Hammond Times, Volume 10, Number 53, Hammond, Lake County, 21 January 1922 — Page 6

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The leadership of the Hammond Clearing House Association in local banking activity may be ascribed to the primary fact that it is a voluntary association, organized and maintained for the sole purpose of facilitating the reciprocal relations of the city's banking institutions and of holding to the highest standard of efficiency in banking operations. Wherever there is a Clearing House the same leadership obtains. Dominant over all other considerations, there exists the spirit of co-operation, which involves the willingness! to subordinate unreasonable self-interest to the general weal and a broad and voluntary, acceptance of constituted authority. It follows then, that membership in the Clearing House Association is a seal of merit, abadge of honor a distinction to be sought, a reality to be expected by the public of its banks. Being a voluntary association, its government is entirely representative and democratic. There is no distinction between members. The large rdown-town bank and the small outlying institution is received on the same

basis. No member yields anything of its autonomy in assenting to the necessary rules of procedure. All is ordered and executed only for the good of the banks themselves and, most particularly, for every bank depositor of the community. Relations with banks of other cities, the roster of customers, the amount and kind of business in hand all these matters are of no official interest to the association or its members. Actually they are never revealed to even the i Clearing House Committee except in an eventuality where the banking health of the community may be endangered, and in that case, it is to be supposed, the first instinct of an impaired bank would be to address the governing body for aid. It has been shown in a previous article that the origin of the Clearing House idea lay in a desire to simplify the balancing of debits and credits between banks. Thus the idea was wholly utilitarian in its beginning. The spirit of helpfulness between member banks and the conception of advancing the financial health and happiness of the community were later develop

ments. As the idea has ramified and grown into these deeper expressions of public service, it may be stated with conviction that they have now become of wider ultimate value than the merely routine check of balancing items: So the individual bank, which relinquishes no atom of its individuality by virtue of its Clearing House membership, finds, on the contrary, that its usefulness to itself, to its customers and to the community as a whole is materially enhanced by this active co-operation with other banks of its own city in keeping the financial situation sound. In Hammond today, interest in the Clearing House Association is no longer confined, to those who make banking their profession. The man on the street, to whom the association formerly meant nothing but a mysterious agency which "had something to do with his checks," is now thinking in terms of welfare, personal and public. Mr. Average Man now enjoys the consciousness that the Clearing House Association is an aggressive force for good, an essential element in our community, without which neither he nor his bank could feel the security that must always accompany the basic idea of banking.

embers of the Hammond Clearing House Association

First National Bank Citizens National Bank First Trust & Savings Bank

Hammond Trust & Savings Bank American Trust & Savings Bank W. Hammond Trust & Savings Bank

Northern Trust & Savings Bank Standard Trust & Savings Bank State Bank of Hammond