Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1909 — GUARANTEED BANK DEPOSITS. [ARTICLE]

GUARANTEED BANK DEPOSITS.

Saturday Evening Post: For an institution which was hanged, drawn, quartered, burned and burled in obloquy by all eminent republican financiers only a few months ago, the Oklahoma plan of guaranteeing bank deposits shows considerable vitality. 6 First Kansas, then Nebraska, have followed with guaranty laws modeled upon that of Oklahoma, and South Dakota has passed a bill embodying the principle in somewhat different form. The Kansas law’ excludes from the benefits of the guaranty fund demand deposits on which interest is paid —which ought to discourage mere speculative banking. The Oklahoma law, it will be recalled, went into effect in February, 1908, so the neighboring states mentioned have had opportunity to observe its effects, at first hand, for more than a year. Apparently they fall to discover those deadly characteristics which were so copiously pointed out at long range during the campaign; and the national bankers of Kansas lately sent a delegation to Washington seeking penhission to participate in the plan. One cannot tell, after only fourteen months’ trial, how the plan is going to w'ork out in Oklahoma; but one can tell, with no trial at all, that how it will work out is purely a question of administration. If it is well administered it will work out well. If speculators are tolerated and the banks permitted to bid extravagantly for deposits, if the state board is too much interfered with by politics or by enjoining courts, if examinations are lax and dummy directors encouraged, it will work out badly Except at first, when twenty-two national banks gave up their charters, the guaranty of deposits by state concerns seems not to have made much impression on the national banks of Oklahoma. Its practical operation is still in the experimental state; but the experiment is worth while.