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our commerce will be accepted with the same foresight and enlightened courage which have marked the other measures of our policy in the Orient.

VI

THE GROWTH OF TRUST COMPANIES

THE trust company is essentially an American institution. It was correctly declared by Mr. Charles F. Phillips at the meeting of the American Bankers' Association in 1902, that,

"in the strict sense of the term, there are no trust companies in Europe or the Orient, and none in the Latin-American countries, barring the Mexican Trust Company, a purely American foundation, and one or two others, all in a nascent state; nor, so far as I am aware, have corporations, anywhere outside the United States and some portions of Canada, yet undertaken to do, in a conjoint and aggregate form, any substantial portion of the work which is customarily and regularly performed by the trust companies in our midst."

The growth of the business of trust companies during the last few years has partaken of the prosperity which has come to many other American enterprises.

This is plain from the statistics of their numbers, deposits, and resources, as reported to the Comptroller of the Currency, and set forth below for representative years:

TRUST COMPANIES OF THE UNITED STATES

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Here is a multiplication within twelve years of the individual deposits of trust companies by more than four times, or an increase of more than 300 per cent. Even within the brief period of six years the increase has been more than 150 per cent. The total resources of the trust companies of the State of New York were $300,765,575 on January 1, 1892. They rose slowly during the next five years to $396,742,947 at the beginning of 1897, and then went up by bounds to $579,205,442 on

January 1, 1899, $797,983,512 for 1901, $969,403,911 for 1902, and $1,039,735,828 on January 1, 1904. How this progress compares in New York City with that of the Clearing House banks may be seen from the following figures of individual deposits:

DEPOSITS IN NEW YORK CITY BANKS

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These figures show that while the deposits of the Clearing House banks of New York City have increased about 40 per cent in five years, those of the trust companies have increased about 150 per cent. Percentages in such cases are sometimes deceptive. The trust companies first began to obtain importance about a decade ago, and it is not surprising that they have gained ground rapidly during the recent period of industrial activity. The real measure of their

progress is afforded by the fact that while the Clearing House banks of New York, with their long-established reputations and great resources, have in five years increased their deposits about $363,000,000, the trust companies of the city have increased theirs by the still larger sum of $455,000,ooo. Throughout the United States the business of the trust companies, although their form of organization is limited to a small number of States, has shown a striking growth. The deposits of all national banks and trust companies reporting to the Comptroller of the Currency appear in the following table:

INDIVIDUAL DEPOSITS IN BANKS OF THE UNITED

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In view of this remarkable exhibit of the growth in the business and resources

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