THE BILLION ARRIVES AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF ON MAY 19, 1916 By JOHN SKELTON WILLIAMS COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY PRESENTED BY MR. FLETCHER JUNE 20, 1916.-Ordered to be printed WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE THE BILLION ARRIVES. By JOHN SKELTON WILLIAMS, Comptroller of the Currency. MR. PRESIDENT, Members of thE TENNESSEE BANKERS' ASSOCIATION, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: There is a coincidence in my appearance here, responsive to the very kind invitation with which you have honored me. My first public address before an organized commercial body was delivered in Nashville on May 24, 1892, almost exactly 24 years ago. The title of that oratorical effort was "The credit of the South." I went at the request of the Commercial Club of Nashville and was so impressed by my subject, by the surroundings and the enthusiasm and optimism of youth that I poured forth statistics, facts and prophecies for more than an hour. I suppose that was more than the commercial club could stand. It lasted the community nearly a quarter of a century and I never have been invited to do any more talking in Tennessee until now. If there are present any gentlemen who heard me then, we may organize a survivors' association and confer on each other medals for courage and endurance. Looking over a copy of that old speech of mine, I am impressed with a feeling something like awe. Events and developments since it was delivered have been so tremendous, and there is promise. of so much more. Our vision has widened enormously. What seemed then to be wild dreams and sanguine imaginations have become realities. Our talk and our thought were of the South, her prosperity and progress. We reckoned in hundreds of thousands and millions. Now we have ceased to think within the limits of States or sections or even of our own continent. We have come to regard the world as the only scope for our sympathies and field for our enterprise, and all the future of humanity as the rightful object for our planning. The billion has arrived. Composed, as we have been accustomed to regard it, of a mass of units so vast as to be almost beyond our comprehension, it seems likely now to become itself the unit on which we will base estimates and calculations of the wealth of the country and even of individuals and corporations. From present indications it will be as familiar to men now young as the telephone, the automobile, and the aeroplane are to those of us who have come to middle age. Pardon me for presenting to you some figures I gathered and presented in Nashville in 1892, and comparisons between them and present conditions, with the hope that they may impress and interest you as they do me; and also that they may help convey to you the conviction that our future, judging by the comparatively recent past, is illimitable. And I will use the story of just the Southern States of this Republic to illustrate what we have been doing and have achieved. I ventured in this former address of mine, talking of "The credit of the South," to say of this part of the country When pessimist or foe questions her future, we need consider only how she has risen, strong and beautiful, from dust and ashes, desolation and darkness; how with uplifted face she has come radiant from amid the graves of her dead and the ruins of her hearthstones to move swiftly onward to prosperity and happiness. There is a dear and glorious past to which we may look back with lingering, tender love and pride; a splendid future to which we may look with exulting confidence; and in the living present we may solemnly and joyfully thank God and take courage. Those words were spoken some 27 years after the close of the disastrous war in which the South lost. We have completed now the half century since Appomattox. I shall ask you to consider the changed aspects and the new duties, opportunities, obligations and responsibilities they have brought. The population of our 16 Southern States, when I last had the honor of addressing a Tennessee audience, had just been reported by the census of 1890 at 22 millions. Since that time the official figures show we have added over 12 million souls. The increase has been nearly 60 per cent. A significant and important feature of this showing is that the foreign element still constitutes a very small percentage of the total; and the population in the South is more essentially native American than in any other section of the country. In every Southern State the villages and hamlets of 1890 have become the thriving cities and towns of 1915. The Chattanooga of to-day is twice the size of the Chattanooga of 1890; Knoxville has nearly doubled in population; Nashville shows a substantial gain of 50 per cent; while Memphis claims now a population nearly two and one-half times as great as it had in 1890. Birmingham, with 26,000 people in 1890, now boasts of 174,000; while Jacksonville, Fla., for the same period, has advanced from 17,000 to 73,000; Atlanta from 65,000 to its present estimate of 184,000; and Richmond from 81,000 in 1890 to 154,000 now. In 1890 Texas had 11 cities or towns with a population of 8,000 or more. That State now has 27 cities and towns with 8,000 or more inhabitants. In 1890 the combined population of Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, Tex., was less than the population of Houston to-day, 108,000, while Dallas and San Antonio now are each credited with a population of 118,000 or more. Oklahoma, which had no town with a population of 8,000 in 1890, now has 10 towns and cities with populations ranging from 10,000 to 88,000. In discussing the growth of this section, I will first ask your attention to your banking statistics. These show that the number of national banks in the Southern States has increased from 731 at the time of the May, 1892, call to 2,147 national banks on March 7, 1916, practically three times as many as 1892. Their capital, surplus and undivided profits increased from 166 millions in May, 1892, to 427 million dollars in March, 1916; while their deposits are six times as great, having increased from 263 millions to 1.636 millions; and their aggregate resources in the same time increased from 456 million dollars to 2,295 million dollars. You see that here, too, we are counting in billions now. The State banks in the Southern States have increased from 1,091 in June, 1892, to 6,865 at the time of the last compilation of State bank statistics in June, 1915. The total resources of State banks, savings banks and trust companies increased, in the same period, from 342 millions to 1,925 millions. More billions. Summing up the growth of banking power in the South, we find that the total number of national banks, State banks, savings banks, and trust companies in the South increased from a total of 1,822 at this time in 1892 to 9,012 in March, 1916-using in this estimate the national bank figures for March, 1916, and the State bank figures as of the date of the latest compilation, June 23, 1915. The capital, surplus, and undivided profits of all banks-National, State, savings, and trust companies increased in the same period from 271 millions to 897 millions. Total deposits in these banks increased in the same period from 485 millions to 2,990 millions; and total resources from 798 millions in 1892 to four and a quarter billion dollars at this time-the total banking resources of this section being now more than five times what they were in 1892. The figures show that the Southern States have now banking resources as great as the entire country had as late as the year 1884; and that the deposits of these banks are now approximately twothirds as great as the deposits of all the banks in the entire country as late as the year 1892-only 24 years ago. It is not out of place for me to call attention here to the instructive fact that the greatest growth and increase which the national banks in the Southern States have ever experienced has taken place since the inauguration of the Federal Reserve System on November 16, 1914. For the past 12 months or from March 4, 1915, to March 7, 1916 deposits in the national banks in the Southern States increased 258 million dollars, which is close to 20 per cent; and the number of national banks in the South has increased during the past year from 2,060 to 2,147. If I may be permitted to digress a moment to speak of some of the advantages of our new banking law, under the operation of which these great strides have been made, I should like to suggest to you a few of the manifold ways in which this Federal reserve act has operated to increase the available money supply in all sections of the country, and especially in the South: First. The new law reduced the reserve requirements so that national banks in reserve cities, instead of being required to carry as reserve 25 per cent of deposits, now carry only 15 per cent; and the country banks which were previously required to carry 15 per cent are now required to carry only 12 per cent. This change immediately released and made available, for purposes of trade and commerce, some hundreds of millions of dollars. Second. National banks in the 52 reserve cities carry their reserves in the 12 Federal reserve banks in the 12 Federal reserve districts instead of being compelled to carry them in the 3 central reserve cities of New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. The funds thus transferred to the 12 Federal reserve banks now become available for loans in all parts of the 12 Federal reserve districts; and hundreds of millions of dollars of reserve money formerly con |