[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
22
Thè Girard National Bank
Of Philadelphia
Capital,	$ 2,000,000.00
Surplus and Profits, .	. 4,015,000.00
Deposits,	41,250,000.00
FRANCIS B. REEVES,	President
RICHARD L. AUSTIN	JOSEPH WAYNE, Jr.
Vice-President	Cashier
THEO. E. WIEDERSHEIM	CHARLES M. ASHTON
Second Vice-President	Asst. Cashier
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THE NAUMAN
Declares Large Dividend
Houston, Tex., Aug. 22.—Four years ago yesterday the Union Bank and Trust Company opened for business with 64 accounts, aggregating $143,000. At the close of business August 21, 1909, it had over 8,000 accounts, aggregating $6,200,000.
The bank has been managed along conservative lines, using modern methods and proper publicity, and now has more deposits than any other bank in South Texas, and stands at all times for the upbuilding of Houston and assisting in every way that is proper.
The Union Bank and Trust Company sent to its shareholders yesterday a dividend representing 8 per cent of the capital stock, carrying 12 per cent to the surplus, making a total of 20 per cent net for the year.
V*
Banks Eager for Certificates
Washington.—Treasury officials profess to see a preconcerted movement on the part of national banks to force the secretary of the treasury to issue $100,000,000 certificates of indebtedness, under the plea of money to move the crops. The law gives him the power to issue these certificates if he deems it proper to do so. They draw 3 per cent interest and can be used as a basis of increased national bank circulation. The life of the certificate is limited to one year.
Pressure is being brought to bear to have Secretary MacVeagh issue these certificates in the immediate future. Each day the official mail is burdened with letters all having this end in view.
So far, treasury officials have given no indication that the requests will be heeded. As a matter of fact, the issue of certificates is being discouraged. It is met with the suggestion that if the banks need money for crop moving purposes, the $500.000,000 emergency currency is available for that purpose. That amount is now in print, or nearly so, and practically every one-of ■the 6,900 national banks has this emergency currency to its credit in the vaults of the treasury. It can be taken out on approved security at any time.
For the treasury to issue certificates of indebtedness, it is pointed out, would be to increase the government paper bearing interest. In effect the certificates are a one-year bond. On the other hand, the emergency currency can be taken out by the banks at no expense to the government, and will supply currency, if such is needed, for crop moving purposes, and at the same time prevent a rise in call or time money rates.
of seventy-two officers, clerks, stenographers and messengers in handling applications, preparing and issuing policies, examining and approving claims and generally attending to new and maturing insurance and to matters arising in connection with policy loans.
In the actuarial department where mathematics, as applied to mortality, expectation of life, expenses of insurance, etc., has become an exact science, two dozen experts are constantly engaged, while the auditor requires fifty-six helpers, many of them expert accountants, to attend to the book and record keeping that is the province of his department.
The thirty employees in the agency department direct the field forces throughout the country and keep them supplied with ammunition in the shape of insurance literature, competitive and otherwise, and with general and office supplies. The six score general agents and managers in the various states look to the superintendent of agencies for direction and encouragement, and through them he reaches the hundreds of solicitors who carry the gospel of insurance into the homes and offices and shops of the land.
For selection and supervision of medical inspectors and for the examination of applications for insurance the medical department home office force includes five experts in addition to the medical directors.
In the care of nearly seventy million dollars of assets and the investment of this enormous sum the treasurer has ninety-six assistants in the financial department, with other financial officers looking after the investment in the various sections of the country. So carefully and successfully has this work been done that in the forty-two years of the company’s history the loss has been almost trifling, a fact commented on with surprise by the insurance investigators of the last few years.
The president, with his secretary and stenographer. constituting the executive department, has general oversight and keeps in touch with all parts of the business.
The directors on the Union Central board are active participants in the business of the company, an appreciable amount of the work of the home office falling to their lot and being attended to with promptness and efficiency.
V
H. A. Anderson has been elected president; O. P. Lalson. vice-president: A. O. Melbv, cashier, and C. B. Melby, assistant cashier, of the Tohn O. Melby Company Bank at Whitehall, Wis.
Enormous Business Growth Necessitates Large Force
When Alexander Hamilton established our national financial system he had for helpers a few clerks in a crowded office in New York City, then the national capital. The change to the present national treasury department makes a great contrast. Almost as great has been the change in a shorter period of time in one of Cincinnati’s largest institutions. During its first year the few officials were able to look after the $133,289 of assets of the Union Central Life Insurance Company without requiring the clerical help necessary to care for the present assets of over $67,000,000. The new insurance written in the first year of the company’s history was $1,206,142, or less than half of the record for last month, when $2,846,075 in new business was issued. The amount of new insurance issued for the first seven months of this year was $20,-864,639, or almost equal to the total amount in force at the end of the company’s first twenty years of business, when the aggregate was $22,-539,569. The total number of new policies issued in 1886 would require less than one week’s work for the present policy division, which is required to handle fifty times as many applications as in that year.
Most Cincinnati people know of the Union Central Life, but few realize that the home office force here in this city transacts an enormous amount of business in its two big buildings on Fourth Street. The old building, at the corner of Central Avenue, has for more than thirty years been known as headquarters of one of Ohio’s greatest and soundest financial institutions, but few appreciate the amount of work transacted there by the home office force in attending to business in all sections from coast to coast and from gulf to the lakes.
The Race Street corner was bought a few years ago to provide additional room and the company has utilized five floors in this, building for the” financial and medical departments and for the policy division of the insurance department. This left the executive, agency, actuarial and auditing departments and the rest of the insurance departments in the old building. A small boy outgrowing his clothes is no more cramped for room than is this rapidly growing healthy son of Cincinnati.
There are some three hundred people in Cincinnati engaged in the local and general service of the company.
The insurance department requires the services