Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/343

 were quarreling with each other, being almost entirely independent of each other, and not controlled by any central authority.

The Mobile branch was authorized, December 23, 1837, to increase its issues one-fourth more than was allowed by the act legalizing suspension; the increase to be used in advances on cotton at not more than three-fourths of its value. On the same day the State officers were authorized to issue State bonds for $2.5 millions, in sterling, at five per cent., for twenty years, to be sold for specie; the proceeds to be deposited in the Bank of the State and branches, in equal shares, in aid of the capital. On the same day, also, a limit was set to the indebtedness which the president or any director might be under to the branch of which he was an officer. Any one who owed any branch $35,000 was ineligible as a director, and an oath must be taken by every candidate. Three Commissioners were to be appointed, in January, 1838, and annually thereafter to visit the Bank of the State and its branches twice a year. The president of each branch was to make monthly reports to the Comptroller, who was to publish them. The provision for Commissioners was repealed at the next session.

The report from Mobile, September 28, 1838, was as follows: "The State Bank and its branches, it is said, are to have a meeting on the 1st October, and if the Tuscaloosa Bank can be made to give up her absurd plan of advancing on cotton, and come into the measure of resumption, but little notice will be taken of the two banks in the northern part of the State. We think everything looks fair for resumption, and on Monday next we shall get clear of shinplasters." "If the thing [resumption] is practicable, why are they [the other banks] to be deterred from the step by the injurious and mischievous speculations into which the Tuscaloosa branch chooses to enter? Are the people forever to be oppressed and cursed with a depreciated paper, to enable bank directors and their favorites to job in cotton and fatten on bank agencies?"

"Stripped of all disguise, we ask, what is the proposition made to a sensible public? It is that the people at large shall continue to suffer the dishonor, the embarrassments and positive losses of a depreciated currency, in order that the debtors to the banks may make use of that currency to pay their debts. It is to tax the solvent, and enact a stop-law in favor of the. embarrassed and insolvent—it is gross favoritism—to those to whose imprudences the State is indebted for its afflictions, at the expense of rank injustice to those who have not been seduced into engagements totally beyond their power to meet."

It was required, February 1, 1839, that the cashiers of the Bank of the State and branches should report to each Legislature the indebtedness of the president, directors, and members of the Legislature, to each bank, and also a list of debtors' endorsers, and amounts of debt, by counties. These laws