The Collapse of the Merchants' National Bank
Tacoma’s banking elite face a ruinous assessment as the city’s failed financial institutions attempt to settle their debts.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A call has been made by Receiver Robert Wingate of the Merchants' National Bank for the payment in cash of the par value of the $250,000 capital stock of the bank. Since the call has been made, superstitious persons have placed emphasis upon the fact that there are thirteen stockholders. The bulk of the stock is held in this city, and the principal holders include ex-president Walter J. Thompson, president Nelson Bennett, and others. Nearly all of the stockholders will be unable to pay up immediately. Those who cannot will have to be sued and judgment taken against their property. Some officers have already surrendered everything they possess; notably, cashier Samuel Collyer mortgaged everything to meet his obligations to the bank, even turning over a fifty-nine-acre tract he had initially forgotten. Ex-President Thompson has turned in his elegant home on Division Avenue and removed to a small house on Tacoma Avenue. While the call is made to secure depositors, it is feared that after the final settlement, there will be little left.
“Very little cash can be raised now on what a few months ago was gilt-edge property.”
Bank failures were a common feature of the 1893 depression, which paralyzed Tacoma and Seattle. Just as today's housing and financial crises often see elites shielded while depositors suffer, the 1890s saw a frantic scramble to seize personal assets—homes on Division Avenue—to cover the hollowed-out balance sheets of the city's banking pioneers.
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