Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/74

Rh publichouses, billiard saloons, &c.; in fact everything that is debasing and low. The following extract is from the Australasian Insurance and Banking Record of date March, 1877, and is quite in accord with my own views:—

“A large proportion of the bank work is here performed by men very young, as compared with British bank clerks. They have not, generally speaking, undergone so long a probation; they have not lived through so many temptations; there are fewer grey heads amongst them. The middle-aged man generally, probably married, is exposed to fewer temptations than the bachelor without domestic resources in his hours of leisure; and these leisure hours suggest the consequences laid down in Dr. Watts’ hymn. We can quite imagine that the evenings of a young banker at some of the outposts of Australian civilisation must be a difficulty. Society of the proper kind there may be none. The chances are in favour of his gravitating to the billiardroom, which is of course at a tavern. He may be moderate in his play, and temperate in his drinking, but a life of this kind engenders loose habits. It may be asked why young unmarried men are selected for these appointments. The answer is that in a comparatively unsettled community the married manager or accountant is not so transferable a commodity as the young fellow with no impedimenta in the shape of wife and children. In the one case there is only a portmanteau to pack; in the other, there are numerous considerations of bank residence, cost of removal, realisation of furniture, &c., all adding to the difficulty of settling an officer to his own satisfaction. And there can be no doubt that an officer dissatisfied with his position is not in the proper frame of mind for doing his best for his employers. In instituting a contrast between bank officials married and unmarried, we do not mean to say that the former do not succumb, but that they are subject to fewer temptations of a dangerous kind.”