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The Concentration of Banking Power in Nevada: An Historical Analysis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

F. W. Barsalou
F. W. Barsalou
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Business Administration at University of Notre Dame
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Abstract

Nevada commercial banking has, from the start, been successively dominated by three organizations. The fact that these organizations rose to power under differing circumstances and by differing means suggests how deep-rooted and long-lived the propensity toward, economic concentration in some environments may be. In such environments the manner in which quasi-monopolistic powers are exercised has real cogency. Under two of the three historical situations studied, service to the consumer has not been noticeably different from that provided in more competitive banking areas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 1955 , pp. 350 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1955

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References

2 U. S. Treasury Department, Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States for the Year 1880 (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1891), p. 592Google Scholar.

3 Fulton, R. L., Nevada's Natural and Industrial Resources (a pamphlet published by the State of Nevada Printing Office, 1904), p. 4Google Scholar.

4 Glasscock, C. B., Big Bonanza: The Story of the Comstock Lode (Portland, 1931), p. 147Google Scholar.

5 Ibid.

6 Taken from material dictated by F. L. Lipman, late chairman of the board of directors, Wells Fargo and Union Trust Company. This information was furnished the writer by Mr. T. Simpson, historian of the Wells Fargo Bank History Room, 18 Feb. 1953.

7 Wren, Thomas, A History of the State of Nevada: Its Resources and People (New York, 1904), pp. 548–49Google Scholar.

8 Lord, Eliot, Comstock Mining and Miners, Monograph of the United States; Geological Survey (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1883), p. 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Tilton, C. G., William Chapman Ralston: Courageous Builder (Boston, 1935), p. 94Google Scholar.

10 Lyman, George D., Ralston's Ring (New York, 1937), p. 42Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 32–33.

12 Ibid., p. 34.

13 Ibid., pp. 34–35.

14 Drury, E. B., An Editor on the Comstock Lode (Palo Alto, California, 1948), p. 14Google Scholar.

15 Lewis, Oscar, Silver Kings (New York, 1947), pp. 38–39Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 40.

17 Lyman, Ralston's Ring, p. 54.

18 Precise statistical and financial data concerning the dominance of the Bank of California is not available. These data were apparently destroyed in fires occurring in Virginia City in the years 1863 and 1873, or in the great San Francisco fire of 1906.

19 Lord, Comstock Mining, pp. 311–14.

20 Lyman, Rahton's Ring, p. 251.

21 Tilton, William Chapman Ralston, p. 338.

22 Ibid., pp. 344–45.

23 An article in the Virginia Evening Chronicle, 13 Feb. 1877, cited by Shinn, C. H., The Story of the Mine: As Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada (New York, 1901), p, 212Google Scholar.

24 Glasscock, Big Bonanza, p. 314.

25 Information obtained from Mr. George W. Wingfield in a personal interview, Reno, Nevada, 7 Nov. 1952. It is interesting to note that, according to Mr. Wingfield, bankers in this entire new mining area did not invest their funds directly into mining shares as had been the practice with bankers on the Cornstock Lode.

26 Ibid.

27 U. S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1932), III, Part 2, 147–48Google Scholar.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Appendix to Journals of Senate and Assembly, 1935, “Report of the State Superintendent of Banks” (Carson City, Nevada, 1935), I, 2–3.

31 A news item in the Reno Evening Gazette, 13 March 1933.

32 Ibid.

33 A news item in the Reno Evening Gazette, 28 Feb. 1934.

34 Ibid.

35 U. S. Bureau of the Census, U. S. Census of Population: 1950. Vol. I, Number of Inhabitants, Chapter 28: Nevada (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1951).

36 State of Nevada Employment Security Department, Unemployment Compensation Benefit Financing (Carson City, Nevada, 1953), p. 38Google Scholar, as cited from the U. S. Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business, Aug., 1952, p. 16.

37 U. S. Bureau of the Census, U. S. Census of Population: 1950, Vol. II, Characteristics of Population, Part 28, Nevada, Chapter B (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1952), pp. 11, 32.

38 Derived from Individual Statements of Condition of National Banks for the year 1950 as compiled by the Comptroller of the Currency (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office), p. 298.

39 A personal interview with Grant L. Robinson, Superintendent of Banks, State of Nevada, on 17 Sept. 1953.