TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 581 



THE BANKING AND CREDIT SITUATION. 



By E. B, Wilson. 



My first contact or impression of the real economic meaning of the 

 work of the meat producers of Iowa was when I was a small boy. My 

 father was a banker in northeastern Iowa, a private banker. When the 

 panic of '93 broke out, two national banks had failed in a town about 

 twenty miles to the north of us, and about midway between my father's 

 town and this other town there was quite an Irish settlement. The Irish 

 had been keeping on deposit considerable money over in the other town, 

 and consequently had considerable money in the banks that failed, and 

 also considerable money in my father's bank. With the failure of those 

 two banks, they were rather uneasy, and every day some of these Irish-^ 

 men would come into my father's bank and would stand around and not 

 say much, tho their actions told us a whole lot, and father realized the 

 situation, and for some reason or thru wisdom and foresight he had accu- 

 m-ulated two large cakepans of gold — old-fashioned tin pans with the 

 flaring out at the top — and he had accumulated those two cake tins of 

 gold coins, and he would invite Mike into the back room and ask him 

 to sit down a moment, and father would slip around to the vault and 

 would get these two pans of gold and would carry them on his hips to 

 the back room, and as he approached he would say, "Mike, heft that," 

 and as Mike reached for the pan father would let go and the whole thing 

 would drop down in Mike's lap with a jingle of the coins, with those 

 bright gold coins all about him, and the psychological effect was won- 

 derful, and the word soon spread thru the community, and thereafter 

 father had no difficulty at all. 



But that wasn't all that father had back of him. He had played 

 another hunch years before, he had looked ahead, he had encouraged 

 the feeding of cattle. There were not many cattle being fed in that 

 community or in the surrounding country, but after some ten or twelve 

 years he had gradually encouraged the feeding of cattle in that com- 

 munity until the industry was well established. I remember particularly 

 one good old German farmer that we will call Fritz who was a very ex- 

 tensive feeder, and during those very trying times Fritz used to come in 

 about every other day and say to my father, "Veil, I haf two more cars 

 of cattle retty, ven you vant dem shipped I will ship dem, John," and those 

 cattle kept going to the Chicago market and the money kept coming back 

 to the bank, and it was a regular tower of strength to that bank and my 

 father during those trying days. 



Now, coming down to the subject of this evening: 



Going Up. 



Did you ever take a ride in an airplane? Did you ever go sailing 

 along at a high altitude, and the higher you went the safer you felt? 

 The fields of corn and small grain looked like a checker board on the 

 landscape. Hills seemed to smooth out and everything looked on the 

 level. 



As you looked ahead, you saw nothing but spacious atmosphere and 

 unlimited sailing space. You reflected that there had been a war, but 



