29
THE CHICAGO BANKER
December IQ, 1908]
$xoo,ooo. Besides Littick, the officers of the bank were: J. G. Stump, president, and J. S. Prettyman, vice-president.
The indictment against Kapner charges him with aiding Littick in the misappropriation of the funds.
Name Directors under New Rule
Stockholders of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, at the adjourned meeting Tuesday elected directors, the proxy committee, and amended the by-laws making these things possible. The directors will meet immediately after the company has been returned to the stockholders by action of the court, and will organize by the election of officers and the members of the various committees, who will look after the business of the corporation.
The directors were classified as follows: Term expiring July, 1909—Richard Delefield, E. C. Converse, Anthony Brady, J. D. Callery; expiring July, 1910—A. G. Becker, George M. Verity, William McConway, Charles A. Moore; expiring July, 1911—Charles F. Brooker, Tames S. Kuhn, Edward F. Atkins, E. M. Herr ; expiring 1912—George Westinghouse, Neal Rantoul, Joseph W. Marsh, Albert H. Wiggin.
The proxy committee follows: James N. Jarvie, Jacob H. Schiff, Charles F. Adams, Robert S. Smith, and F. W. Roebling.
V
New Incorporations
Papers filed in the Eastern states last month for new railroad, industrial, mining and miscellaneous concerns with a capital of $1,000,000 or more, represented $106,350,000. This total compares with $114,750,000 in the previous month, and $44,300,000 in November a year ago. By far the most important incorporation was that of the $50,000,000 Independent Fertilizer Company, the proposed combination of something like fifty outside fertilizer concerns. Leading interests who are promoting the deal have called a meeting for next week, when it is planned to perfect permanent organization. Among the other large incorporations in the Eastern states were the $10,000,000 Tennessee Chemical and Fertilizer Company, the $7,200,-000 Boynton Beach Company, and the $5,000,-000 Modern Copper Company.
New Jersey headed the list of states, followed by Delaware and Maine. The grand total of all companies incorporated last month with a capitalization of $100,000 and over, including other states than those of the East, reached $158,958,000, against $172,360,700 and $99,245,500 in November a year ago.
V*
Shoots Wrong Man
Vinton, la., December 14.—George Rams-tead, the assistant cashier of the Peoples’ Savings Bank at Vinton, was waylaid and shot through the shoulder at an early hour this morning by an unknown assailant. Ramstead had been to Cedar Rapids and was returning home on the night train. When near his residence he was stopped by his assailant who exclaimed:	“I’ve got you now,” and fired one
shot.
Flis assailant suddenly discovered he had shot the wrong man, and, offering an apology, disappeared. Ramstead will recover.
T*»
“The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch”
The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, has published a new book by Henry Wallace Phillips, entitled “The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch.” The mascot was a street Arab from the East who had gone West and fallen in with Jim Felton, a broken and lovelorn man, who has failed to “strike it rich” and whose sweetheart had declined to marry and “live on love and air.” After many trials and adventures, to the verge of death—the mascot brings Jim and Annie happily together.
Banking Corporation has running accounts of from $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 on a capital of $2,000,000, and pays 6 per cent dividends. Nearly all of these banks have had a considerable reduction of deposits during the past two years, and their stocks have fallen in value.
When it is remembered that South Africa is largely a desert and that it has all told, only about 1,000,000 white people, the wonder is that it can support such banks at all. It seems to me that business of all kinds is much overdone. The steamship lines are too many, the railroads too expensive and the cities too big for the populations. This is especially so considering that the products of these 1,000,000 whites are almost altogether owned in Europe, and the profits of their labor are spent there.— F. G. Carpenter, in Birmingham Age-Herald.
Hamlin Garland’s “Shadow World”
Harpers have issued what many think will prove to be Hamlin Garland’s greatest work— “The Shadow World.”
Mr. Garland here presents a third and new hypothesis of the phenomena of the so-called spirit world. The practical man has usually called them fraudulent, while the devotee has declared that they were the returning spirits of the dead. Mr. Garland’s theory is neither the one nor the other. By means of dialogue that reads like fiction the author gives the results of sixteen years investigation on his own part, and of the experimental work of European scientists, on the influence of mind over matter, on mental healing, and on the peculiar actions of that mysterious thing we refer to as a “spirit.” It sound incredible, and it reads like a wonderful story. In the face of the part this whole matter is playing in this century, no one should miss reading Mr. Garland’s book.
His former best known works are “The Tyranny of the Dark,” and “The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop.”
Published by Harper Bros., New York, at
$1-35■
V*
Cashier Indicted
Columbus, Ohio, December 14.—Assistant District Attorney Thomas Darby received word at midnight from Deputy United States Marshal Sanderson, at Zanesville, that he had in charge Abraham Kapner and C. S. Littick, of Dresden, and would bring them to the city in the morning. Both were indicted by the United States grand jury here to-day. They are prominent in the community, and the arrests will not be a surprise in that section, as trouble has been predicted ever since the failure of the First National, of Dresden, on October 14, 1907.
Kapner is a member of the firm of Kapner Brothers and the Duga Hosiery Company, and was connected with the bank; Littick was the cashier of that institution before it was closed by order of the Comptroller.
The trouble began when the firm of Reiger, Kapner & Altmark, of New York, filed a petition in bankruptcy in the local branch of the United States court. It was the distributing agent for the hosiery company, and upon its solvency depended the solvency of the hosiery company. An examination disclosed that much of the money in the bank had been used to bolster up the hosiery concern.
The money, it is alleged, was procured from the bank through Cashier Littick, aided by Kapner. The former is indicted on three counts of having misappropriated the funds of the bank as well as making false reports on the bank’s condition to the Comptroller.
The disclosures were made by Special Examiner E. S. McCune, who spent 60 days recently in inspecting the books. It is said that the funds misapplied amount to more than
“The War in the Air”
The airship has sailed into literature just as did the automobile, only in a higher plane. “The War in the Air” is a new story by H. G. Wells, and is published by the Macmillan Company.
It was 1913. The single rail had been introduced, and aeroplanes were as plentiful as tabbycats. Banking holidays brought grotesque sights. There were “quantities” of young men and young women on bicycles and motor cycles; there were gyroscopic motor cars, running bicycle fashion, upon two wheels ; there was still some old-fashioned four-wheel traffic. Special occasions always drew forth every description of out-of-date vehicles. One saw' tricars and electric broughams and dilapidated old racing motors with large pneumatic tires. In the upper atmosphere there were, upon this especial occasion, several wasp-like, navigable airships. Edna rested supreme on a basket trailer, and the teuf-teufing eight-year-old motorcycle, about to take fire, ran like a thing of yesterday. As he relished his ride, Bert eyed, with philosophic disinterest, a newspaper placard. This spoke of war. Germany had denounced the Monroe doctrine. Little it all mattered. “Ole-woys rottin’ about woar,” he scoffed. But this w׳as no false cry. The clouds darkened. War came and, though adventitiously, Bert went.
The story tells how in mid-Atlantic the American North Atlantic squadron was attacked by practically the entire German navy. Down from the sky, piloted by wireless telegraphy, swooped these aeronaut vultures to complete its destruction. It was a wild fight, and Bert’s poor heart grew chill. ... Yet it was nothing, in a tragic sense, to what the forlorn Londoner should witness in their falcon descent upon New York City, not to speak of the horrors of the world—wdiy not universal? —strife which ensued.
It must not be thought that this work wants purposeful bearing. On the contrary, it powerfully illustrates the utterly foolish possibilities of a war of the future.
V*
The Banks of South Africa
Banking in South Africa is not the same as in the United States. With us every little town has its individual bank, and there are hundreds of small institutions operating with capitals of $50,000 and upward. Here all the money is handled by a half dozen great banks with branches reaching to all parts of South Africa. These big banks report to each other and, although competitors, work largely in harmony. If a man’s credit is bad it soon becomes generally known, and if one bank drops him he has little hope from the others.
As to the extent of the banking. I have before me some reports of the big institutions. The Standard Bank of South Africa is now doing a business of something like $150,000,-000 per annum on a capital of less than $8,000,-000. It has about $100,000,000 worth of deposits, and its profits are $600,000 and upward per year. During a great part of its existence it has paid as much as 18 per cent, and it is now paying 16, notwithstanding the hard times.
Another big institution is the Bank of Africa, which has a capital of $5,000,000. The bank has deposits of $30,000,000 or $35,000,000, and its assets and liabilities are about $50,000,000. It has been paying 13 per cent, until recently, when the dividends were cut to 10 per cent, with a prospect of going down still lower.
The Natal Bank, which does business chiefly in Natal and the Transvaal, has a capital of only $2,500,000, but its deposits amount to something like $10,000,000 or $20,000,000, and it pays about 12 per cent.
The National Bank of South Africa, with a capital of over $5,000,000, has deposits of $38,-000,000, and pays 8 per cent, while the African