Gradually one comes to understand that the bank is perhaps not the building but the business organization that is there performing these transactions.
In the United States there were in 1913 about 26,000 banks reported.[1] These may be classified first according to the source from which they derive their charters or authority to do a banking business as: national, state, and private.

The last are unchartered and act under the general state laws governing private contracts; in general they are unsupervised.[2] Banks may be classified also according to the two main types of business they perform, as banks for savings and commercial banks.

Most banks do mainly a general commercial business; some are distinctly banks for savings; but in truth this dividing line can be less and less sharply drawn between banks as wholes; rather the distinction must be made between the savings function and the commercial discount function, which are more and more being performed by one and the same bank.

The trust company usually well exemplifies this union of functions.

This will best be explained in connection with the subject to which we now turn, the analysis of the functions which banks perform.
Sec.2.