Current Situation

In business & finance the week was one less of deeds than of talk:

Judge Elbert Henry Gary, at the 31st general meeting of the American Iron & Steel Institute in Manhattan, said: "Opportunities in this country are better than ever before--every man must admit this. Never before in my affiliation with the steel industry has there been a time when governmental administration was honestly, sincerely and actually so much interested in the prosperity of the people of the country."

Melvin Alvah Traylor, President, American Bankers' Association, to Alabama Bankers' Association convention at Birmingham: "In former years when it was difficult for people living in outlying communities to get to larger centres, and many towns and villages in sparsely settled regions had to depend more or less upon their own resources, small and under capitalized banks may have been a necessity. At the present time there is no such excuse. The automobile has made it possible for even distant towns to keep in close touch with larger centres and there is no justification, in my opinion, for any bank having less than $25,000 capital."

Virgil Jordan, chief economist of the National Industrial Council, at its Conference Board meeting in Manhattan: "The business forecaster who attempts to predict the business outlook for the rest of this year and for 1928 is up against it, if he relies upon most of the current and fashionable methods [of prognosticating]. For some reason the old medicine no longer works. . . . There may be a slight further recession in business for a short time, but it is likely to end in a real business boom, rather than in a genuine depression."

M. J. Hickey, secretary of the National Industrial Council, at its Conference Board meeting in Manhattan: "If our leaders of government and the people of the United States really care about the liberties for which our forefathers fought, bled and died; if they want a general restoration of our institutions of law and orderly social progress, they must promptly unite in halting the present ceaseless and unnecessary making of laws by Congress and the state legislatures."