The Merchants’ Bank Fails to Save Itself
Stockholders fall short of the Comptroller’s demand, leaving Charles H. Baker to wind up the failed Seattle bank.
The effort to wind up the affairs of the Merchants' National Bank without a receiver has failed, and a receiver will be appointed. Comptroller Eckels said today that the effort to obtain a 50 per cent voluntary subscription from the stockholders had failed. Other plans were suggested, but the Comptroller said they were not feasible and that he would have to appoint a receiver. It is probable that Charles H. Baker will get the appointment Wednesday.
W. T. Wickware, cashier of the bank, has been in Washington for several days and has had frequent interviews with the Comptroller. He brought a batch of endorsements for Laramie Mayor, the bank's candidate for receiver. The cashier was asked about the applicants and showed a marvelous lack of knowledge of his fellow townsmen, many of whom, including Baker, he said he had never heard of. The Comptroller asked why he had protested against a man he had never heard of and should call him incompetent. S. C. Rathbone is the latest applicant for the receivership, making twenty-one in all.
“The effort to obtain a 50 per cent voluntary subscription from the stockholders had been a failure.”
When a Seattle bank failed in 1891, stockholders were asked to rescue it and the Comptroller stepped in when they could not. The fight over receivership—and the cashier who claimed not to know local candidates—has a familiar ring in an era of bank failures and regulatory rescue.
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