clearest I ever heard, and I remember it. And you would do well to remember it, too. And to ponder it! And to act," concluded Mark Adams.
Personal History of a Bank The bank picture and a story appeared in Dallas News, October 13, 1946. R.L. Thornton, president of bank, was born in a half dugout, graduated from the Corn, Cotton and Mule University. He opened a Private bank on $20,000 borrowed capital, at 704 Main Street, Dallas, in 1916. He took in $12,000 deposits the first day. Thirty years later his bank, The National Mercantile Bank & Trust Company, moved into its own 30-story building, which was built during the war when the rest of us could not build a home, at a cost of $5 million. He had climbed 30 stories in thirty years, his assets climbed from $20,000 to $184,000,000 — a gain of 920,000 percent, or an annual growth of 30,666 percent profit a year. And that did not include the millions drained off by means of bond sales, stock sales, dividends, etc., which went into ranches, oilfields, beautiful homes, which did not register as "assets of the bank", and other millions went to pay the expenses of their "in-the-family white trash", who have beaten trails to the four corners of the earth Yellowstone Park, tables at Monte Carlo gondolas in Venice, pyramids of Egypt, hot sands of Miami — all places where international white trash swarm and lounge with billions of American "credit dollars" steaming from their fingers. That story is typical. That is a niche in the "House Banking Built," which Josiah Stamp said OUGHT to be torn down. The man and woman who live without turning their hands to honest toil, who live by their wits, are creatures of banking, their lives of non-toil made possible by these bankers "creating" debt dollars which would buy the products of those who must toil to live.