farmers, mechanics, and washerwomen. Two facts were established, viz.:
that the Negroes of the South were working; and that they were saving
their earnings. Northern as well as Southern whites were agreeably
surprised.

But bad management doomed the institution to irreparable ruin. The
charter was violated in the establishment of branch banks; "persons
who were never held in bondage and their descendants" were allowed to
deposit funds in the bank; money was loaned upon valueless securities
and meaningless collaterals, and in the fall of 1873, having been kept
open for a long time on money borrowed on collateral securities
belonging to its customers, the bank failed!

During the brief period of its existence about $57,000,000 had been
deposited. The liabilities of the institution at the time of the
failure, as corrected to date, were $3,037,483, of which $73,774.34
were special deposits and preferred claims. The number of open
accounts at the time of the failure were 62,000. The _nominal_ assets
at the time of the failure were $2,693,093.20. And in the almost
interminable list of over-drafts amounting to $55,567.63, there
appeared but one solitary surety!

On the 20th of June, 1874, Congress passed an act permitting the very
men who had destroyed the bank to nominate three Commissioners, who,
upon the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, should wind up the
affairs of this insolvent institution. Section 7 of the Act reads as
follows:

"SEC. 7. That whenever it shall be deemed advisable by the
trustees of said corporation to close up its entire business,
then they shall select three competent men, not connected with
the previous management of the institution and approved by the
Secretary of the Treasury, to be known and styled commissioners,
whose duty it shall be to take charge of all the property and
effects of said Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, close up
the principal and subordinate branches, collect from the branches
all the deposits they have on hand, and proceed to collect all
sums due said company, and dispose of all the property owned by
said company, as speedily as the interests of the corporation
require, and to distribute the proceeds among the creditors pro
rata, according to their respective amounts; they shall make a
pro rata dividend whenever they have funds enough to pay twenty
per centum of the claims of depositor