When Mr Webb comes to the question of the dangers resulting from monopoly, he finds that they lie chiefly in a restriction of facilities, and in raising the price exacted for them, and that in both respects the danger appears to be great. There is, he says, every reason to expect that the banker, as the nearest approach to the “economic man,” will take the opportunity of raising his charges either by increasing the frequency and the rate of the commission exacted for the keeping of a small account, or by reducing the rate of interest allowed on balances, or adopting the common London practice of refusing it altogether. “The banker, who is not in business for his health, may be expected, on this side of his enterprise, to pursue the policy of ‘charging all that the traffic will bear.’ It would probably pay the banker actually to refuse small accounts, and to penalise the employment of cheques for small sums. This would be a social loss.”
With regard to the other side of his business, lending to the borrowers, Mr Webb thinks it need not be assumed that the monopolist banker will actually lend less, because he will seek at all times to employ all the capital or credit that he can safely dispose of, but Mr Webb thinks that he is likely, as the result of being relieved of the fear of competition; to feel free to be more arbitrary in his choice of borrowers, and therefore able to indulge in discrimination against persons or kinds of business that he may dislike; that he will raise his charges generally for all accommodation, again, theoretically to “all that the traffic will bear”; and, finally, that in times of stress with regard to all applicants, and at all times with regard to any applicant who was “in a tight place,” that he will extort as the price of indispensable help a theoretically unlimited ransom.