WITH ITH the beginning of the Seventh Volume of The Reader's Digest, of which this issue is the first number, many readers will wish either to bind the completed past volume (ending with the yearly Index in the April issue) or to file each issue of the present volume as it comes to them. The Reader's Digest Binder is of the most approved and convenient pattern, takes six copies, opens flat, and holds each copy securely while permitting any single copy to be instantly filed or removed without loosening the others. It can be supplied for $1.50 postpaid and is returnable if unsatisfactory. Published Monthly, 25c a copy; $3.00 a Year; (Foreign, $3.25) Entered as second-class matter, at the Post Office at Pleasantville, N. Y., Additional entry at Post Office, Concord, N. H. Copyright, 1928, The Reader's Digest Assn., Inc. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A., BY RUMFORD PRESS, CONCORD, N. H. A Giannini, Banking Colossus Condensed from Forbes Magazine (March 15, '28) B. C. Forbes P. GIANNINI, banking colos sus, has reached his long arm from California to New York and seized control of the 116-year-old Bank of America, making him master of more banking capital than any other man in America's history. His ambition, I am authoritatively informed, is to establish a towering financial institution in each of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank districts and to acquire a liberal number of branches tributary to each of the 12. He also has his eye on foreign fields. He has operated for some time on a very large scale in San Francisco and Los Angeles-his Bank of Italy has about 300 branches in California; he has controlled sizeable banks in New York City and now will be in a position to extend his hold very greatly; he is invading Chicago and doubtless will lose little time in effecting a foothold in other leading cities. Through his Bancitaly Corporation, a holding company, he has quickly built up the most gigantic investment trust, mostly for bank stocks, in America. His Bank of Italy, organized in San Francisco in 1904, and which now has branches dotting the entire State of 671776 California, has far more depositors than any other American bank, approximately 1,300,000. And he is almost daily buying up additional banks, paying therefor prices which Californian bankers describe as unprecedentedly high. The rise in the Giannini bank stock quotations has been phenomenal. More fortunes have been reaped in them than were reaped from California's gold deposits in 1849. So rampant is the mania for speculating in them that many millions of Eastern money are being loaned to California speculators at exorbitant rates of interest-from 11 to 15 percent. Mr. Giannini deprecates such action. He has issued several statements that the shares of his institutions were being carried to unwarranted heights. Not long since he frankly urged holders not to borrow money to buy or hold them. Also, he gave warning that the profits made last year, over $30,000,000 by the Bancitaly Corporation and $20,000,000 by the Bank of Italy, were unusually high, and might not be duplicated. Despite all this, on the California Stock Exchanges the Giannini stocks almost |