The Pujo Committee has failed to apply the prohibition of common directorships in potentially competing banking institutions rigorously even to national banks. It permits the same man to be a director in one national bank and one trust company doing business in the same place. The proposed concession opens the door to grave dangers. In the first place the provision would permit the interlocking of any national bank not with one trust company only, but with as many trust companies as the bank has directors. For while under the Pujo bill no one can be a national bank director who is director in more than one such trust company, there is nothing to prevent each of the directors of a bank from becoming a director in a different trust company. The National Bank of Commerce of New York has a board of 38 directors. There are 37 trust companies in the City of New York. Thirty-seven of the 38 directors might each become a director of a different New York trust company: and thus 37 trust companies would be interlocked with the National Bank of Commerce, unless the other recommendation of the Pujo Committee limiting the number of directors to 13 were also adopted. But even if the bill were amended so as to limit the possible interlocking of a bank to a single trust company, the wisdom of the concession would still be doubtful. It is true, as the Pujo Committee states, that “the business that may be transacted by” a trust company is of “a different character” from that properly transacted by a national bank. But the business actually conducted by a trust company is, at least in the East, quite similar; and the two classes of banking institutions have these vital elements in common: each is a bank of deposit, and each makes loans from its deposits. A private banker may also transact some business of a character different from that properly conducted by a bank; but by the terms of the Committee’s bill a private banker engaged in the business of receiving deposits would be prevented from being a director of a national bank; and the reasons underlying that prohibition apply equally to trust companies and to private bankers.