Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/345

 That right, with some limitations as to banks, was affirmed in United States Bank versus Primrose and the other cases decided with it.

.—The "Free Trader" said, July, 1838: "Against the banking institutions of Mississippi we find the voice of their former warmest and most devoted friends becoming loud, indignant, and denunciatory. Every day only increases public imprecations against their unscrupulous swindling." "They [the banks of the State] must raise the value of their paper, and they must do it soon. There is no time to be lost. In Lauderdale County, on the night preceding the time for the opening of the spring term of the Circuit, the court-house was burned down. The Judge, unwilling to be thus baffled, determined to hold the court in some other building, but the Sheriff resigned. The duties then devolved on the Coroner, but he too resigned; and the Judge was actually obliged to go home and leave the litigants to take care of themselves."

The Brandon Bank determined, April 10, 1838, to redeem its circulation with seventy-day post-notes payable in Philadelphia. From the report of the Bank Commissioners in 1838, we get the following exposition of the proceedings and status of the Brandon Bank. In the statement of this bank the individual deposits appear under the resources to the amount of over $90,000. The reason was because persons who delivered cotton to the bank would not give notes when the amount received was less than the value of the cotton. The amounts thus appeared as over-drafts. "Their agencies exercised all the powers of a bank of discount, thus giving a locomotive character or the principle of ubiquity to the Brandon Bank."

The bank intervened to give credit to planters who had put their cotton in its hands so that they could buy provisions. The Commissioners reckoned its profits for the year at fifty-one per cent. of its capital. If it is allowed to buy its own depreciated paper they will be much greater. "The mode by which such enormous profits are realized without other capital is very simple. A charter is first obtained from the Legislature. A small portion of stock is to be paid in before the bank goes into operation. A few honest planters desirous of promoting the improvement of the country, which the bank promises, take stock in good faith and pay it up in bona fide capital. Those, however, who are experienced in these matters pay up as little as possible, but as the latter are financiers they are elected to manage the bank. They soon discount paper for themselves and other stockholders of financial abilities. With this they buy more property to secure more stock, to get more discounts, to buy more property, to secure more stock, etc., etc., and finally they are able to write up a very respectable capital upon which they are permitted to issue double the amount. * * * So long as a few men can draw a profit of more than fifty per cent. from the labor of the country for merely writing their names on a slip of paper, promising to pay their own bank any given amount, it is natural that they should endeavor to