BUSINESS AND BANKING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 4

BUSINESS AND BANKING.

“Miniature Banking Histories.” By B. H. Mottram. London: Chatto and Wlndus. (6s net.) o “Management: the Secret of Increased Net Profits.” By Herbert N. Casson. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. (6s net.) “ Business or Bankruptcy." By Norman Tiptaft. With a foreword by Sir Gilbert Vyle. London- Elkin Matthews and Marrot. (2s 6d net.)

Mr Mottram explains in a preface that most of the information’in “Miniature Banking Histories” has bpen gained as the result of personal knowledge, as the hurrying crowds before the Stock Exchange, and in the great ports “ seem unconscious of the system of transference of indebtedness by book-keeping called Credit, without which their world could not exist for a week.” His book is divided into three. In the first he sketches in miniature the history of the Bank of England, Barclays, and some 15 other banks operating in Great Britain, and deals also with the rise of the Rothschilds. The second part is devoted to biographical notes on four great bankers — John Law, Samuel Rogers, 'Hudson Gurney, and Lord Overstone; the third to scenes in banking life, an “ attempt to body forth the daily intimacies of an occupation hardly touched by imaginative fiction.”. This authoritative book is made doubly readable by the author’s distinguished literary style.

Mr Herbert Casson, the prolific “ efficiency expert,” has written “Management,” he explains, “in response to a demand for a book on management that describes the new ideas and methods that have sprung up in the last few years.” It is designed for the instruction of merchants, managers, and managing directors, and deals, not with routine equipment, or wage services, but mainly with “the HUMANIZING of a job—-with the creation of a company feeling. It is the first book on management that pufk PERSONALITY first—the personality of the manager—of the employees—of the whole firm.”

Mr Tiptaft, the author of “Business ot Bankruptcy,” is the head of an important firm of manufacturing jewellers in Birmingham, and recently returned from a world business tour. His book is a forceful plea for the elimination of politics from the country’s commerce. He declares that under existing conditions the business man is a far more necessary person than either the politician or the bureaucrat, a contention which will interest many people who are inclined to agree with him.. M’G.