The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-02-08
Come to Town to Protest
Against a Bill
TO REGULATE THESE
Organizations, Which They Say
Is Unjust.
Point Out That Foreign Ones
Need Regulating.

Senator Crossan's bill to place all
building and loan associations doing
business in Kansas under the super
vision of the state bank commissioner
has caused a storm of protests to be
sent before the house and senate COM
mittees on banks and banking which
viii soon make a report upon the bill
now pending before them.
Last night a delegation of Horton
citizens. accompanied by other inter-
ested parties from other parts of the
state, went before the house committee
and they will today go before the senate
committee and make formal objections
to the bill.
petition which the delegation pre-
scented to the committee and which will
later be filed in the house and senate
is the most remarkable part of the fight
being made on Crossan's bill. The pc
tition contains the following state
ments:
I'VE beg your honorable bodies to
take immediate and effective measures
to protect the citizens of this state from
the incursions of certain foreign build
ing and loan associations.
I'VE represent that such associations
are conducting business in this state
to the detriment and harm of our citi-
zens, making representations and inn
preSsfOnS which are not borne out by
the practical workings of such institu
lions and that innocent people have
been and are being inveigled into in
vesting money in the stock of such COR
porations or borrowing money there
from to the loss of such investors.
THAT the mana cement of such cor
porations is concealed and hidden from
innocent stockholders; that the bylaws
are framed to mystify the stockholders;
that the officers and directors are under
cover of such unjust and inequita BILE
bylaws, apparently destroying, using
up and squandering the assets
The petition then recites that a large
paying money into these corporations
for several years, but that when dis
satisfied persons attempt to withdraw
from such associations they are COM
PEELED to pay an amount in excess of the
original loan to obtain a release of the
mortgages upon their homes; that the
management of such institutions is so
manifeStly inequitable and unjust that
it is a matter of common report that
owing to the cost of reSorting to law to
protect the individual rights of the
small investor he is estopped from re-
Iief''
One section of the Crossan bill pro-
vides that no interest or premium
charges made by a loan association
shall be deemed usurious and against
this provision the opponents of the bill
are making vigorous fight.
The people of Horton and in other
parts of the state adjoining Missouri
have been, so they claim, fieeo d by a
foreign loan association-one doing bus
mess in Missouri, the general head
quarters being in st. Joseph-and the
fight they are making is due to their
experiences with that association.
Another feature of the bill which they
suggest be amended by the committee
is that requiring the associations to
make detailed annual reports to the
bank commissioner. These petitioners
claim that loan associations as a rule
keep their business dealings so con-
cealed from the borrowers that there is
no possible way for a borrower to know
whether or not he is being fairly dealt
with.
The lobby to fight the Crossan bill is
now coming to Topeka in force and the
hottest fight of the session may be ex-
pected upon this measure