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M. FLETCHER HEARD. His Brief Talk Well Received-The Closing Business. President Coulter announced that, in the absence of Mr. Percival Kuhne, of New York, he had requested Mr. Allen M. Fletcher, formerly of this city, now of New York, to favor the convention with a talk on a subject of his own choosing. Many of the delegates had evidently heard Mr. Fletcher talk on other occasions or else his reputation as a witty and entertaining speaker had reached their ears, since he was greeted with spontaneous applause when he arose to address the convention. Mr. Fletcher spoke as follows: "I confess I hardly know what I am going to say to you. I do not know how to put you in closer touch with my present frame of mind than to tell you a little story, which perhaps you have all heard, although some of you may not. A number of years ago a elergyman was visiting another, and the friend he was visiting was all the time at work writing a sermon-so much SO that it rather embarrassed his friend. Finally he said to him, You should not do that. I never write out my sermons. While you are writing that with a view of bettering some of your people in your church the devil is looking right over your shoulder. preparing arguments to refute all you are going to say. When I go into the pulpit the devil don't know what I am going to say, because I don't know myself. Well, that is a good deal my present frame of mind. I am always ready to help a gentleman from Indiana; I owe that to the State. It has occurred to me that perhaps some of the other members here might be interested in hearing something relative to methods that are fatal to conservative banking. I do not know that I can say anything on that subject that would interest the older ones or that they do not already know or that experience has not taught you already. "To that end let me say to you that the city of Indianapolis only fifteen years ago had sixteen banks. Of the sixteen then existing only three now remain. Now it might occur to you that that was owing to the fact that this was not a good place to bank. That is not the case. It is a good place to bank, it is a safe place, a profitable place, limited only by the limitation of its natural environment. The same is true of any business here. But that result I have given you was brought about by methods in almost every case, yes, in every case, that were fatal to conservative banking. FATE OF THE BANKS. "Of the various banks in existence at the time I speak of, one, the Citizens' National Bank, went into voluntary liquidation with credit to itself, and the Meridian National Bank was absorbed by the Merchants'. It was a solvent bank and went out of business. The other eleven failed-failed. Now if you analyze the cause and effect that led to that result in those various banks you will find in the main that it was owing to three particular, not exactly methods, but facts, and put them under three heads. First, inability to say No when it should be said, and emphatically. When there is any question about a transaction, the making of a loan-any question at all in the mind of the banker-I think it should be said. even if leads to the loss of a good customer. The banker. standing as he does a trusteee of those whose money he has, should not give the customer the benefit of a doubt if a doubt really exists in his mind. Second, the want of courage to face a loss when It has been made, the courage not to put good money with bad. I believe that in nine cases out of ten where a customer has become seriously embarrassed. especially where it is the result of a slow growth, a continuing process of getting into that condition, that it is wiser not to help him, not to try, because the difficulty, the root of it, is below any assistance or advice that you can give him. Of course, where the case is the result of a calamity, something of the kind that is unexpected, that presents quite a different proposition, but a number of the failures here that pa. sed before my eyes have been the result of not sufficient courage to meet the loss and meet it then, not sufficient courage to refrain from putting good money with that which was in effect already gone. The third and greatest trouble of the institutions that I have referred to I think was the desire to create volume. volume at the expense of conservative business management, and when I speak at the expense of conservative business management there are a multitude of little things that come under that head that I won't attempt to go into. I put it broadly on that specification. The habit of rushing out in the clothing store fashion and grabbing of a customer and bringing him in, sometimespretty often-results in a misfit. I don't think in the long run it pays. The taking of a customer because, while he is not all right, simply because you are afraid some other bank is going to get him. I have known that not to be very profitable. NOT A GOOD STEADY DIET. "As a steady diet it don't pay. I think you are justified in knowing all you can about a customer and knowing he is just what you want. If it comes to this, that you are prepared to take him because you think he is all right and yet won't make you a fair statement-I have known that to cause a failure. I don't think the bankers of this State ever had a case of swollen credit-mistaken credit, if you pleasewhich was more difficult and which caused them more trouble than one which occurred in the southern part of the State here, and which you are all familiar with. The advertisement of one's indebtedness for the purpose of creation of volume is all right where you have use for your money, but where call loans don't exist, where collateral security don't exist, in smooth-sailing times it is all right, but clouds come to the banker sometimes, depressed conditions come to him sometimes. The banker who has not been through a panic and an acute one is not a banker in the broad sense of the word: he has yet something to learn. A bank should be evenly balanced, not topheavy in any respect. It should at all times have sufficient money hand to stand any reasonably strong run. The mere fact that a bank is solvent, that it stands high, that it has good directors and good stockholders, is not necessarily proof against disaster. "I well remember the case of the Meridian National Bank here. On the day after the failure of Mr. Haughey, its president, Mr. Gallup, a man of large means personally, worth more than the capital stock of his bank, decidedly more, with available securities in the shape of bonds and stocks -he had not gauged the situation he had before him and taken in his sail, and he found himself needing assistance, and if he