104 Frank aS. FlUlbrick 



savings banks. Although the land booms of the West had 

 collapsed in 1889-90, the immense grain crops of 1891-92 

 had a bad effect, and so the wholesome check to specula- 

 tion and bad loans that had started was not of very great 

 value when the collapse came in 1893. In the East it was 

 different; for inasmuch as foreign capital was concen- 

 trated there, as domestic also, the eastern financiers 

 profited by the lesson of 1890; they were drained of gold; 

 and "it was on the eastern stock exchange that foreign in- 

 vestors poured for two years continuously their holdings 

 of American securities."^ The result was that poor banks 

 were weeded out, and that when the crisis came the New 

 York bankers were free from "industrials," comparatively 

 sound and conservative. 



Now let us look at the bank failures in 1893.^ There 

 were in all 585 failures of all kinds of banking institutions 

 with liabilities of 169 millions of dollars; 414 of these, 

 with liabilities of 115.3 millions, did not resume, but 171, 

 with liabilities of 80.8 millions, did. For the banks resum- 

 ing we find that the ratio of assets to liabilities was high- 

 est in the Northwest, and that in all the other regions it 

 was about the same. Thus 3 banks in the Middle section 

 had a ratio of 1.43, and represented liabilities of about 

 1.93 millions ; 66 in the West with liabilities of 20.99 mil- 

 lions had a ratio of 1.45 ; 46 in the Northwest with liabili- 

 ties of 9.81 millions, stood 1.85; 22 southern institutions 

 with 9.09 millions liabilities stood 1.46; and 29 banks in 

 Pacific States held 11.52 millions debts and showed a 

 ratio of 1.31 only. 



The ratio of assets to liabilities for the 585 failed banks 

 was as |23/$21 or 1.08 ; for the 414 that remained closed 

 it was as |17/|19, or 0.89 ; and for the 171 that resumed it 



^A. D. Noyes. "The Banks and the Crisis of 1893." Pol. Sci. Quar., 

 Mar., 1894. 



"Cf. Appendices VII and IX. 



310 



