The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-09-24
American Bankers Association
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By Frederic J. Haskin.

demands of business today that every dollar in the country must be work ing for five different people all the time. Every dollar has to be on de- posit to the credit of five people. or else five times to the credit of one man. If there were to be simultaneous run on all the banks of the country. they could not pay as much as twenty cents on the dollar. unless they were given time to liquidate their loans. dis counts, etc.
 The banks of the country are all ways watching the bond market. When the new Panama bonds were recently issued the banks were on hand and got the most of them. only s500,000 worth of them reached the the hands of private individuals. The panic which brought out these bonds to stay the money market was costly thin. It is estimated that the people of the United States are now normally creating wealth at the rate of $4,000- 100000 a- year. Men versed in finan- cial affairs estimate that twenty-f five percent of the wealth producing machinery of the country was tied up by the panic. and on this basis it cost the people of the United States bin- ion dollars.-enough to dig the Panama Canal. build the greatest navy in the world, and leave sufficient on hand to start the big scheme of internal water way improvement advocated by the Rivers and Harbors Congress. These same authorities estimate that there was as much real loss from the effects of the panic in other countries as there was here at home, which would make the worlds toal loss from the panic of 1907, $2,000, ,00O. GOO. These figures are not based on shrinkage of values, but upon a twenty-five percent reduction of the wealth producing agencies.
 It Is said that there are today more then 300.000,000 tied up in commodi- ties in this country. These commodi- ties have left the haul which produced them, and are now in possession of the middlemen who stand beween the producers and the consumers. Ti9e real marketing of this years crops has little more than fairly begun.
 As bearing on the question of guar anteeing deposits. 1t is interesting to note that there had been. up to re- cent date. 469 national bank failures in the United States. This amounts to about five percent of all the banks chartered by the government Of course the net loss to the depositors was very slight, only 8 very small fraction of one percent. There are now about 6.S30 national banks in exis- tence.
 There is some talk in banking cAr- cles about new departure in dealing with dormant" accounts-accounts which have continued so long that there is no chance of the depositors ever turning up to claim their money. Under existing usages these accounts are troublesome. and amount to no in- considerable pile of money. It Is be- ing proposed that when a person opens an account with a bank in the future, 1t shall be with the understanding that if it Is allowed to lie dormant" more than a certain length of time, the money shall then revert to the bank and the account be closed in that way. In all the big cities there are hundreds of fair-sized accounts which have lain dormant" for years. The depositors are often made by sail Iors who, after having deposited their savings. go away never to return. Could the full history of each of these accounts be known it is not improbable that a thousand tragedies would come to light
 There are perhaps a quarter-miliion of last years clearing house certifi- cates still afloat around the country. There are over $25,00O worth of them outstanding which were issued by the San Francisco banks alone. There is always a goodly number which get lost in the course of their travels,