HIS building is in Marietta Street, near Spring Street, in the City of Atlanta. It has a frontage of about 70 feet, and runs the full depth of the lot. 200 feet, giving approximately 14,000 square feet to the floor. It is three stories high with a basement.

The basement contains the store rooms, locker rooms, and toilet rooms for both men and women employees, the telegraph room, mail room, file room, specie-vault, garage, etc.

The first floor contains the offices for the officials of the bank, with the governor's and secretary's office to the right of the entrance and the chairman of the board, to the left. The main lobby is in the center of the front part of this floor and is two stories high with mezzanine galleries. On each side are the offices of the cashier and assistant cashiers; in the rear of the lobby are the cages for the tellers immediately in front and connected with the main cash

vault. This vault is one of the strongest ever built, being entirely of reinforced concrete with walls, floors and ceilings over two feet thick, in which are embedded heavy railroad rails and reinforcing rods of steel; covering this is a network of lead conduit charged with electricity and connected with the alarms, so that the least interference is immediately detected; in addition to which a complete A. D. T. system of protection is installed throughout the bank. The doors are the heaviest made from special design and have all the modern equipment as to bolts, time-locks, etc.

In the rear of the first floor on the right is the fiscal or bond department, through which all government bond transactions are handled. On the left is the currency department, where all the money is sorted and new bills issued.

On the second floor are the library and attorney's office, bank examiner's office and clerks' galleries around the upper part of the

main lobby. In the rear on the right is the discount department, and on the left the transit department, through which checks of all member banks are cleared.

On the third floor, in front, is the auditors' department; in the center the directors' room and committee rooms. In the rear is the kitchen and large cafeteria, capable of taking care of meals for three or four hundred persons, the employees ranging between these numbers.

The construction of the entire building is modern in every respect, being of reinforced concrete with fire-proof windows and wire glass, marble front and pressed brick sides and rear. The mechanical equipment is especially designed to take care of the needs of such a large important institution. The heating and ventilating systems are as nearly perfect as modern engineers can make them. This is also true of the plumbing, of which there is considerable, and Crane Fixtures were selected for this installation.

There is an electric passenger elevator and the latest electric lighting fixtures made necessary by the immense amount of clerical work done.

The general contractor was the A. J. Krebs Company, of Atlanta; the plumbing, heating and ventilating contractor, Jennings-Gresham Plumbing & Heating Company, of Atlanta; the electrical contractors,

J. M. Clayton and McGaughey Electrical Company; elevators by the Otis Elevator Company; vault by the Mosler Safe Company; marble by the Georgia Marble Company and the Alabama Marble Company; sheet metal by the Dowman-Dozier Manufacturing Company, of Atlanta, Ga.

The building was designed and supervised by A. Ten Eyck Brown, architect, of Atlanta, and this building has been used as a model for other Reserve Banks throughout the country as it was the first built.

Uncle Sam's New Navy

It will probably be interesting to readers of THE VALVE WORLD to learn something about the Navy programme of the United States which at present is the most extensive ever undertaken by any nation.

During the War the shipyards of the United States devoted their efforts entirely to building small naval craft and emergency cargo carrying ships, but since the Armistice has been signed the building programme of the larger naval ships has been taken up, and we are now rapidly completing six battleships of the Tennessee-New Mexico

class.

Electric power will be generated in the form of 3-phase, 60-cycle, 5000 volt alternating current.

The statistics of the new battle cruisers given in the table indicate that these vessels are to be very unusual in many respects, but their most remarkable feature is the enormous power of their turbines-180,000 horsepower, or 160,000 kva.

These figures do not, however, give an adequate conception of the magnitude of this power. Not only is it greater than that of any ship ever designed-for the power of the British cruiser "Hood" is 134,000 hp, and that of the "Leviathan" 90,000 hp, but it is greater than that used by most cities of more than half a million inhabitants. For example, the combined capacity of all of the central station and electric railway power houses of Pittsburgh is less than 150,000 hp; of Baltimore, less than 160,000 hp; and of Philadelphia, about 200,000 hp; There are, in fact, but two or three steam power plants in the world that have greater capacity than the engine rooms of these battle cruisers will have, so that, from the standpoint of power engineering alone, the

How "Stick-to-Itiveness" Wins

Diamonds are chunks of coal that stuck to their

job.

If it has taken millions of years to develop mankind, must we fret if it takes us a few years to rise above the rank and file of mankind?

Must we quit if we don't get there quickly? Note this: There is not one major figure in American financial, industrial or commercial life today under forty. Not one.

And what of the past?

The original J. P. Morgan, though born rich and reared as an international banker, was sixty before he did his greatest work and nearer seventy before Wall Street, in its hour of trouble, acknowledged him as its undisputed leader.

Harriman at fifty was an obscure broker with a penchant for railroading.

Hill's hair was gray before he became Empire Builder of the Northwest.

At fifty Woodrow Wilson was a little-known college professor.

Charles M. Schwab was president of the world's first billion-dollar corporation before he was thirtyfive, lost his steel throne, dropped from the limelight for a decade, but during this time he redoubled his efforts and he has done his greatest work since he crossed the half-century mark. He did not quit. He stuck.

The three bankers who were the most influential in America-James Stillman, Jacob H. Schiff and George F. Baker-averaged seventy years of age when the first two died; while the three leaders of the "younger school"-Henry P. Davison, Frank A. Vanderlip and Otto H. Kahn-have all lived half-a-hundred years or more.

There is not a leading railroad president in the whole land not old enough to be a grandfather. Employers today shun shifters.

There is no market for rolling-stones.

Life is so specialized that jacks-of-all-trades are wanted by none.

To last, a man must stick to his last-he cannot hope to be a good shoemaker today and a capable plumber tomorrow.

The pace today calls for men of red blood, not white livers, men of grit, not grouch.

Stickers, not sticklers, are wanted.

Is it not the literal truth that America, as we know it, owed its discovery by Christopher Columbus to this very virtue of stick-to-itiveness?

Without stick-to-itiveness no man is likely to climb to the top of the ladder-and stick there. -Forbes Magasine.

T

Paper Currency

HE great bulk of the world's business is done today by the effecting of exchanges through the circulating medium of a "paper currency." A paper currency consists simply of written or printed promises to pay on demand a stipulated amount in metallic currency that has been legally declared to be standard by the bank or community or country issuing and guaranteeing the paper currency.

A thoroughly sound paper currency must not be circulated in excess of the total amount of reserved precious metal (adopted as the legal standard medium of exchange) necessary to redeem it, dollar for dollar, on demand. This does not necessarily mean that there shall be no greater amount of circulating paper currency than the actual amount of standard metallic currency stored in bank vaults or state or national treasuries; but that the amount of metallic currency in reserve always must be equal to the meeting of any emergency in the way of demand that the possibilities of exchange may make. For instance, it is not conceivable that every dollar of circulating paper currency should be presented on any one day or at any one hour for redemption in metallic currency. And there are other factors which enter into the complexities of modern business and exchange that govern the safe amount of paper currency that a bank, a community, or a country may issue. These, however, are not essential details of the elementary character of our Chats. The point to be stressed is that a safe paper currency always must be redeemable in full promptly on demand.

Promise to Pay

Paper currency in circulation in the United States today consists of engraved and printed slips of paper of various denominations, such as $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, and so on, and printed and written slips of paper known variously as checks, drafts, bills of exchange, etc. Probably the bulk of the nation's business is

transacted with the latter class of paper currency, so great has grown general confidence in our business methods, the integrity of our business men, and the solidity of our banking institutions.

Every one of these slips of paper, whether guaranteed by the National Government or by the signature of the maker of a check, is a promise to pay, and is accepted in exchange as such on the thoroughly grounded assumption that it may on demand be converted into an equivalent amount in gold, which is the legal standard medium of exchange of the United States, and of practically all of the civilized nations of the world.

Guaranteed Obligations

The dollar bill or the five dollar bill you have in your possession bears on its face some such legend as this: "The United States will pay," or, "Secured by United States certificates of indebtedness, or gold notes, United States Bonds or other securities," or, "The Bank will pay on demand," or, "The United States of America will pay to bearer on demand." Each one of these promises or guarantees indicates to you that for your paper bill there is some place in safe keeping and ready for you on demand an amount of gold equal to the amount stamped or written on your bill.

Paper currency came into being somewhat as follows: Society, having settled on gold and silver as the precious metals most suitable to be used as mediums of exchange, next had to consider means of protecting those metals from loss through theft, fire, abrasion and other accidents and elements. Another problem to be considered was the cost of exchange through the direct exchange of the precious metals for commodities.

As the use of this most productive instrument of exchange increased very greatly the number of exchanges, and thus required more laborers in this department of industry, it was natural that divisions of labor should be introduced in order to use the

instrument, or natural agent, with the greatest degree of success, and also to accomplish, with a given amount of industry, the greatest amount of exchanges.

Banks and Banking

When every person and especially every merchant was compelled to keep on hand a sufficient amount of gold and silver to transact his business, each one naturally had to bear for himself the cost of protecting those metals from loss. He also would require either to carry the metals himself or to hire others to carry it for him in the making of exchanges. Add to this the time required in frequent countings of the coined metals, the wear and tear on the coin, etc., and we may see how naturally men came to evolve better methods of making exchanges with this natural agent.

Instead of every merchant and every person keeping the metals in his own possession, a repository was employed in which, under proper safe-guards, all the standard medium of exchange of a community was stored. Each one despositing such medium in this repository was given a certificate of deposit. How easily, then, the transition was made from going to the depository and removing the actual coin to make payment in an exchange to the using of these certificates of deposit, thus leaving the precious metals practically at all times intact in the repository.

Banks Increase Exchanges

These repositories are now known as banks, and practically all of our business in this day is carried on through the agency of our banks. Our banks, by means of division of labor, diminish the amount of the circulating medium necessary to carry on the exchanges of a country; they greatly diminish the labor of transportation and of counting money in the same place; and almost remove the necessity of transporting it between different places.

We cannot do better here than to quote the definition of a bank as given by one of the leading banking institutions of the country:

"A bank of itself does not create wealth. It is not an industry; it does not carry on production, and it cannot of itself supply wealth to the community. It is a receptacle,

a reservoir of the floating, liquid, wealth of the community. Its function is to aid production and trade by making this floating wealth more available and more useful than it could be without being gathered together.

An Agency of Business

"It is an agency for the more efficient use and handling of the community's wealth, but not for making wealth by any magical method, such as the printing press affords, or by creating deposits through loans. It is important to keep this in mind, because whenever people begin to complain that the banks or the Government should make money "easy," it is time to utter a warning.

"Sound banking requires that somebody shall put a dollar of wealth into the bank for every dollar that the bank loans out, and when we speak of wealth we include the paper representatives of the liquid wealth. that is moving in trade. The wheat, meats, cotton, lumber, coal, and merchandise of all kinds that are being transferred are creating and depleting bank deposits as they move. It is through them that pools of deposits or lending power, are created. When prices rise the deposits are increased and as prices fall they are decreased. These funds are the basis of the banking business. Deposits that arise in this way represent real values which may be loaned and shifted about with safety.

"Remember all the time that if you want the banking business to be kept on a safe basis it must confine itself to funds of this character, received from the public. Whenever the banks begin to create deposits, or money, by manufacturing credit, they are dealing in something unsubstantial, fictitious, and charged with possibilities of mischief."

Our banking business today has been made possible through the adoption of a paper currency. Banks add nothing to the capital of a country, but they are capable of rendering the existing capital much more productive. They increase the productiveness of capital chiefly by the facilities which they afford for the extension (not the creation) of credit.

Credit

Credit has been defined thus by McCulloch: "Credit is the term used to express