NORMS AND TRENDS IN EARNING ASSETS 29
changed, the amounts will indicate by years the consistency among
the several districts.
Table 14 is similar to Table 6, which relates to ratios of loans
and discounts to earning assets. The amounts are different, and
the signs throughout are opposite. A negative change in loans and
discounts corresponds to a positive change in investments, and
vice versa. All districts had lower ratios of investments to earning
 assets in 1920 than in 1919; all but one, lower ratios in 1921
than in 1920; and all but one, higher ratios in 1922 than in 1921.
The increase in 1922, as compared with 1921, continues through
1923—all districts moving in a given direction but at different
rates. In 1924, nine of the twelve districts reversed their direction
 of change, eight of them in 1925 changing the downward
trend between 1923 and 1924 to an upward one between 1924 and
1925. The consistency of change in direction does not appear
to be of the random type; it is rather indicative of a control of the
composition of the earning assets common to the banks in the
separate districts. Table 7 (page 19), with the column headings
interchanged, summarizes the uniformity of the direction of
change from year to year.
While Table 8 (page 19), with signs interchanged in both the
stub and the caption, serves to indicate the direction of change

TABLE 13

COMPARATIVE PERCENTAGE AMOUNTS OF DEVIATION FROM DISTRICT
LEVELS AND NET YEAR-TO-YEAR CHANGE IN RATIOS OF
INVESTMENTS TO EARNING ASSETS

DIFFERENCES FROM DISTRICT AVERAGES, 1919-1925

Sign

I

Number of
Cases

2

Percentage
Groups

vVeraces

ud over
~tr - 00
ypnday ~

r
0
art ove

rv

Avera

Average
Percentage

~~

r

17
1.8:

4.09
10.20
17.08

10.08

NET PERCENTAGE
CHANGE FROM
YEAR TO YEAR

~ 6.19

—-J7 12
~ 8 ox
2.06

+ 70
+ 4.06
+ 9.74
+ 5.46