OU are going now to look over—and not overlook—the most stupendous, wasteful and exorbitant bank expense account ever entered on bank ledgers on this earth. You are going to look at the details of an expense account where the items run by millions, where expenses have no legal limit and where they are incurred, paid and audited without any supervisory authority. You are going to gaze at an expense account where the "sky is the limit."
Take first a look at the New York Federal Reserve Bank's expense account. That one is the most arrogant, wasteful and prodigal of all the twelve regional satrapies.
In 1917 the entire salary and wages account of the New York Federal Reserve Bank was $970,580 and their total loans and discounts were $399,078,000. Mark that down—salaries and wages of $970,580 and loans and discounts (which really measure the business of a bank) of $399,078,000, or $1 of expense to every $413 of loans and discounts.
On January 25, 1922, the salary and wages account of the New York Federal Reserve Bank was $4,988,703, with loans and discounts of $146,526,938, or $1 of expense to every $29 of loans and discounts!
Ask any practical banker, any administrative business man, any expert accountant or any efficient expert if it is possible to justify any such expense ratio. One to four hundred and thirteen in 1917 and one to twenty-nine in 1921—fourteen to one raise!
In 1917 there were 12 officers of that bank to administer loans of $399,078,000. In 1921 there were 40 officers of that bank to administer loans of $146,526,938. In other words, you get 28 more officers to administer a business shrunken down over sixty per cent! In other words, you get over a two hundred per cent increase in officers to administer a sixty per cent business shrinkage!
And now incidentally the pay of those 40 officers—administering a sixty per cent shrunken business—amounted to more money than the salaries of the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, half the United States Senate and the Governors of twelve American States besides! If that isn't bottomless bureaucratic greed expressed mathematically, you express it yourself!
Look further into the depths of this golden pool of New York Federal Reserve expense plunderbund. You are helping pay it and you are entitled to scrutinize the salary items. Take 'em as they come.
J. Crane entered the bank at a yearly salary of $1,080 as manager foreign department and now receives a yearly salary of $7,500, or an increase of 594 per cent.