The Alaska citizen., 1913-06-30

have yielded rower over the business. commerce. credits and finances of the whole country that is despotic and pcrilous and is daily becoming more perilous to the pub lie welfare.
 FAlLACIOuS STATISTICS PRE-
 SENTED.
 For 1he maintenance of such an impossible economic theory there have becf spread before Yom com mittee elaborate tables of so-called directorates from which exceedingly mistaken inferences have been publicly drawn In these tables il is shown that 1N0 bankers and bank directors serve upon the boards of corporations having resources az gregating twenty-five billion dollars and il is implied that this vast az gregate of the eoanry's wealth is at the disposal ot these 1So men But such an implication rests solely upon the untenable theory that these men, living in different parts of the coun- try. in many cases personally unae- quainted with each other, and in most cases associated only in oeca- sonal transactions, vote always for the same policies and control with united purpose the directorates of fhe 132 corporations on which they serve The testimony failed 10 es- tablish any concerted policy or harmony of action binding these lSo men toae,h her, and IS matter ot fact no such policy exists. The ab- surdity of the assumption of such control becomes more apparent when one considers that on an average these directors represent only one quarter 0. the membership of their boards II is prep sterous to suppose that every 'interlockina' director has full control ill every organization with which he is connected, and that the majority of the directors who are not 'interlocking" are mere fgurehcads, subject 10 the will of a small minority of their boards.
 Perhaps the greatest harm in the referred to lay in the further =unwarranted inference, 70 which has been given wide publicity, that the East sum of $25.ooo, o,0eo,ooo was in cash of liquid form subject 10 the selfish use or abuse Of indi- Such an idea eXcites the public mind to demand the correction of a fancied situation which does not and, in our belief. never can exist
 DECENTRALIZATION THE RULE.
 In like manner an endeavor has been made 10 show. not by means of exact statistics which alone can tell the story. but rather through testimony obtained in the shape of replies to hypothetical questions that New York is far out stripping the rest of the country in comparative banking resources. Precisely the contrary is the case. The reports of the Comptroller of the Currency show not only that there has been no such tendency here, but that for some time. New York $ proportion of the country's banking capital and resources has been declining. The banking re sources of torty-one other states have increased since 1900 more rap, idly than they have in New York state; and, whereas in 1900 New York city hanks represented 23.2 per cent. of the banking resources of the United States, now, as pointed put in Mr. Davison's statement. they only 1S.9 per cent. of such resources.
 This striking tendency toward a greater and greater diffusion of American banking is illustrated fur ther by the fact that between 1900 and 1912 the number of independent banks in the country has, according 10 the best reports obtained. in- creased from 10,37S to 25.16O or by more than l40 per cent, while the population increased by less than 9 per cent in the same period Here is complete evidence of a ten lency operating today toward the of banking facilities. 1 INCOMPLETE AND MISLEADING
 FIGURES.
 Other evidence was adduced before l iour committee from which the in | erence was sought to be drawn | hat during the autumn. when in- l crest rates on "call' loans in New | York are likely to be high, interior | banks were in the habit of with l holding money from their local GUS omers, who needed it for agri | 'ultural and mercantile operations, | md of sending it to New York to be oaned against Stock Exchange col