The Freedmen's Savings Bank

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 175265076X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-129631

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fleming, Walter Lynwood http://d-nb.info/gnd/120660560X

Title:: The Freedmen's Savings Bank

Place of publication:: Chapel Hill

Publisher:: Univ. of North Carolina Press

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: x, 170 S.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VI. The administration of Frederick Douglass. The collapse of the bank

Collection:: Economics Books

92 THE FREEDMEN’S SAVINGS BANK Not to make too long a story, I was, in six weeks after my election as president of this bank, convinced that it was no longer a safe custodian of the hard earnings of my confiding people. This conclusion once reached, I could not hesitate as to my duty in the premises, and this was, to save as much as possible of the assets held by the bank for the benefit of the depositors; and to pre- vent their being further squandered in keeping up appear- ances, and in paying the salaries of myself and other officers in the bank. Fortunately, Congress, from which we held our charter, was then in session, and its com- mittees on finance were in daily session. I felt it my duty to make known as speedily as possible to Hon. John Sherman, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, and to Senator Scott of Pennsylvania, also of the same committee, that I regarded the institution as insolvent and irrecoverable, and that I could no longer ask my people to deposit money in it. This representation to the finance committee subjected me to very bitter opposition on the part of the officers of the bank. Its actuary, Mr. Stickney, immediately summoned some of its trustees, a dozen or so of them, to go before the [Senate] finance committee and make a counter statement to that made by me; and this they did. Some of them who had assisted me by giving me facts showing the insolvency of the bank, now made haste to contradict that conclusion and to assure the committee that it was, if allowed to go on, abundantly able to weather the financial storm and pay dollar for dollar to its depositors. I was not exactly thunderstruck, but I was much amazed by the contradiction. I, however, adhered to my statement that the bank ought to stop. The finance com- mittee substantially agreed with me and in a few weeks so legislated, by appointing three commissioners to take charge of its affairs, as to bring this imposing banking business to a close. This is a fair and unvarnished narration of my connec- tion with the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, otherwise known as the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, a con- nection which has brought upon my head an amount of

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