BANKING THE MOST LOGICAL OF TRUSTS
A bank in New York City gave its employés a Christmas present equal to half their annual salary. The bank had assets of $100,000,000. A fine example, you say, to other great business concerns! But the bank had only fifty employés. In the entire country there are probably not more than 100,000 persons engaged in banking, either directly or indirectly.
The banker has, relatively speaking, no human factor to consider. And that factor with a concern like the United States Steel Corporation or the Pennsylvania Railroad is mammoth, almost baffling. The banker deals not in the production or distribution of wealth itself (in both of which much labor is needed), but solely in the paper representatives of wealth, money, and credit. Thus he can apply far more directly than the manufacturer or railroad manager the economies and efficiencies of Big Business.
Banking—the business of dealing in money and credit—is the most logical of trusts. And in practice it has justified the theory. Where banks have become larger they have become stronger, where co-operation and concentration have gone far, there safety and effectiveness have reached a high pitch.... Banking is the one central business of all—it is the business of businesses. So if it has become more efficient as the trust idea, or at least the principle of concentration, has gained sway, how can we have too much concentration and who is there to complain?...
If the bankers have, faithfully and well, handled the trust of extending credit to the limit of their ability, yet when the president of the second bank in size in the country acknowledges himself to be one of about a dozen men in whose hands the power of extending credit is, in the last analysis, concentrated—then it is high time, seriously and fearlessly, to consider the subject....
Three main factors are in the main responsible for the concentration of the control of credit and they are the growth of big banks, the growth of big industries, and the financial laws of the country....
NO LACK OF BANKING FACILITIES
However great the concentration of money power in this country, it cannot truthfully be said that banking facilities are not also increasing. Figures taken from the reports of the National Monetary Commission and other official sources show that the number of banks is mounting up faster than either wealth or population....
WHERE THE MONEY HAS GONE
When one first realises the extent of this country's banking resources he is properly astonished. But how evenly are these resources distributed? It is commonly known that banking facilities in the Southern and Western sections of the country are small indeed as compared with the New England, Eastern, Central, and Pacific Coast sections, where large cities abound. To illustrate, in 1909, when the total banking power was close to twenty-one billions, more than half was represented by forty-seven cities, and close to one-quarter was held by the two hundred banks in New York and Chicago. In other words about 1 per cent. of the country's banks held close to one-quarter of the country's banking power.