boys, take this $200,000 in cash just as a present." Now, what do you know about that? We go to Washington with a cheque book, write a cheque to the Reserve Bank for $200,000, and get for that cheque against just ordinary bank deposits we had piled up in Austin, $200,000 in U.S. Bonds, and $200,000 in cash. That certainly doubled our money before we got our doors open to lend our neighbours money. (Note: We used Uncle Sammy instead of the Reserve Bank, because in reality Uncle Sam stands behind them, and is endorser of all that they do.) Well, you look at me and I look at you and both of us are wondering how we are going to keep robbers off our trail as we return to Texas with all of that $200,000 in cash. Uncle Sam, seeing our perplexed expressions, said, "Now, boys, you will not need all that cash to do business on. Since you are a country bank (he knew we were on the wrong side of the river) you will need only $32,000 in the vault just leave all of the cash here in your reserve fund. The Reserve Bank will send you the $32,000 cash when you build your vault and get ready for business, and the $168,000 will be your reserve fund.
So we came back to Austin, and having spent our last dollar buying U.S. Bonds, we had to find a house we could rent to do banking business in. We could not build. Finally we found a fellow who agreed to build us a bank building, just a modest one-story structure, with picture window that lets us look out over rolling bare hills except there were scattering live oaks here and there. It sort of hurt our feelings to be put way out of business section, and behind a new trade centre at that, and on a side street but it didn't matter: we now had that better mouse trap. But finally we moved in, the Reserve Bank sent us the $32,000 to do business on, leaving us the $168,000 in our reserve funds the San Antonio Reserve Bank. Our South Austin friends came in and left deposits with us, even Houston and citizens from other towns came in and left deposits. They wanted to pep us up, you see and that first night our clean, new deposit books shewed that we had on deposit to the credit of our friends $32,000. Well, when we took those deposits we only