THE CHICAGO HAJVK.E'R
Fovirvded in 1898
Number 13
CHICAGO, SEPTEMBER 26, 1908
Volume xxv

Banking Conditions in Nebraska
ing, and at the meeting of 1900 there were present, and represented, only 135 banks.
Look if you will at our attendance of to-day, with our membership of 738, leaving 100 banks to be heard from, and if the bank you represent is not already enrolled among our numbers go and see the secretary before going to lunch, register your name and become one of us.
We are peculiarly fortunate at this writing-in having with us many representatives of the larger financial institutions of our Eastern cities. We bid you all a hearty welcome and assure you, instead of being wall ornaments, we shall have use for all of you and shall expect the benefit of your experience during our deliberations.
And when you leave us to attend the meeting of the National Bankers Association, at Denver, next week, please go through our state in daylight, look out of the car windows, and as you take in the invigorating sight of our bumper crops that adorn our fertile prairies, see our great alfalfa fields and stacks of grain, our hogs and cattle, notice our beautiful country schoolhouses and churches, our thriving villages and miniature cities, our happy and prosperous people, tell us honestly if you do not wish you could come and live in Nebraska.
Questions of vital importance to Nebraska bankers require our earnest consideration. The guaranty of deposits law is a live issue. One which we must meet. It has injected itself into both state and national politics. The bankers of this state have fixed conflicting-views upon this subject. Aspirants for legislative and congressional honors are placing it in their platforms. The question will be so prominently before our next legislature that in all probability action will be taken upon it either for or against, and this convention will do well to give the subject its serious consideration.
We are fortunate in having with us some bankers from Oklahoma—the only state in the Union having such a law—who can give us first-hand information as to its practical workings.
More vital still to the interests of the country banker is the' proposed legislation as to postal savings banks. The proposed bill came dangerously near passing the senate at the last session of Congress, and is made a special subject for consideration on December 14th at the next sitting.
In my judgment no measure can be so disastrous to the country banker of this state as this bill with its present features, and this pending legislation demands your most earnest thought.
The panic of last fall convinced the people of this government that our currency system was defective and that some action looking to a more elastic system was imperative. After months of consideration. Congress, just before it? adjournment, passed the Aldrich-Vreeland Bill. It was universally understood to be a
President J. P. A. Black sums up q the advances in association work by his state organization at the Lincoln Convention. ::	::

honesty of the purpose of the Nebraska bankers.
And as I look to-day into your faces, at this splendid gathering, I cannot but feel that this meeting should of right be one of grand thanksgiving service for the glorious results attained through the combined salutary. influences attending our efforts.
During those days of November and December when we were sweating blood, I almost wished some other fellow had been president of the association this year. I foresaw at our group meetings a small attendance of disheartened bankers heartily wishing themselves out of the business, yet battling for success against almost insurmountable obstacles, and I greatly feared my address to you on this occasion would be a faint apology for ignominious failure. But no! The bankers of Nebraska have learned to meet difficulties only to conquer, and when the smoke of battle had cleared away we found all over our state a band of earnest seekers after better methods, and when our group meetings were held throughout the state, the attendance was larger than ever before, while the programs were so full of good things that the time allotted each was far too limited for full discussion of the subjects presented. Mr. Folda with his question box never found time dragging on his hands and the umpire was always compelled to call time long before the discussion waned in interest.
It was my special privilege to be present at the meetings of five of our six groups and should have attended the other had not Groups Two and Three held their meetings on the same day.
And I can say to-day without fear of contradiction that the benefits of this association never showed forth so clearly as during our recent troubles.
As we have come together from year to year at our group meetings and state associations, the personal acquaintance we have each formed with our fellow-bankers has so united us in the desire for the welfare of each other that every Nebraska banker is the personal friend of his neighbor and competitor. And I speak with pride when I say that through the strength of mutual confidence encouraged by the labors of this association, Nebraska came out unscathed through the dire disasters of that fearful panic. Not one bank failed; not one depositor lost a penny. After the panic of 1893 and the troublous times of 1894 it required six years for Nebraska bankers to get up courage enough to try to hold a state meet-
W hen a year ago you so kindly selected me as your president, thus according me the esteemed privilege of presiding at this convention, I told you that I felt capable of assuming the duties of the office because every member of the association would be my personal assistant.
My hopes so far have not been without realization and as we are met to-day for the consummation of our labors of the year, if each one here present will remember that he is an especial committee of one, to assist me in carrying out our programme so excellently arranged by our Lincoln bankers, we shall have one of the best conventions in the history of our association.
There has been “something doing” since we last met. We have had some experiences that were pleasant and others quite the reverse.
For several years at our annual gatherings we have listened to the wise counsel of our better informed brothers as they pointed out to us the signals of impending panic and the necessity for the utmost conservatism in the management of our institutions. We heard the distant rumblings of the thunder in Wall Street; we knew of the overtrading in our entire country causing the increasing demands for money, constantly forcing discount rates higher and higher in our Eastern cities. But we thought we had exercised due caution in the management of the banks in this splendid state, and deemed it impossible that any Eastern money stringency could affect our own large balances, and with our splendid crops and prosperous people, we viewed the future with optimistic eyes. And when on the morning of the 28th of October we were informed by our Eastern correspondents that currency payment had been suspended, that our fond balances were for ornament rather than utility, no thunderbolt from a clear sky could have had a more paralyzing effect.
Even those of us who had successfully weathered the panics of 1873 and 1893 were wholly unprepared for these new conditions which so suddenly confronted us.
I am frank to say that the hardest thing I ever did in my life was to face my customers at the counter and say, “Yes, I have your money but cannot pay you cash to-day.”
I will not try to discuss the brain racking scenes through which we passed during the succeeding six weeks, or two months, except to refer to the masterly and manful manner in which the bankers of Nebraska arose to meet the emergencies of the situation; to laud the good sense and forbearing spirit of Q.ur depositors, who so nobly stood by us during these terrible days; to commend in most hearty manner Mr. Royce, the secretary of the state banking board, and his corps of examiners for the successful, careful, and painstaking manner in which the interests of our state banks were preserved during this crisis, and to thank the newspapers of the state, and the press in general. for the confidence they inspired as to the