0	1
01
THE CHICAGO BANKER
Anglist i, 1908]
Greater Honesty Amon¿ Bankers
misapplies any of the moneys, funds, securities or credits of the bank, or ■who makes use of the name of the bank with intent to injure or defraud the bank or any individual, person, company, or corporation, shall upon conviction be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in the penitentiary not exceeding five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.”
It should be at least fifty years, great God. any horse thief gets a severer sentence in this country, and in Missouri the nigger who steals a chicken is made equal in crime to his banker colleague. Why, we should blush to think that our legislators put our capability to steal on such a level. Do you believe with me that the dishonest methods of bankers have led to panics, and in turn to the need of emergency currency? Now reverse the proposition. Let the experience of depositors with their banks be satisfactory so far as honest methods are concerned; deal out the most severe punishment to wrong doers—to the bank official robber—showing him no mercy beyond that displayed in dealing with criminals of other sorts. No distrust among depositors, no emergency currency; confidence in depositors, confidence in investors, confidence in bankers is the remedy, and that remedy can be brought about only by the experience that justifies it.
V*
“The Small Country Place”
The Lippincotts of Philadelphia are constantly bringing out useful and delightful books, to which class belongs “The Small Country Place” by Samuel T. Maynard, a distinguished writer upon landscape gardening as applied to home making. This author has spent more than thirty years teaching botany and horticulture. The book is thoroughly practical, and will be of great value to those who live upon small country places, especially those whose work allows them but a few hours each day to spend about the home.
The author discusses the growing of farm and garden crops, the care of the horse, the cow, poultry, and bees, and similar subjects.
It is a work that should be in the hands of every one who owns or rents a bit of land in the country or suburbs, and the large farmer will even find in it many suggestions that will be of material aid to him׳.
There are a great many illustrations showing plans of orchards, vegetable, and flower gardens, lawns, roads, walks, etc.
Published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, with seventy-five illustrations from photographs, and numerous line drawings. Cloth, $1.50 net. Post-paid, $1.65.
V*
Wilderness Homes
The new book on log cabins and how to build them, by Oliver Kemp, will come clear up to your expectations. It is full of pictures and practical advice for those who hope some day to have a home in the woods. Mr. Kemp wants the public to know how to build a log house, and how to be generally efficient when out camping. He will find a ready audience among the campers who take to the wilds in droves every summer, and his volume will have real value, too, to those invalids who are beginning to discover the benefits of primitive modes of existence. There are many helpful pictures and the text is an inspiration. Published by the Outing Publishing Co., at $1.25.
V*
Joseph F. S. Davis was recently elected cashier of the Denver Stockyards Bank, of Denver, Colo.
This is the panacea for panics presented to Colorado bankers by J. M. B. Petrikin of Greeley, in a very novel address
learned financiers on the causes of the panics which have disturbed the financial and business interests of this country. It has been my good fortune to have been connected with banking interests through only two of these periods. I have read much of the conditions during those periods in the great business centers. I have had intimate acquaintance with those conditions in our own state alone, and my opinions and conclusions must be drawn from only what I have actually experienced and personally come in contact with.
Failures in other lines of business affect a few, but a great bank failure affects every one. And what are the causes of the failures that make for ultimate loss of the depositor’s money? Speculation and use of the bank’s funds by the bank officers for their own purposes. Do you know of bank failures that were due to poor judgment in the matter of making loans that caused the depositors the loss of a dollar? There have been cases of poor loans and the exercise of poor judgment in legitimate investments causing loss to stockholders, but never have I heard that depositors have lost anything under such conditions. Did you ever hear of a bank being even temporarily embarrassed by the robbery of a daylight hold-up, or the wrecking of its safe and vaults by burglars? Yet under such circumstances anyone who would shoot down the hold-up or robber, would be blazoned forth as a hero, and the liveryman at Coffeyville, Kansas, who shot three bank robbers, has done more to advertise that section of country than any one man I know, and they are yet picturing him in the illustrated journals. Think, if you please, of the notice given any attempt to rob a bank by explosives or hold-ups; red ink front page; bold faced type; pictures of the place; the men connected with it and the dogs used to trail the robbers; and yet, as I say, no depositor ever lost a dollar on account of such robberies, and no bank was ever criticised or lost any of its patronage from such a source. No bank was ever suspicioned on account of loss of funds of another bank with which it was connected, due to wrong judgment in the making of loans in the ordinary course of business or on account of robberies such as I have mentioned. What is the cause of failures that bring in their wake misery, loss of homes and businesses; breaking of hearts at the loss of a life’s savings; suspicion of bankers and every other person entrusted with the people’s money; robberies of savings taken to homes as a safer place; aye, suicides and murders?
In the history of banking in the United States the disastrous failures have been due to illegal use of the depositors’ money by the bank officers for their own speculations. In my opinion there is no greater crime than that committed by a person who takes advantage of his position of trust and uses the moneys entrusted to his care in speculation for his own profit. Secure from bodily harm ; without tne courage of the hold-up or risk of life of the safe blower, he takes everything in sight. Do you wonder that people get panicky when they see such crimes, and then the persons committing them found guilty and sentenced to only a few years’ imprisonment?.
Read, if you please, the extreme penalty of our Colorado banking law:
“Everv president, director, cashier, teller, clerk, officer or agent of any bank, who embezzles, abstracts or wilfully and feloniously
Were I able to really give all the reasons that lead to emergency currency, not guess at them, or present a theory only, you would unanimously accord me eligibility to any position in the financial affairs of our government. I trust no one has been misled by the title of my paper to expect an exhaustive treatise on our financial system, a task as impossible to me as it would be wearying to you.
The reasons advanced that make emergency currency necessary remind me of the proposition of the “result of an irresistible force striking an immovable object,” and the answers given are about equally conclusive. Volumes have been written and many more will follow, on the reasons for our money stringencies, attributing the cause to conflagration, earthquake, the stock markets, government expenditures, shortage or over-production of crops, the anti-liquor agitation, because we built two or did not build four war ships, Rooseveltism and Bryanism, and since there are so many and varied opinions I am not backward about calling your attention to another.
Historians will make no note of this feature of our banking system as effecting the periodical disturbances we are acquainted with. I have seen little about it in the public press. What shall I call it? Politely I might say, we ought to have a higher regard for the great profession of banking of which we have the honor to be a part ; that we should consider ourselves above our fellows in the commercial world ; that integrity is the corner stone of the banker’s structure, etc.
Thinking of the bank failures of• the past few years, I prefer to say that what we need more than anything else to prevent the recurrence of banking conditions such as we had in 1893 and 1907, is more honesty among bankers. Centuries ago, on tablets of stone, were recorded rules of conduct which have stood the test of the ages ; none better are known to men. No one has questioned the advisability of following those commandments, be he seeking fortune, happiness, or fame. Our mothers taught us the words, and the greatest men of history have acclaimed “Amen.” Only four words compose one of those commandments, and I desire to now impress upon you the importance to us as a purely business proposition, to say nothing of the ethical or moral side of the question, that we must pay more heed to carrying out that admonition : “Thou shalt not steal.”
Not only shalt thou not steal money, or goods, thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s good name or reputation ; thou shalt not steal or take from his greatest asset by circulating false rumors, for such gather force like unto the prairie fire or the whirlwind. Is there worse stealing known than that which resulted last fall in causing a great banking institution in the Middle West to temporarily close its doors ; an institution of which our country should be proud ; not a penny lost to depositors; not a word uttered against the character or integrity of its officers ; an institution which has attracted to its management financial men in the higher official positions of the government? Is it not important to all of us that no repetition of such scandalous methods should be allowed?
How small and insignificant is the result of the boldest hold-up or safe-blowing to a community, compared to the systematic underhanded circulation of a rumor intended to ruin the business reputation and good name of another.
The emergency which calls for an increased currency is the result of a sequence of events. I read with much interest the articles by