[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
10
Wisconsin Trust Company
MILWAUKEE
CAPITAL $500,000 ־ SURPLUS -	100,000
OFFICERS
OLIVER C. FU LLER, President	GARDN ER P. STICKN EY, Vice-President
FRED. C. BEST, Secretary	R. L. SMITH, Assistant Secretary
DIRECTORS
The Wisconsin National Bank
OF MILWAUKEE
CAPITAL $2,000,000	־
SURPLUS 1,000,000 ־
OFFICERS
L.J. PETIT, President	HERMAN F. WOLF, Cashier
FRED’K KASTEN, Vice-President	L. G. BOURNIQUE, Asst. Cashier
CHAS. E. ARNOLD, 2nd Vice-President	W. L. CHENEY, Asst. Cashier
WALTER KASTEN, Asst. Cashier
DIRECTORS
L.J. Petit	Frederick Kasten	R. W. Houghton	Oliver C. Fuller
Herman W. Falk	Geo. D. Van Dyke	Gustave Pabst	Charles Schriber
Isaac D. Adler	H. M. Thompson	Patrick Cudahy
L. J. Petit, Chairman Frederick Kasten R. W. Houghton Oliver C. Fuller Herman W. Falk	Charles Schriber Custave Pabst	Gardner P. Stickney
Isaac D. Adler	H. M. Thompson Patrick Cudahy

Ur^es War upon Express Money Orders
beginning of the national banking system, and giving an analysis of the causes of these failures. Some 28 distinct reasons are enumerated. A study of this table is both interesting and instructive. About two-thirds of these failures are attributed directly to dishonesty, fraud, and violation of the law on the part of officers and directors. Of the balance, all but 20 had in them the elements of imprudent or injudicious banking, money stringency, or depreciation of values, or certain combinations of these causes. Only three, in all these years, were closed by run, and 17 by simple depreciation of securities. Of these 17, 8 occurred during the period from 1893 to 1896. In the past decade, 124 national banks have gone into the hands of receivers, and of these failures fully 70 per cent are chargeable to dishonesty, fraud and violation of law. Of the remaining 30 per cent, which may be said to have been honest, so far as motives were concerned, only a very few were free from the imputation of carelessness and imprudence.
In Michigan, during the same 10 years, half a score of incorporated banks have closed their doors. Two of them, or 20 per cent, were not dishonest, but one of the two, and probably both, went down because of injudicious methods of management. The receiver of one of these two banks has declared dividends of approximately 100 per cent to depositors. It is plain from the foregoing that honest bank failures are exceedingly few, and, were we to eliminate from this class all that come about from a lack of ability in management, the modicum of loss to depositors from the outcome of unavoidable failures would indeed be very minute, or perhaps vanish completely.
The president of the Michigan bankers at the Petoskey convention reviews conditions and makes recommendations
bank to adopt these checks and money orders and to push their sale to the utmost.
The guaranty of deposits, as an issue of national politics, is dead for some time to come at least, although in several states, in various forms, it has become a law. That the question as to whether or not the government, national, or state, shall go into the banking business is not by any manner of means a dead issue in the minds of the people is evident. The problem is here. It is not a mere specter, vanishing when closely pursued into thin air, its terrors dissipated.
In the last annual report of the comptroller of the currency appears a tabulation showing that 499 national banks have failed since the
Petoskey, Mich., July 8.—The retiring address of the president of the Michigan Bankers Association was replete with suggestions and comment upon banking fads and conditions. Among other things he said:
I wish to take this opportunity to urge upon all members of this association what seems to me to be the great advisability of handling the travelers’ checks, devised and perfected by the American Bankers Association, to the exclusion of those issued by the express companies. For many years the express companies, shrewdly making use of the facilities, provided, unwilling it is true, by the banks themselves, have gradually and insidiously usurped an enormous amount of very profitable domestic and foreign exchange business.
This diverted stream of business should be turned back into its rightful channel, the banks. It was with this end in view that the American Bankers Association undertook and perfected its system of money orders and travelers’ checks. The money orders have been in use for some time, while the travelers’ checks have only recently come out. It seems to me fitting that this association should, as a body, take some steps to distinctly encourage the sale both of travelers’ checks and money orders by its members and by the banks generally throughout the state.
A committee might be appointed, which, perhaps, coming into closer personal touch with the bankers of Michigan, would be able to very effectively supplement the efforts made by the general association in this direction ; or provision might be made to have this work issue from the secretary’s office. In any event, permit me to say, it is to the interest of every