Morris tribune., 1908-10-31
OKLAHOrlA'S BANK LAW,


OKLAHOnA's BANK LAW
Mr.. Bryan's bank guaranty platform has
been one of the most attractive propositions he
has ever advanced, and yet it is not one on
which there is any need of people disagreeing
If workable plan can be evolved for prevent
ing loss to depositors from the bank which oc-
OCCASIONALLY fails, then everybody wants it, and
the only question is whether or not Mr.. Bryan
Eor anyone else has yet devised workable plan
There is no need of arguing on the theory
of the matter, for Oklahoma has already tried a
bank guaranty law, and few years trial will
demonstrate whether not it is desirable. Mr.
Bryan points to the Oklahoma law as already a
proven success, but this is manifestly a part
isan position. No law can be tried out in a
few months, and the weaknesses of the law are
only now beginning to appear. If those weak
nesses shall appear to be permanent and so
important as to render the law undesirable,
then the people of Oklahoma will have sense
enough to repeal the law, and its failure will
be demonstrated.
The people of the country at large af-
ford to wait and see how the law is going to
work there.
One of the Oklahoma bankers says of it,
"Our so-called state guaranty law, is, in my
opinion, the most vicious ever enacted by
state Legislature. One of the worst effects con-
spicuously apparent is the fact that new state
banks are being chartered at an alarming rate,
and we all know that there are already en-
tirely too many banks in the state,
"More than fifty new banks have been
many of them to my personal knowledge, will
be managed by inexperienced, incom petent
would be bankers who imagine that under the
guaranty law banking will be simply "snap."
He further says that the law is stimulating
the payment of absurd and impossible rates of
interest in order to attract depositors.
"If you think that any bank afford to
pay per cent interest on time deposits with
out taking rash and indefensible chances with
the money of the depositors, then refer the pro-
position to any banker or set of bankers any
where in America outside of Oklahoma. You
will get but answer, and that is that the
is absurd and impossible.
"There are pointed evidences of alarm on
this score in the minds of the men who COM
posed the state administration
"There's the significant action of the bank
ing board and the bank commissioners in re-
fusing to issue charter to an applicant for
bank to be organized in a town of insignificant
size and already supplied with at least three
banks.
"Then there's the ruling of Judge Houston
of the district court of Logan county, who,
when the parties who had been denied charter
brought mandamus proceeding, decided that
the state banking authorities were powerless
to exercise their discretion in denying banking
charters to those who made application and
were able to show that they had fully complied
with the law
These incidents not only demonstrated
that the friends of the law and those delegated
with authority for carrying out it's provisions
are alarmed at the furore for starting
banks which is sweeping the state like
prairie fire, but that they also powerIess
20 curb or check this tendency and that appIi-
,ants for charters all look alike to the eye of
he law just all banks operating under that
aw look alike to depositors'