State Independent
Bankers to Meet
Organization Planned to Fight
Chain Bank Invasion
For the purpose of taking concerted action against the threat of chain banking across state lines independent bankers of this state will meet shortly to consider organizing a state association.
A call for the meeting, slated for Bellingham, June 16, on the eve of the annual convention of the Washington Bankers Association, was sounded yesterday by a committee of three independent state bankers.
They are Ben Phillips, president of the First National Bank of Port Angeles; Fred Forrest, president, First National Bank of Pullman, and D. T. Coffman, president, Coffman-Dobson Bank and Trust Company, Chehalis.
The three were named to study the chain banking problem at the regional conference of the American Bankers Association in Portland last February.
Approximately 150 independent bankers of the state have been invited to the Bellingham conference.
NOT COMPETITIVE
In their invitation the committee stresses that “it is not the intention to compete in any way with the Washington Bankers Association.”
In addition to organizing a state association which would be known as the Independent Banks of the state of Washington, bankers attending the meeting will be asked to consider lending support to organizing similar association throughout the Western states compromising the Twelfth Federal Reserve Bank District.
In its call for the meeting the state committee declared:
“With the McAdoo bill in the senate we feel the seriousness of the situation must appeal to ‘you.’”
The McAdoo proposed legislation, as previously pointed out here, would permit member banks of federal reserve districts to stretch their branches across state lines without obtaining state charters.
GIANNINI INVASION
The immediate concern of Washington independents is the threat of invasion by the Giannini banking interests of California, which the independents assert the McAdoo measure would make possible of they became part of the national banking law.
Giannini interests have already made five known bank purchases in this state as part of a nucleus for an ultimate state chain.
Unit bankers declare Giannini expansion would have been much more rapid here were it not for refusal of the state to issue charters.
The McAdoo legislation, they assert, would provide the open sesame by making it unnecessary for the Giannini banking group to obtain state approval.
OPPOSE McADOO’S BILLS
Simultaneously with announcement of the independent banking meeting, Tom K. Smith, president of the American Bankers’ Association, announced yesterday that the association’s interim committee “has reached the conclusion that the association would oppose McAdoo bills S2347 and S2348, providing for branch banking across state lines.”
The committee, he said, adopted the following statement:
“The American Bankers’ Association has approved the principle of preserving state automomy with respect to branch banking and granting to a national bank the right to establish branches in the state in which it is domiciled to the same extent that branch banking is permitted to state banks under the law of that state.”
“Therefore,” Smith said, “the association’s committee on federal legislation has been instructed to oppose the McAdoo branch banking bills.”