neral terms, a fair interpretation of which permits them to engage
in both commercial and investment banking under certain specified
limitations, of which the most important are the following: they must
not invest in or hold real estate beyond their owns needs for suitable
quarters, or temporarily for the purpose of collecting debts due them;
they must not accept real estate as security for loans; they must not
loan more than ten per cent of their capital and surplus to any one
person or firm; and they must keep reserves to the amount of fifteen
per cent of their deposits, if they belong to the group known as
country banks, and to the amount of twenty-five per cent of their
deposits, if they belong to either the reserve city or the central
reserve city group.

In the case of country banks, at least two-fifths of the required
reserves, and in the case of reserve city banks, at least one-half,
must consist of specified forms of money in their own vaults. The
remainder may be balances payable on demand in approved banks in
reserve or central reserve cities in the case of country banks, and in
the central reserve cities in the case of reserve city banks. In the
case of banks in central reserve cities, the entire reserve prescribed
by law must consist of money in the vaults. These required minimum
reserves must not be infringed upon. When a bank's cash and balances
with its reserve agents fall to the prescribed minimum, discounting
must be stopped under penalty of suspension of privileges and
liquidation by the Comptroller of the Currency.

At five dates each year, selected by the Comptroller of the Currency,
national banks must make detailed reports of their condition on
prescribed blanks and publish abstracts of such reports in local
newspapers. They must also submit to examination by persons appointed
for that purpose by the Comptroller as often as this official may deem
necessary and proper.

National banks have been organized in every state of the Union, and in
Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont they have completely supplanted the
state banks. Elsewhere they exist side by side with state banks and
compete with them. In some states they are more and in others less
numerous than state banks. In the kind of business transacted the only
important difference between the two classes of institutions consists
in the loans on real estate security, which national banks are
prohibited, and state banks allowed, to make. The latte