Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

208 HISTORY OF THE BANKThe rapid strides made by The Canadian Bank of Commercein the territory west of the Great Lakes are best shownby the fact that, whereas until its entry into the Yukon in1898 it had only one branch in the West, that at Winnipeg,at the close of 1911 it had 149, of which 113 were in the threeprairie provinces.It will be seen that the outcome more thanjustified the bank's western policy, but it must not be imaginedthat it was adopted in a restless, speculative spirit. Infact, one of the great services rendered in the West by theCanadian banks has been their effort to educate the people(not at all times with success) in sound conservative methodsof finance. The optimism of Sir John Aird and his chief didnot blind them to the fact that, while the future of the Westseemed assured, there was a limit to the number of unprofitablebranches (the present value of which lay chiefly in theone time.future) that could be carried by the bank at anyConsequently it was the policy of the general manager and ofthe Board to keep the brake on, and to meet the definite needsof the western community as they arose, rather than to takereckless chances.There was also another problem which had to be faced,the practical one of obtaining trained men for the new branches.The strain on the staff during that period of extension wasthe firstsevere. Conditions in Canada, as a whole, duringdecade of this century, were prosperous and there werenumerous openings for young men which appeared to offer amore remunerative career than banking. Clerks leaving theemploy of the bank were occasionally able to boast of havingmade within a week or two, on a real estate deal, more thana year's salary with the bank. Resignations from the staffshowed a tendency to exceed applications from young meneligible for employment. At the beginningof the bank'swestern development it had only sixty Canadian branches fromwhich to man the new ones, so that the problem of finding atrained staff for from six to twelve new agencies per annumseemed at times insoluble. The managers of the old-established