Q. What per cent. of earnings on your capital did you show last year?
A. Roughly, our net earnings were 20 per cent. It cost us 50 per cent. of our gross earnings to run the business.
Q. What taxes do you have to pay?
A. We pay income tax on all our earnings, and deduct from our gross profits. We are entitled to deduct, roughly speaking, our expenses, and then upon the remainder we have to pay the income tax, or whatever it is, at 1 shilling in the pound, for instance, now.
Q. Would you say that the Bank of England is a popular banking institution among other banks in England?
A. Yes, I should say so decidedly. Its popularity goes to this extent, that it is absolutely indispensable to them. Some of them may grumble at this proceeding or that proceeding, but they have one and all to own that the Bank of England is indispensable to them.
Q. As a matter of fact, if you had presented to the Bank of England last fall some bills which had been negotiated through you which appeared to be finance bills, do you not think they might have gently hinted that it was not agreeable to them to have you negotiate any more finance bills?
A. I may say they have that recourse, and they might say to me if I gave them any just cause for doing it, just the same as anybody else.
Q. In other words, the Bank of England has such a commanding position here among the financial institutions which control all the finances of Great Britain that they dominate it when they choose to?
A. When they choose.