The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-05-12
PRESIDENTS ADDRESS
MIR. SMITH SPEAKS TO THE
 BANKERS.
Birmingham Bank OHlciaI Makes Timely Suggestions and Praises the New Law Regulating
 State Institutions.

| President Tom o. Smith. of the Ala bama Bankers Association. in his annual address to the Association yesterday made some timely suggestions to the bankers.
 In referring to the newly enacted State | bank act MT. Smith paid high tribute to Michael Cody of Montgomery who worked diligently to secure it's passage. The address of Mir. Smith was as fol- lows:
 Gentlemen of the Alabama State Bank CTS Association:
 I congratuiat you upon, the prosperity and success which have waited on your footsteps during the past year. With one exception, no untoward event has come | to pass that might tend to injure the | standing of the banker in the eyes of the public or weaken the confidence that lies 1 at the root of all we have grown or may hope to grow. It has been a sea- son of steadily increasing deposits and of I e steady increase in the number of our banking institutions. National and State. If were asked to point out that fea- ture in the expansion of the banking business in Alabama which is most to be | felioitated and from which most Is to Do expected. should say 1t Is the multi | piicatton of banks in our smaller towns. | If any impression has ever existed that the larger city banks could view this | general blessing with the ba1f-closed eyes of unweloome. let me emphasize It's error.
 Banks do business with banks and com pete as class with every other medium of exchange among the people from the | government down to the express com pany. So keen has this competition be- | .ak oyfr aFAs | fecting and inaugurating a system of
 money orders of their own. by which they purpose not only to retain the busi- 1 ness of exchange but to regain much that
 has already been lost to the post and the | express offices To make a success, our money order must be obtainable any
 where and collectible everywhere, and a bank in every town becomes the key to | the situation.
 But in another and more general way | the small country bank plays supreme part in the building up of the whole busi- | ness of banking. In the South especially many people with many dollars have
 never patronized banks and the old stock ing contingent is out of all proportion | The planting of a bank at their doors | brings out the horde. small In itself but large in the aggregate, and puts 1t into general circulation. The small merchant
 comes to deal directly with the bank and new business is brought into the banking channel. In various ways what
 was fixed becomes liquid. and banks live
 on the hu1dity of the assets of the peo' ple ,,
 Enlightened self4nterest, apart from those generous motives of desire to pro
 mote the welfare of the public in which
 bankers are no whit behind their fellow
 men. prompts us all to sustain and en
 courage the carrying of banks to thu
 people as opposed to waiting for the peo pie to come to the banks
 The general extension of banking facil'
 ities both by the planting of banks in tho
 smaller towns and by their growins strength in the cities. has proved an un'
 mixed blessing to the farmers of thu
 State. It has not been many years since
 a great wave of prejudice against banki
 swept over the rural districts and thu farmers saw in us an enemy rather thar
 friend. Yet the sequel has proven tha
 through the very agency against which
 they warred so strenuously, has come tho
 long delayed era of cheaper money. Or
 their part the banks. so long distrust
 full of the farmer as borrower ar'
 coming to deal more and more directly
 with him. Agriculture, after all, is tht
 most stable and the soundest of all tho
 bases of wealth, and we have no case or