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Rh These advances were to a large extent attributable to carrying the country’s necessary stock of goods, both through the process of manufacture and through the period of sale. To a smaller extent they were loans to brokers and other persons on stocks and bonds. But here again it was not the bankers’ own money that was loaned. Rather was it, in the main, the aggregate of the deposits of a great many people.

It does not follow from the fact that certain interests are money lenders that the source of supply is a relatively few wealthy people. The greatest money lenders of all are the savings banks and the life insurance companies. At the middle of 1922 there were in American savings banks 26,637,831 accounts, aggregating $18,087,493,000. At the end of 1920 the life insurance companies had assets of $7,319,997,019, which was contingently the property of over 40 million policy holders. Of this great fund 32.29 per cent was invested in mortgages, divided about half and half between farm mortgages and the other kind made up of city, building, home and industrial loans. About 26 per cent was invested in railroad bonds and stocks. Loans on policies amounted to $820,000,000 and investments in government bonds to $772,000,000. The other investments were mainly in state, county and municipal bonds.

In all of these forms of investment—savings bank deposits, life insurance and government bonds—there have been important increases since 1916. This does not reflect increase in the national wealth, which, as I have shown in my book, did not occur in the period 1916-20 and to but relatively small extent in 1921–22. What it does show is a transfer of the claims upon the