The study of a single section of the balance sheets, that of discounts
and loans, has allowed us to follow the periods of prosperity, of panic,
and of liquidation. When we next consider the other sections, we find
the confirmation of our anticipations. Among these sections, in the
order of importance, we notice first, public deposits in the form of
running accounts; they constitute the reverse of the loans and
discounts, whose total is immediately credited to the banks' clients,
and the increase of paper on hand also follows. From 1865 to 1873 the
steady increase was uninterrupted, viz., from $183,000,000 to
$656,000,000; the maximum amount shows itself in the first quarter of
1873, eight months before the maximum of discounts and loans; in 1888
they ran down to $622,000,000; there is, say, a difference of
$300,000,000 between the two totals, and this difference is the same, we
observe, as that between the highest and the lowest of the two sections,
as we notice it in the same year, during the liquidation of the panic of
1873. [Footnote: See table of balance sheets of the Banks of the United
States.]
In the last period the progression is the same; from $598,000,000 the
amount of deposits advanced to $1,350,000,000, whilst discounts and
loans reached $1,684,000,000; that is to say, there was still a
difference of $334,000,000.
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