, as otherwise, especially when a large amountof dust was brought in, its care overnight would have giventhem grave concern.From the beginning it was evident that the well-establishedlines of conservative banking, unless sensibly andmodified to meet the conditions encountered, wouldradicallyresult in the bank doing a business altogetherinadequate toprovide for the heavy expense incurred in opening the branch,and the almost equally heavy cost of maintaining it. A bankin that country run along the usual lines would perhaps haveincurred no actual losses, but its returns would have shownnothing to offset its expenses. The problem was to draw asane dividing line between courage tempered by wisdom andcommon sense, and courage without either. Even in thecomparatively simple task of identifyingthe hundreds ofpayees of the various kinds of bills of exchange presented,the situation which faced the officers of the bank was, especiallyat first, an entirely novel one. In order to identify themselves,many men could offer only others equally unknownto the members of the staff or to the rest of the community.The officers of the branch did their best in such cases andused such powers of discrimination as they possessed, butseemingly took chances such as would drive many a staid,comfortable bank manager in the east into his grave. Thecases was its versatile andbank's trump card in these knottyexceedingly shrewd teller the same who in the openingdays had disclaimed the responsibilities usually accompanyingthat position. He was a Mason, and by some mysteriousmethod which none of the rest of the staff could ever fathom,he would, in certain cases, establish some community witha man, take him to one side and after brief converse withhim announce, "He's all right." That settled it, and it ispleasing to record that in several years the bank incurred nolosses through this channel of prolific possibilities. Takingthe Dawson business as a whole, while the same immunity