Banks make few investments in real estate or other physical property; it is, in fact, their duty to keep out of ordinary enterprises, but they are forced sometimes to take for unpaid debts things that have been held as security.

Profits on bank notes have at times been the main, almost the sole, motive for starting banks; but that is not the case to-day when the right of issue is so strictly limited.
[Footnote 1: These are classified as follows: _Number_ -- _Per Cent_-- _National charter_: 28.56 National banks 7,404 28.56 _State charter_: 67.52 State banks 14,011 54.05 Loan and trust companies 1,515 5.84 Savings banks 1,978 7.63 _Private_: 3.92 Private banks 1,016 3.92 ------ ------ -- ---- 25,924 100.00 100.00 ] [Footnote 2: Opinion favors prohibiting the use of the word bank to any except regularly incorporated organizations, or at least subjecting private banks to the same supervision as the chartered banks.] [Footnote 3: Not to be confused with a trust in the sense of a monopolistic enterprise, with which it has no connection except by mere verbal accident, through the word trust.] [Footnote 4: See next sec.] [Footnote 5: The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 has given encouragement to this practice by reducing to 5 per cent the reserve required to be kept against time deposits.

See ch.

9, sec.

7.] [Footnote 6: Usually with deduction of interest in advance; a process called discount.