be paid as collections are made from the assets. The advantage of this plan is that it prevents the exhaustion of the guaranty fund by one or two failures. Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas provide that depositors are to be paid immediately after a failure, and for some time the effect of this provision in the first named state was to keep insolvent banks in operation because there was not enough money in the guaranty fund to pay the depositors if the banks were closed.1 If the Mississippi fund is deficient at the winding up of the affairs of a failed bank, the depositors will receive pro rata payments until subsequent assessments for the guaranty fund come in. The deposits of Mississippi state banks June 30, 1914, were $47,359,000. The normal assessment of one-twentieth of one per cent would yield about $24,000, and five assessments, the maximum number in one year, would yield about $120,000. There are no statistics to show whether such assessments are in keeping with previous loss experience in Mississippi. However that may be, the writer is of the opinion that the success of any insurance plan is jeopardized by making the initial fund so small. Fortunately there are as yet few large state banks in Mississippi. A bill similar to the Mississippi guaranty law was before the Louisiana legislature last winter. It was beaten largely by showing that if any one of the large state banks of New Orleans failed, and if its own assets sufficed to pay 75 per cent of the deposits, the mere interest on the certificates issued for the remaining 25 per cent of deposits would absorb almost all of the assessments for the guaranty fund, leaving no hope of ever paying the principal. After this argument the bill was amended by reducing to 3 per cent the rate on certificates issued in case of failure, but the bill was killed by a vote of nearly two to one. The guaranty of deposits becomes obligatory on all Mississippi banks on May 15, 1915. There is speculation over the probable attitude of the examiners at that time toward banks of whose condition they are not quite certain. If a 'Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xxviii, p. 77. bank is closed early in May so that the loss falls on the depositors, when matters might have been smoothed over until the deposits were under guaranty, the examiner who ordered the closing will lose the votes of a certain element of the depositors when he comes up for reëlection. Such a possibility illustrates the unwisdom of electing bank examiners, but it is not likely that examiners will toady to the vote of the depositors of failing banks. The certificate placing deposits under guaranty can be issued only after an examination in which the bank is found to be solvent. A record of failures after such examinations might be as serious a campaign handicap as the displeasure of depositors who thought the examiner ought to have helped them pass on their losses to the guaranty fund. "It seems fairly well understood that not every bank applying for a guaranty certificate has received one." 1 It is, of course, too early to draw conclusions from the operation of the law. When the writer last inquired, only one state bank had nationalized, and only two national banks had applied for state charters. There is no rush to get into or out of the state system, but up to November 10, 1914, 67 banks, including some of the largest in the state, had voluntarily taken advantage of the guaranty provisions.2 Some of these believe that the guaranty has brought about a growth of deposits by increasing the confidence of the people. The data are yet too few, however, to warrant any conclusion of the sort. The adoption of a guaranty scheme in Mississippi may tend to substantiate, so far as one example goes, the prediction ventured by the writer a year ago, that from time to time more states would probably supplement their service of bank regulation and supervision by enabling, if not requiring, the banks to effect insurance in a state administered fund for the benefit of depositors. FIDELITY TRUST COMPANY, KANSAS CITY, Mo. THORNTON COOKE. 1 Mississippi Banker, vol. i, no. 5, p. 9. Ibid., vol. i, no. 5, p. 11. LINCOLN AND THE TARIFF: Some THE note which I published in the August issue of this Journal on the tariff phrase attributed to Lincoln (getting "both the goods and the money ") has stirred discussion, as is natural with anything that concerns the great president. further light upon the origin of the phrase has come in consequence. For most of the information which I am now able to give, I am indebted to Mr. Calvin W. Lewis of Brookline, Massachusetts, who first called attention to some of the clues in contributions to the Boston Transcript signed with a pseudonym, and who has since put at my disposal in the most obliging way the results of his inquiries. It will be remembered that the earliest appearance of the phrase, so far as Mr. Matteson and myself were able to trace it, was in the American Economist for June 29, 1894, where it was stated to have been copied from the "Howard Independent" of June 9, 1894. The Howard Independent proved a puzzle. Mr. Matteson was able to find no trace of any such newspaper, and concluded that it was a myth, or at least a misprint." The puzzle was not lessened by the failure of the American Economist to give any explanation. Our note was brought to the attention of the Economist, and some reference has been made in its columns to Lincoln's utterances upon the tariff and to this particular myth; but no attempt was made to verify, or specify further, the source from which the phrase had come. A suspicion could not but arise that the phrase might have been manufactured by the Economist, and that the Howard Independent was a pretense. That suspicion proves to be quite without foundation. The Howard Independent is not a myth; but, as Mr. Matteson thought possible, it is a misprint. It appears that there is in Illinois a flourishing town by the name of Harvard, and that a weekly newspaper, the Harvard Independent, has been published there for many years. "Howard Independ ent" was merely a misprint for "Harvard Independent." Moreover, Mr. Lewis, through correspondence with the present editor of the Harvard Independent, has learned from him that a search in his files brought to light, in the issue of the date stated, June 9, 1894, the identical phrase. It is there, and the American Economist copied it in good faith and with due credit. It is not surprising that the editor of the American Economist, after the lapse of twenty years, should have quite forgotten just how he happened on the phrase, and should now find it as difficult to trace as the rest of us. Any suspicion of fabrication on his part was quite without foundation. But all this only serves to push the inquiry one step further back. Where did the Harvard Independent get the phrase? In the works of Robert G. Ingersoll there is an oration upon Lincoln, which bears the date 1894. In it there is a passage1 which says that Lincoln was nominated for the legislature and made a speech," and that this speech was in favor of a protective tariff. Ingersoll refers to it shortly after as Lincoln's first speech. After some remarks about the influence of manufactures in "developing the brain" and "giving wings to the imagination," Ingersoll goes on thus: "It is better for Americans to purchase from Americans, even if the things purchased cost more. "If we purchase a ton of steel rails from England for twenty dollars, then we have the rails and England the money. But if we buy a ton of steel rails from an American for twenty-five dollars, then America has the rails and the money both." It will be observed that this differs in one significant particular from the phrase attributed to Lincoln. The purchase from the American is supposed to be at a higher price than that from the Englishman, - twenty-five dollars instead of twenty dollars; the allegation is that it is more advantageous to buy at home, even at the higher price. 1 See vol. III, pp. 127-128 of the "Dresden Edition" of the Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (New York, 1900). The oration, or lecture, is also reprinted as an introduction to the seventh volume of Lincoln's Collected Writings, edited by Nicolay and Hay (New York, 1905). There are other grounds for questioning whether this passage, as it appears in print, was the source of our myth. It is not put by Ingersoll in quotation marks, nor is there any intimation or implication that it is taken from Lincoln. Ingersoll mentions steel rails; if he had wished to imply that the language was Lincoln's, he would hardly have selected an article not known in Lincoln's day. A careless reader might possibly infer this to be a paraphrase or quotation from Lincoln; but only a careless one. More important is the circumstance that internal evidence points to its having been published at a later date than that of the passage in the Harvard Independent (June, 1894). Immediately following the two paragraphs just quoted Ingersoll goes on: "Judging from the present universal depression and the recent elections, Lincoln, in his first speech, stood on solid rock and was absolutely right." "Recent elections" must refer to the elections of the autumn of 1894. The elections of 1892 were not favorable for the Republicans, but those of 1894 were. It is the latter only to which Ingersoll could have alluded. The date of the oration in its printed form is clearly later than that of the appearance of the phrase in the Harvard Independent. Nevertheless, I am disposed to believe that Ingersoll's oration is the fons et origo of the myth. Ingersoll was much in demand as a lecturer and political speaker. For years he orated on the lyceum platform and spoke at political rallies. The oration on Lincoln doubtless was delivered many and many a time before it was put into cold print. The tariff phrase doubtless figured in it, and was likely to stick in the memory of hearers; and it is in this way that the editor of the Harvard Independent probably got hold of it. Hearing it as delivered, with the dramatic emphasis of which Ingersoll was a master, he would not fail to remember it, and at the same time would naturally suppose it to be a quotation from Lincoln, not an epigram of the orator's. The circumstance that the difference in price between English and American rails, which is an important part of Ingersoll's version, does not appear in the Harvard Independent or in other places, is |