The total liabilities of all banks failing since 1890 aggregate $898,000,000. The total number of all banks failing since 1890 is 1,757. In other words, eighty-eight banks have failed every year on an average, or more than seven banks every month, and one bank about every four days, during the last twenty years. But who can estimate the indirect losses or depict the consequences of these bank failures? If this tragic condition can be obviated, it is a crime against the people of the United States, it is a crime against civilization itself, to permit its continuance. MR. BANKER: No, indeed, neither Uncle Sam nor Mr. Laboringman assume any risk in their guarantees. They certainly do not, and I will go still further, and under those circumstances will guarantee the support of every merchant, manufacturer, farmer, laboringman, and every man, woman and child, whether depositors or not, as we would be the greatest benefactors of the human race, if we could devise a plan that would remove all risk from every deposit. And yet, humanly speaking, I am not sure that this very result, the absolute guarantee of all deposits may not be accomplished, and the chief factor in the accomplishment of so great a blessing to the people is locked up in the principle of reserves, assuming, of course, that the administration of the banking business is such as to keep it sound. If all the deposits made with the bank were in gold, or were convertible into gold, and held to meet the deposits when called for, the problem would be simple indeed, and would be solved already. But such a plan would be impracticable and archaic. Indeed, it would preclude all profit, unless a charge were made for such service, and would reduce a bank to a safe deposit company. It would exclude the use of all credit, and therefore destroy the possibility of doing approximately more than nine-tenths of the business carried on today, unless we should go back to actual barter. Our problem is to make the business of banking absolutely safe and yet preserve the great credit structure by which the business of the country and the world is carried on. MR. MERCHANT: For the purpose of this discussion we must assume that the business is honestly managed, and is, therefore, ordinarily sound, and confine ourselves to just the single subject of reserves, which my study leaves me to think, may be considered; 1st, from the standpoint of the single bank; 2d, from a standpoint of the community or a single city; 3d, from a standpoint of the whole country; 4th, from the standpoint of the whole world or our relation to the rest of the commercial world.