And the detail of all this is incredible, and it needs a special machinery to cope with it.
A large joint stock bank, if well-worked, has that machinery.

It has at the head of the executive a general manager who was tried in the detail of banking, who is devoted to it, and who is content to live almost wholly in it.

He thinks of little else, and ought to think of little else.

One of his first duties is to form a hierarchy of inferior officers, whose respective duties are defined, and to see that they can perform and do perform those duties.

But a private bank of the type usual in London has no such officer.