﻿THE PRESENT

61

Of the certificates acquired by the banks, much
the largest quota has been for their own account,
only a minor part being apparently taken in behalf
of customers. This applies to the loan anticipation
certificates; with respect to the tax anticipation is-
sues the conditions have probably been the reverse.
No precise tabulations are available as to the sev-
eral amounts of the loan anticipation certificates
taken and held by the banks as compared with those
taken and held by investors. It is possible, how-
ever, to form some opinion as to this from the
condition of the national banks on the several
“call” dates; from the condition of “member
banks in leading cities ” reporting weekly after De-
cember 7, 1917, to the Federal Reserve Board; and
from the condition of member banks other than
national banks on December 31, 1917, similarly re-
ported. A somewhat involved and necessarily free
computation from such data — attempted by the
present writer and elsewhere set forth in detail 39 —
leads to the highly tentative conclusion that of the
certificate issues prior to January 1, 1918, the banks
took for their own account slightly less than seven-
eighths and that of the issues emitted thereafter
up to April 19, 1918 when large amounts of tax an-
ticipation certificates had been sold “ over the
counter ” and when progress had been made in se-
curing a wider distribution and absorption of the
loan anticipation issues — the banks took something
more than three-fifths.40

89 “ Holdings by the Banks of Treasury Certificates ” in Fed-
eral Reserve Bulletin, September, 191B, pp. 845-7.

40 Some modification of these proportions is suggested by