XI 
SERIES CORRELATED WITH GROSS EARNINGS 
CuArTER V was concerned with the norms and trends of gross 
earnings as percentages of earning assets, the discussion relating 
in the main to the size of such ratios for the member banks in 
the different Federal Reserve districts, their characteristic devia- 
tions from district and country levels, and their year-to-year 
changes from 1919 to 1925. In Chapters IX and X, the net 
amounts of dispersion and of year-to-year changes in gross earn- 
ings were discussed in relation to variable amounts of and changes 
in the earning assets and deposits of member banks by districts. 
That is, in the latter chapters, attention was directed to the nature 
of the association of variable ratios of earning assets and of 
deposits, with variable ratios of gross earnings, the latter being 
only one of a number of series bearing functional relations to 
such amounts. 
In the present chapter, the study of gross earnings is different. 
Interest now relates to the net amounts of dispersion and of 
change in various series of bank data associated with amounts 
of dispersion and of change, respectively, in gross earnings. What 
are wanted are measures of bank activity for series paired with 
variable amounts of gross earnings. Specifically, and for one 
series, for instance, our inquiries are of the following nature: If 
ratios of gross earnings to earning assets of banks in given dis- 
tricts and years are above their district levels, are ratios of loans 
and discounts to earning assets of the banks in the same districts 
above or below their district levels? Contrariwise, if they are 
below these standards, are ratios of loans and discounts, on the 
average, below their standard levels? Moreover, do the same 
or different relations obtain when the yearly deviations from the 
country’s averages for the respective series are correlated? In 
addition, are year-to-year changes in gross earnings ratios ac- 
companied by similar or by different net year-to-year changes in 
ratios of loans and discounts to earning assets? In general, what 
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