The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-08-12


 The Scare Has Shut the Murray Hill
 Bank-Depositors Will Not Lose
 The Banks Customers Were Alarm
 ed About the Silver Craze and Drew
 Out Their Money In Order to Hoard
 it-Not Enough Quick Assets for an
 Emergency
 New York, Aug. 1.-The Murray Hill bank, state banking institution at the northwest corner of Third avenue and Forty seventh street, did not open it's doors for business this morning. h. stead the following notice was pasted on the glass of the outside storm doors:
 This bank Is closed pending an ex- animation Of the condition of it's af- fairs. E. R. KILBURN,
 Superintendent of Banking"
 Shortly after Il o'clock Mir Kilburn dictated this statement:
 T have closed the Murray Hill bank because l thought it in an unsafe con- dition. have taken this action after consulting with members of the clear ing house committee and the board of directors. The trouble with the bank so far as I have been able to ascertain, Is that it has not sufficient money with which to do business and no way of raising it. A great many of it's assets are represented by real estate and oth- CT securities which cannot be realized upon without great sacrifice at present. It is my opinion that the depositors will be paid in full.
 The bank under the presidency of MT. Hopkins, has been, in my opinion, conservatively managed, but the fact that it had accumulated such a large amount of unavailable assets has plac- ed the officers in a position as above stated, where they have not and cannot get sufficient ready money to continue business. l had a meeting with the board of directors this morning and proposed to them that if they would raise at once the sum of $l00,000 and l put 1t into the assets of the bank I would allow them to continue. l found l this impossible, and believing that fur | ther continuance in business would de- velop into worst state of affairs. I | deemed it advisable to close the bank at once The deposits amount to about I S1, 100 000."
 l IHp tdDlIdI SlDCk OI lfle HUI | bank is s190,000 In July last a semi 1 annual dividend of per cent. was de- | clared and paid. It was not until a week ago that matters so developed as | to attract the attention of the superin- tendent of banking. MT. Judson, MT. Kilburn's assistant, then began an in- vestigation with the result that MT. Kilburn himself took charge yesterday and closed it's doors this morning. | One of the banks officers thus ex- plained the trouble:
 l "Our condition is due directly to the | silver craze. We have many deposit ors, although no particularly large ones | among them. But with the advent of | the recent hard times and the silver scare all these balances were much sealed down. People drew their money | out of the bank to hoard 1t.
 l "Others needed all the ready money they could lay their hands on to con- tinue their different lines of business and kept very close to hard pan. Theil collections were very slow. A few when the saw how low good stock had fallen, preferred to draw their personal accounts and invest them in these se- curities.
 "We could not realize on our secur. | ities, could not obtain ready money | and thus our present situation formed Itself. It was all due to the free silver craze, which is doing so much damage to all kinds of business"
 It was necessary, of course, under the banking law of New York, that the 1 Murray Hill bank keep on hand 15 pei