Just as there are in the east mutual savings banks, which are relics of former days, so the Trust Companies, with their limited powers, are only a landmark in the evolution of American banking, and must disappear as a separate institution in time.
The growth and development in fifty years has produced in the United States a banking unit, doing in a conglomerate way what it ought to be doing as a departmental business, with four distinct functions: viz., a commercial business, the manufacturing of credit; a savings bank business, accumulating the savings of the laboring masses, which is a sacred trust fund that should be placed in high grade investments; a trust company business, executing trusts, and carrying on agencies of every kind; a note-issuing business, which is only another form of the commercial business, as the bank note is in fact only another form, as we have learned, of a deposit--a circulating credit in place of a check credit for the convenience of the people.
From Feb. 1, 1863, the birth of the National Bank Act, down to the present time there has not been one single change in the National Bank law worth mentioning. It is true we have dotted an "i" here, and crossed a "t" there; but as for a substantial change there has not been a single one made. Now, this is truly a most marvelous fact, when you consider how great have been the changes, especially since 1890, or during the past twenty-two years. Our banking resources have increased fourfold. In 1890 they were about six billion, today they are more than twenty-five billion.
MR. LAWYER: This growth in our banking power is not so strange because it only reflects the growth of our business. The clearings of the United States in 1890 were only thirty-seven billion, while the clearings this year must pass the hundred and seventy billion dollar mark. The productions of the United States in 1890 were only seventeen billion. The productions of the United States in 1912 will exceed thirty-five billion dollars. The wealth of the United States in 1890 was only sixty-five billion dollars. The wealth of the United States in 1912 is estimated at about one hundred and twenty-five billion dollars. The imports in 1890 were seven hundred and eighty-nine million; the imports the present year will be one billion eight hundred million; the exports in 1890 were eight hundred and forty-five million; this year our exports will exceed two billion three hundred million dollars.