Our Bank is Now Confident and Guide
Troubled Clients Bring Their Problems to Its Doorstep, And Many Services Are Performed for Them
Only seven years before FDR declared a national bank holiday to prevent a run during the Great Depression, a 1926 New York Times Magazine article declared banks are “now confident” and acting as a “guide” for America.
The journalist Horace W. Foster wrote:
The banks are becoming the cathedrals of today. In another generation, if present development continues, they will assume the position that Rheims, Notre Dame, and Westminster had in years gone by. To what single institution does the intelligent portion of the community turn for advice, financial aid, leadership, social service? To the banks – to the banker in the small town, to the great trust company in the city.
To put it mildly, “present development” did not “continue.” Less than two days after taking office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a nationwide suspension of all banking activity and transactions for an entire week.
As of 2023, only 4.2% of Americans remained unbanked, a record low. That’s only about half the rate from as recently as 2011, when the unbanked rate was 8.2%.
That FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) survey also found only 15.1% “banked” of Americans said the primary way they accessed their account was in-person, rather than mobile or online. In our increasingly digital era, that’s less than half the "primarily in-person” rate from as recently as 2013, when it was 33.3%.
Our Bank is Now Confident and Guide: Troubled Clients Bring Their Problems to Its Doorstep, And Many Services Are Performed for Them
Published: Sunday, January 10, 1926