The Causes of Banking Failures.

WE have in our leading article referred at some length to the sensational evidence given by Mr. Harkishen Lal before the Industries Commission. On one point it is necessary to guard against misapprehension. The issue that calls for immediate enquiry is not whether Mr. Lal is right in ascribing the failures of the People's and other Banks either wholly or principally to the causes to which he did ascribe them. That is a very different matter, and in respect of that matter there is admittedly a difference of opinion. The issue that does call for enquiry is what, if any basis there is for the statements made by the witness, first, as regards certain officials and secondly as regards the Government itself. The two are clearly confounded by the Pioneer, when after quoting a few salient extracts from Mr. Lal's evidence, it concludes with the following observation:-"The fact is, of course, that the failure of Lala Harkishen Lal's enterprise was due to nothing else but an autocratic contempt for ordinary methods of conducting business.