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Knickerbocker Trust Company Bankrupt Four Years Ago. Big Concern to Merge With Columbian Trust Company. SATTERLEE'S WORK SUCCESSF Then He Was Fined for Violating Anti-Trust Law. Great Strides Made in Auto and Aeroplane Business. New York, May 24.-To report the bare fact that the Knickerbocker Trust institution and the Columbia Trust institution are to be merged, neither one absorbing the other, and yet one institution hereafter representing what have been two banking institutions for years, would be only meagerly to convey the meaning which is behind this combination. The bare facts are that the Knickerbocker and the Columbia institutions will give up their old stock and will receive for it new stock which fairly represents the relative difference between the two institutions. The new institution will have a capital of two million dollars; it will have a surplus of seven millions, and if the deposits carried by the two institutions are carried by the combined trust these will be somewhat in excess of sixty million dollars. Invariably in banking circles in this city the first thought caused by the announcement of the combination was this-that the transaction reflects the unprecedented reaction from bankruptcy. Jespair and apparent permanent ruin to a position of prime importance in our banking world which is a record made by the Knickerbocker Trust company in a little over four years. This was the institution which was obliged to close its doors in October, 1907, thereby bringing to a head the panicky conditions which had prevailed for two or three weeks. For four or five months arter the state banking department took possession of the Knickerbocker Trust. its life hung in the balance. Nothing but co-operation between a majority of the depositors and the state nking department and the ability of some men who had not been prominent in finance to nurse what remained O1 the assets made it possible for the Knickerbocker Trust to open its doors. It did that by issuing promises to pay at stated intervals proportionate parts of the money deposited with it to the depositors. The business of saving this bank was chiefly committed to Herbert L. Satterlee, who was not a banker, but a lawyer, and who, for a time, was assistant secretary cf the navy in President Roosevelt's administration. Mr. Satterlee's courage energy and grim determination to save that bank together with the skill and tact with which he met and overcame the objections of recalcitrant or sulky depositors, served to save the institution. It was sometimes surmised that Mr. Satterlee's triumph could be traced to the fact that he is a son-in-law of J. P. Morgan, but the fact remains that his success was due in no way to his family essociation with Mr. Morgan. He saved the institution and within a year after It opened its doors it began to pay, much before it promised to do SO, its obligations to its depositors. The market value of its stock was recovered. This revitalizing of the Knickerbocker Trust was a conspicuous and recognized service to the banks of New York. It served greatly to restore prosperity. When Mr. Satterlee completed his work he stepped aside and within two years was compelled to submit to the humiliation of facing an indictment brought by the United States government upon a criminal charge of having violated the antitrust law. Notwithstanding the fact that the alleged vi lation was not only in the highest degree technical, but also that Mr. Satterlee personally had no knowledge of what the corporation with which he was identified had done in the steel wire pool matter, nevertheless the indictment stands in the record and beside It is written the statement that he was compelled to pay a fine of one thousand dollars. How Wealth Is Created. At the recent international exposition of aeroplanes and various other flying machines which was held in this city there was a cemonstration of the manner in which the specially prepared rubber cloth is utilized for the wings of aeroplanes and also for the large dirigible balloons. The great balloon in which the second attempt is to be made to cross the Atlantic from Atlantic City is made of this specially prepared rubberized cloth. The process is understood to be a trade secret. At all events, there was no demonstration of the manner in which it was manufactured. A manufacturing company located at Akron, Ohio, has recently received an order for twenty-five thousand yards of this cloth. and it thought that great as is this amount it will be found before the end of the year to be a comparatively trivial order, since there is now no doubt that aeroplanes and dirigible balloons are to be built in greatly increasing numbers, especially as some of the foreign governments have now accepted this ap-
