Banks & Robbers

P: Four men entered Pana, Ill. early one morning last week, ate a good breakfast and then drove on to First National Bank. There they forced the janitor who was washing windows to let them in by a rear door. While one robber directed operations with a submachine gun, another made the assistant cashier open the vault. Having packed $27,600 into two suitcases, the robbers fled. Suspected was Desperado John Dillinger.

P: At the point of a submachine gun three robbers held up Bank of Montgomery, Grant County, La., departed with an undetermined amount of loot. The bank's president swore the leader was John Dillinger's "living image."

P: In the dead of night two robbers broke into Edwardsville State Bank in Wyandotte County, Kans., fell upon the vice president as he entered in the morning, made off with $1,400. While waiting for the time lock to release the vault door, one of the robbers observed: "You know, it's a wonder that Dillinger hasn't visited this joint."

P: Burglars cut the vault doors of Bank of Dudley, Ga., hauled out $2,500.

P: For the fourth time in five years robbers plundered First State Bank of Willis, Tex. They took $300 from the till, $50 from a Negro customer.

P: In an unsuccessful attempt to hold up Farmers Deposit Bank of South Vienna, Ohio, a lone robber mortally shot President Henry Marlin Saylor.

While these crimes were taking place throughout the land last week, the executive council of the American Bankers Association in Hot Springs, Ark. was pondering a report on the subject of bank robberies. Bank clearings in the 21 leading U.S. cities last week were up 82% from last year to the highest level since January 1932, but the week's crop of robberies was nearly normal. An ABA committee reported that in the six months ending Feb. 28 there had been 188 bank hold-ups by daylight, 29 night burglaries--an average of nearly nine per week. But the half-year total was down from 340 to 217. Scrupulously the ABA report cautioned that "there were 3,000 or 4,000 less banks to raid."

Total casualties for the six months were down from 126 to 110. Gun play had taken the lives of three bank employees, two spectators, eight peace officers, 24 bandits. Scores had been wounded. Banks had lost a total of $1,257,700 by armed violence. Most of the robberies were in small towns. The ABA committee recommended modern protective devices, deplored the $20,000,000 annual bill which U.S. banks pay for various kinds of crookery insurance, urged support of the Ashurst bill to control the domestic arms traffic and penalize robbers who make attacks on Federal Reserve members.

Besides its report on bank robberies last week the ABA executive council plumped for extension of the temporary deposit insurance plan, not because ABA was eating last year's hot words but because the temporary plan was less distasteful than the permanent plan. It heard Cleveland Trust's well-publicized Leonard Porter Ayres blame overproduction of banks for the 16,200 closed in the last 13 years; listened to a message from Chairman Leo T. Crowley of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., reminding it that although there had been 60 failures since Jan. 1, not one insured bank had closed;* felt warmly proud when President Francis Marion Law reported that ABA memberships had soared from 9,600 last year to 11.500, "very substantial evidence that we are beginning, at least, to emerge from the depths of Depression."

* But three days later an insured bank did fail -- Pittsburgh's Bank of America Trust Co. with $1,100,000 in deposits. Having discovered irregularities in the books, Pennsylvania banking authorities clapped on withdrawal restrictions, and President William P. Ortale, ill at home, was held for alleged embezzlement of $106,000. Under the temporary insurance plan which protects accounts up to $2,500, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is liable for about $391,000 but it was estimated that its actual loss would not be more than $75,000.

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