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was appointed to satisfy the deSome of the an ers positors. feared immediate stockhold liabilities asessment for the payment of and offered to give any who would assume its their held stock obligations. to this stock is at nearly its value, and is as gilt double Today garded par edged security it re+ five no has Within received years, although deposits, currency, the made bank no loans, issued no sold no drafts, it has paid two dividends to its stockholders and promises many more. The very of the bank has been forgotten, a few men who except name by grey-haired are personally interested in its affairs. Moreover, it is unique in being corporation having large assets and no liabilities beyond the obligation to its stockholders. report on the bank, made re tion The of earliest by the the condi ceiver, Col. Huntington W. Jackson, that the were and the debts were showed $1,800,00. nominal assets nearly leaving & nominal $800, to the stock $750,. 000 $1,000,000. pay liability of On this looked most enbut & close that many of the the couraging, 000. showed paper examination loans of se. bank, made in flush times, were collaterals of and real estate at eured value, by scheduled uncertain and taken as only for money boom available prices payment "slow" the loaned paper There was two much enough "short" paper. Of the real estate, one tract of 100 acres lay on a barren sand ridge near the lake shore and nearly ten miles southeast of the City Hall, in 8 unsettled part of & tract of acres Another wholly forty-five suburb of the as far to the west the bare. flat city was nearly on prairie, of its where there was little prospect ever more than & Still another prop. patch. being anything piece southwest of cabbage far out in the por the city in a region as promerty tion most of lay wholly undeveloped and yet little immediate growth, except and special ising in taxes assessments. lots and There was & score of other of land, some in and 8 great quantity paper, parcels city, doubtful New of York of it more or less or In fact, it to some of much worthless. the ninety stockholders seemed that retain would hardly pay the bank to its property and meet the expenses of management. By the process known as "squeez ing,' and the sacrifice of some of the of real estate the re to pay the ceiver choicer managed pieces before the face close of 1881, the depositors of their claims. A year received their they value interest in inter full, stockholders left, nearly five after the close and years the of expensive the bank, with a score of pieces of real estate, most of which had comparatively little present cash value, and 8 quantity of doubtful claims and lawsuits, the legacy of panic. But Chicago was growing. The suburb in which the hundred acre tract was located became a part of A cable line touched it; an and the city. almost reached electric down line passengers immediately of it:an elevated apin front dropped railroad dozen proached it within half 8 in the '90's the Fair found root World's blocks. Early the in tract Jackson im which adjoined on the north. apartment great mediately Park, hotels, houses, A city and of sprang suddenly into exaround it. and was residences, istence Chicago park. city far out beyond the In July, 1891, the receiver called the stockholders together and laid them an offer $1,000.000 for 100 acres of and upon the the before despised stockholders, mature land, de rejected it, it be worth much more a it liberation, would feeling that few years later. If the offer had been &Cit would have paid capital stock of cepted the entire comfortable off $750,000 not only would have left & to be divided among $250,000 but it the In stockholders for their patience. hardly less the five acre cabbage 8 manner forty remarkable patch be. valuable. Car lines passed it, the of Oak Park, a congrew out siderable came suburb city, itself around it, and every year has added thousands of dollars to its value. And 80 it happened that in 1893 receiver was able to pay a of 10 cent to the & the per stockholders, with diviand he followed it in 1895 second dividend of 10 per cent. And thus, by & combination of shrewd and the Third good patience, fortune, management National Bank now presents the spectacle, probably unequaled in finance, of a institution for twenty years and yet paying worth nearly twice stock defunct, business dividends its par on value.