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out the fact that our co-operative banks can assist in the movement in which you are interested, the proper housing of our citizens, but I am very sorry to say that our banks as at present operating are annually growing less able to provide the funds needed in the field we now occupy, although the assets of our banks annually show a healthy increase. From a perusal of a comparative exhibit found in our bank commissioner's annual report for 1912, I find that in 1906, of the total amount loaned by our banks, 56.67 per cent of it was loaned at 5 per cent per annum, whereas since the said year there has been a steady increase in the rate to the borrower to such an extent that in the year 1912 the amount loaned at 5 per cent had fallen to 39.28 per cent and it would be much worse than it is but that most of our banks decline to take advantage of the situation.

The co-operative banks of Massachusetts can be a great help to your movement if permitted to do what is now being done safely and successfully in about every other state of our country and in the other Nations, Kingdoms and Empires of the world, where banks of our like are operating for the benefit of the people.

Will close with your permission by offering a few suggestions First. In connection with our banks there might be established a savings department similar to that in connection with trust companies, except that the funds deposited in the said department shall be used only for dwelling house loans and that no loan shall exceed $5,000.00, and that a monthly payment similar to what is now required shall be made.

Second. Allow our banks to borrow upon its bonds in multiples as small as $10.00, the bonds to be practically guaranteed by our commonwealth because of its careful supervision of the security, etc., upon which the banks loan the funds so required. This would assure money at the lowest possible rate, thereby making it easier for the persons we desire to help both in supply and rate of interest.

Third. Provide that an easier monthly payment on account of principal may be made and that the said payment may be eliminated entirely, for a time, under stress of certain conditions, when they can be, equitably.

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Fourth. Establish a board of practical experts, whose services should be available at no expense by bodies of our citizens desiring to purchase tracts of land upon which they intend to build their homes, so as to enable them to build them at as near as possible to what we would call the cost to the builder who builds to sell. This should enable the banks to loan upon houses built under these conditions, if not of too expensive a character, up to 90 per cent of their cost.

FIVE per cent interest will cause money to double in fourteen years. It takes eighteen years to double itself at four per cent.

The American Home, the Safeguard of American Liberties.

Address of MR. CHARLES EUGENE CLARK before the Quarterly Meeting of the Hamilton County League.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:

On behalf of the United States and the Kentucky State Leagues of Local Building Associations, I most heartily thank you for the privilege of greeting you, at this, your quarterly meeting, when, as the representatives of your many local associations, you have come together in convention, to perpetuate your organization and to counsel with one another, concerning its general welfare.

We only voice the universal hope, that this, your meeting, shall be a most pleasant and profitable one, as co-workers in a common cause, you meet to celebrate the day, with good-fellowship and good cheer, note the progress that has been made during the past year, and mutually encourage the working, saving cohorts of your citizenry, who, through the local building associations of Hamilton County, are endeavoring to snugly lay away a moiety of the wages of their toil, and thus lay a secure foundation for the American Home, the safeguard of American liberties.

These gatherings conduce to keep alive the spirit of your organization. They afford one and all the means of a closer acquaintance. They permit of the timely discussion of those questions that are germane to your interests, and create that bond that cements individuals and organizations, working in a common cause, and knit together communities and foster that spirit of good-fellowship among men that leads to and makes for the common weal.

Your institutions encourage to a superlative degree, thrift, economy and home building among the masses, and upon which laudable purposes are founded, in no small degree, the prosperity, happiness and contentment of our common country.

For your efforts are entering more largely each year into the economic lives and conditions of the people, substantially contributing to their social and economic betterment and material advance

ment.

"For tho on hamely fare they dine,

Wear hodden gray and a' that,

Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine,
(You teach) A man's a man, for a' that."

Under the wise administrations of their officers, your local associations have afforded their respective shareholders a profitable place for investment for their periodic savings, which have been handled without loss or scandal, to the advantage of the depositor and borrower, resulting in the establishment of American Homes and the betterment of the commonwealth.

Judged by the supreme tests of its objects and being, the degree with which it has served the interests committed to its care and charge, your associations are an unqualified success; for you have served both the individual and the state most worthily and loyally, in the manner of money saving and home building, and

you have succeeded in making your very existence a most potent necessity to the general welfare.

Together with your kindred associations throughout the state, you have encouraged and enabled your members to save more than two hundred and eighteen millions of dollars, which mighty sum has been crystalized into thousands of happy, congenial homes, scattered across the fair face of your great commonwealth, and you have enabled the State of Ohio to take the front rank in the building association movement of our common country, and to write a high water line in its building association annals.

Your efforts have redounded in innumerable new, happy homes and in a more prosperous and intelligent citizenship. They have made for civic greatness, and have largely enabled your people to take an advanced position among the cities and communities of the land, and to fulfill to a large degree the purposes for which God hath fashioned them.

You have rendered to your fellow-man and your state a most meritorious service. You have enriched your communities, your neighbor, your state and yourself. Your community has waxed in increased wealth and population, your neighbor in an advanced and bettered circumstances, your state in a larger and broader citizenship, yourself in a duty well done, and a character enriched and ripened to a larger human service.

Your efforts have resulted in educating the people in that greatest philanthropy, that of learning them how to best and nobly help themselves. It has resulted in better social, industrial, economic and moral conditions, and in a broader patriotism among the masses of your people; all of which have made possible the establishment in your midst, of American Homes, the safeguard of American Liberties. For you have enabled many thousands to sooner "Weens and wife, to build a happy fireside clime, the true pathos and sublime of human life."

My friends, Homes were ever a necessity. The birds of the air have their nests; the beasts of the forests and fields their lairs; the wolves and bears their dens, and men their habitations, which, according to their civilization, range from the rude wigwams and igloos of the Indian and the Esquimaux, the dug-outs, shacks and log cabins of the pioneers, to the comfortable homes of the more refined and civilized races. For thus has man in all ages, ever endeavored to rear super-structures of greater or lesser magnitude, to serve his needs according to his state of life; the uncivilized and nomadic tribes living in tents which they can fold, and steal away with the coming of the dawn, while the settled peoples with fixed habitations, build more substantial structures and thus establish responsible and settled governments and commonwealths.

Fate and time have dealt with each according to its purpose and mission, as it has served the more vital and necessary uses of mankind.

The tower of Babel, typifying the pride and ambition of men, has long since crumbled into dust, and is now a nameless and for

gotten mound. The walls and hanging gardens of Babylon are now merely a tradition, their very site being unknown. The once glorious Parthenon, the very zenith of architecture, as it stood in simplicity, beauty and grandeur on the Acropolis of Athens, is now a mere fragment of Greek civilization and culture. The halls of Nebuchadnezzer and the palaces of the Cæsars are fleeting memories; their bastions and foundations having long since become one with the crust of earth above which they once proudly towered; while the humble homes of the peasant masses of every clime have ever continued to be, or have been reproduced from age to age, answering to the civilization of each succeeding generation and dynasty, dotting the landscapes of plain, valley, hill and mountain, as the races have spread over and occupied the world; and between whose sheltering and hospitable walls, and beneath whose hallowed. roofs their occupants reared their families, and in these domestic retreats learned to forget, in the midst of homely domestic joys, "the grayness and misery of every day life."

As we look over the history of the human race and its social and economic conditions, it is a far cry from the cave dwellings of our ancestors, in the German forests, where their habitations and lives were beset 'round about with most arduous conditions, on down through the medieval life of Europe, to the colonial life and rude log cabins of our American pioneers, with their limited conveniences and whose occupants lived most primitive lives, ever subject to attack and murder by the hostile Indian tribes, who roamed through our primeval forests, burning and scalping the early settlers, whose only protection was the rude log cabin, a possible stockade, and the ever-ready rifle, to the snug homes of our generation, with all their conveniences of modern life. From these arduous conditions have sprung that liberty loving people, and that civilization of which we are so proud and which is so great a factor in the world today, and whose cradle is the American Home, the safeguard of American Liberties.

The early pioneers of every national stock who came to our shores, and their descendants, as well as those who cast their fortunes with us at a later day, have topped the mountains, peopled the valleys, cut down and cleared the trackless, gloomy forests, and spread over the ever-widening, limitless prairies, dotting them with habitations, hamlets, towns and cities; have driven out and destroyed the pitiless red skins, as well as the wild beasts that peopled and beset the land, until now, our country is covered with the urban and rural homes, extending across the land from sea to sea, of a dominant, virile race.

Such heroic figures as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Wetzel, Lewis, Houston, Andy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, Sevier, James Robertson, Hardin, Scott, "Old Tippecanoe," Generals Wayne, Harrison, St. Clair and Rufus Putnam, and the later, but mighty Abraham Lincoln, are all sprung from the loins of our colonial forefathers,

and have carved and blazed the way for the civilization that has made possible the mightiest republic that has claimed the allegiance of men, that has ever existed on this earth, and whose foundation has ever been, and is The American Home.

For these heroes and many other forgotten worthies, struggled, lived and died to establish the American Home. And we are the heirs of the fruits of their countless sacrifices, and the fortunate possessors of the land and liberties for which they struggled and died.

From these patriotic forefathers we have learned our lesson of patriotism that should ever inspire us, to ever protect and multiply the American Homes which they established, and the government which they founded, as the safeguards of our American Liberties.

The rude pioneers and the generations who immediately followed them, earnestly wrought and builded, and have left us as their successors. Their lives, their sacrifices and their deeds have been woven into the warp and woof of our country's history. And the homes which they left have been the inspiration of their descendants, and the cradles wherein have been rocked the defenders of the liberties of our common country.

For these American homes and their traditions were fought the battles of the Revolution, the many indian wars, the war of 1812, the Mexican war, and lastly the great Civil war, which latter, for four full years threatened our very existence as a nation, rent asunder our land, from the lakes to the gulf and from ocean to ocean, and in which struggle countless battles were fought, wherein more than two million men were engaged, brother striving with brother, citizen with citizen, each for the right as he saw it; wherein countless treasure was expended, and tens of thousands of homes made desolate, while countless graves dotted the land throughout its length and breadth. And yet the American Home, with its hallowed traditions, with its sacred memories of father and mother, sister and brother, and its various scenes of domesticity and remembrance of loved ones, of their and our lives and sacrifices therein, as well as its many happy memories, and all that it and they stand for, came out triumphant, and have survived the vicissitudes of time and war.

The ravages of the Civil war, as well as the war whoop of the indians have long since been forgotten; new generations have been born in the half century that has passed since the thunder of battle has died away among the hills and fields of carnage, dyed with patriot's blood, as well as those of the pioneers, have brought forth abundantly of the harvests of peace, to bless and sustain a reunited country.

In the tapestry of our national life as it has grown in the loom of time, depicting therein the events of our country's history, have been woven imperishably, the log cabins of the pioneers, our early struggles, our battles and our victories, as we marched on

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