Three Men in a Boat Ask: 'What's the Use of Banks?'

What use are the banks?

What do bankers do all day to earn their astronomical salaries and gargantuan bonuses?

Are they worth it?

Questions on everyone’s lips these days. But has that always been the case?

Surely there once was a Golden Age of Banking, a more innocent, serious time when highly-trained financial professionals, experts in their field, did a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Those halcyon days long before anyone had heard of The Credit Crunch, Pay Day Loans, The Occupy Movement, The Gnomes of Zurich or even the Great Depression. 

Take for example the Victorian Age.  Back then the local bank manager was a respectable person of high social status.  If a gentleman had a problem with his bank account he would sort it out face-to-face with his friendly bank manager, probably over a lunch of beef and oyster pie.

Cast your mind back to an historic afternoon in 1869.  It is a mild day in high summer, and in spite of the persistent drizzle, a young man’s fancy is lightly turning to the thought of a boating holiday.  Hurray! Jerome K Jerome has just written Three Men in a Boat, one of my favourite books of all time.

Three friends, (George, Harris and the author, not to mention the dog, Montmorency), embark on a boating holiday for the sake of their health.  During the course of their adventures on the river, one of the things which constantly messes up their itinerary is George’s job at the bank, which he is fitting in around their boat trip.

The deep respect and reverence in which bankers were held at the time is made clear from Jerome K Jerome’s vivid description of George’s typical working day at the bank:

…George… would not be able to get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two…

Later on in the book, Harris’ exploration of a fascinating and historical riverside graveyard is interrupted by the rigours of George’s employment.

I reminded him of George, and how we had to get the boat up to Shepperton by five o’clock to meet him, and then he went for George.  Why was George to fool about all day, and leave us to lug this lumbering old top-heavy barge up and down the river by ourselves to meet him?  Why couldn’t George come and do some work?  Why couldn’t he have got the day off, and come down with us?  Bank be blowed!  What good was he at the bank?

“I never see him doing any work there,” continued Harris, “whenever I go in.  He sits behind a bit of glass all day, trying to look as if he was doing something.  What’s the good of a man behind a bit of glass?  I have to work for my living.  Why can’t he work.  What use is he there, and what’s the good of their banks?  They take your money, and then, when you draw a cheque, they send it back smeared all over with ‘No effects,’ ‘Refer to drawer.’  What’s the good of that? 

Those were the days!