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Tennessee Associations to Organize a League. MOVEMENT is on foot to organize a State League of Building and Loan Associations for Tennessee. A meeting has been called to be held in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 18th for the purpose of perfecting an organization.

W. R. Bringhurst, Jr., Secretary of the Cumberland Building, Loan and Savings Association, of Nashville, writes that it will be the purpose of those fostering the movement to make application to the United States League for membership as soon as the Tennessee League is fully organized.

This is a movement that has been long delayed and should do a great deal toward developing the building and loan interests of Tennessee.

Keeping Money at Home.

Why should the financial institutions of a community such as the banks, overlook the advantage of building and loan associations to the community. The banker sells municipal bonds, government savings certificates and all other kinds of bonds to his constituents. They send the money away to a foreign community for a small fee. Wouldn't it be better if they turned this fund into a local building and loan to loan the money at home, thus building up the community and keeping the money at home in the bank to build business and manufacturing.

If this co-operation could be secured, how much larger the deposits would be, how much the town would be bettered.

I wonder if any of you ever talked this over with your banker to see whether he realizes that your associations are not sending the money away from your community, but loaning it at home. While the banker has been accusing the building and loans of taking their money from them, they overlook the fact that the building and loan money is re-deposited in the bank. It may be that this point covered in your next booklet would awaken the citizens and financial men to the advantage of the building and loan.-J. L. Hersh, in Kansas League Bulletin.

1908, 1909 and 1910 U. S. Proceedings Wanted.

The Congressional Library is missing the following copies of the U. S. League Proceedings: 1908, 1909, and 1910. If you have same in your files, for which you have no more use, kindly forward them to the American Building Association News, No. 15 West Sixth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Residential Building Predominated Last Year.

The total amount of construction contracts let during 1921, as reported by the F. W. Dodge Company, was $2,359,018,000, only eight per cent under the 1920 total. It is doubtful whether any other business fared so well in 1921 as the construction industry as a whole has, even though the volume has been unevenly distributed as to classes of projects and as to locality.

The predominating factor in the year's program was residential building, which amounted to $880,052,000, which was thirty-seven per cent of the 1921 total, and represented an increase of fifty-four per cent over 1920 residential construction. Public works and utilities took second place, amounting to $459,184,000, or nineteen per cent of the year's total. Other important items were: business buildings, $336,920,000, or four per cent; educational buildings, $242,562,000, or ten per cent (this figure representing a very considerable increase in a number of projects and in total value over 1920); and industrial buildings, $173,325,000, or seven per cent of the year's total.

The principal factors favorable to a big construction year are the still unsatisfied demand for buildings of every class and the steadily increasing amount of money available for investment in construction projects. These factors are not uniformly favorable everywhere. Recovery in recent months has been rapid in the East and very slow in the Central West. This unevenness in the rate of recovery may be expected to continue well into 1922. The recovery of general prosperity in the Central West will continue to be slow, and general business conditions in that section will retard speedy revival of construction activity, particularly in agricultural communities.

While it's reasonable to expect increased activity in every class of construction projects, it is probable that residential building will again predominate. Public works, business buildings, and educational buildings, all of which made good records for activity in 1921, may be expected to continue at a satisfactory rate. Even industrial buildings, which special class is likely to be about the last to return to a normal rate of activity, should show an increase over 1921.

President Harding on Home-Making.

In his recent message to Congress President Harding referred to the importance of home-making in the following language:

"Home-making is one of greater benefits which Government can bestow. Measures are pending embodying these sound policies to which we may well adhere. It is easily possible to make available permanent homes which will provide, in turn, for prosperous American families, without injurious competition with established activities, or imposition on wealth already acquired."

Why Return to Normal?

On all sides today we hear the cry, "Let's hurry the return to normalcy." The question is, what do they mean by "normal times." It is generally understood that people want the world to return to pre-war conditions, but why should we go back? This is not the age for returning to any previous condition. It is better that we should go forward now and keep going forward in the same good old way. Let the directors and officers get back of a real "own your home" campaign in each community. Let us all work to reduce the tenant class to proud possessors of their homes.

The next years will be the greatest the building and loan association movement has ever known. There will be greater development, greater efficiency and larger increase in assets than ever before.

The greatest need today is not the return to normal times, but rather for every secretary to face the facts as they are, study the conditions and needs of his community and then fight and keep on fighting, intelligently and conscientiously.

As long as this world has been peopled there have been boosters, knockers and whiners. Let's do less knocking and whining and more boosting, not only for ourselves but for everyone. Business will be as good as we make it.

Above all things strengthen your respective leagues, have your directors attend these meetings. Get them to assist in the great constructive work that is now so essential.

Return to normal times? Never! Let's go forward, now, to a bigger, better and more profitable year.

President Harding On Saving.

Earl R. Obern, of the Noel State Bank, Chicago, has received the following letter from President Harding: "I have for many years been pretty well convinced that saving money is largely a habit, and people who make a good beginning at it presently discover that it is by no means impossible and is altogether a good thing to do. Just at this juncture in the world's and our country's affairs it is certainly one of the most useful contributions that people could possibly make toward putting the world right.

"I do not believe there is any other way to straighten out the tangle of financial and economic concerns, precipitated by the war, except to produce a good deal more than we consume, which means to save, and by our savings to re-establish the world's stores of working capital. I have no more earnest hope than that the public may take this lesson to heart and learn to save as, in view of our great national good fortune, they could be able to do."

Real Estate Mortgages the Best Security.

At the fifteenth annual convention of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents held in New York City last month, Asa S. Wing, president of the Provident Life and Trust Company, told the assembled presidents that real-estate mortgage loans have now far out-distanced railroad securities as the leading investment held by life insurance companies. He stated that real-estate mortgage loans have doubled in ten years, increasing from $1,228,000,000 to $2,468,000,000.

Investments in railroad securities were $1,383,000,000 at the end of 1911, as against $1,793,000,000 at the end of 1920.

Real-estate mortgage loans form more than thirty-two per cent of the total assets of the companies now, while railroad securities, which formed more than thirty-five per cent ten years ago, have dropped to twenty-six per cent. Policy loans of $820,000,000 rank third and United States Government bonds of $772,000,000 are a close fourth, being 11.30 per cent of the assets. Other investments include state, county, and municipal bonds and real estate. The total assets of the companies are in excess of $7,300,000,000.

Referring to the huge increase in real-estate mortgage loans President Wing said much of it had gone to the farmers, but that there is now a discernible trend toward the city again to meet housing requirements. On this point he said:

"For the first time in many years, if not the first time in the history of the country, the total amount of farm loans held by life-insurance companies now exceeds the loans on city property, the proportion being 50.53 per cent loans on farms, as against 49.47 per cent on city property.

"This trend of investments toward the city has been strongly manifested since 1919 and can be shown most clearly by the proportion of new money going into each class of mortgage during the last few years. During 1918 and 1919 91.03 per cent of all the net increase in loans was on farm property and 8.97 per cent on city property. In 1920 the proportion of money invested in farm loans dropped to 63.73 per cent, while the city loans increased to 36.22 per cent."

Missouri League Proceedings.

The proceedings of the twelfth annual convention of the Missouri State League of Building and Loan Associations, held at Hannibal, October 14 and 15, 1921, make up a very interesting volume of seventy closely printed pages of papers and discussions. The successful advertising campaign put on by the Kansas City associations is herein discussed and explained in detail, which might well serve as a guide for associations in other cities.

Insured Savings Accounts.

BY K. V. HAYMAKER, Detroit, Michigan.

The idea of combining life insurance protection with savings accounts is not at all new, since it has been considered and discussed, and to some slight extent experimented with, by building associations and other types of financial institutions, for some years past. Recently, however, there has been quite a revival of interest in the subject, and a number of life insurance companies, and a still larger number of savings institutions of various kinds, have been making a practical application of the idea in their business. After a somewhat thorough study and investigation of a number of the plans now in operation involving the combination of insurance and savings, the facts which have been thus disclosed, and the conclusions arrived at, may be of interest to readers of the AMERICAN BUILDING ASSOCIATION NEWS.

Most forms of life insurance policies embrace two features: 1st, Protection; 2nd, Investment. Term policies and straight life policies may be cited as samples of purely protective policies, without investment features; since the insured cannot usually get any personal return from them. After straight life policies have been carried for some years, they have a slight surrender value, but the attractive feature of both these forms of insurance is the protection which they afford to the beneficiaries selected by the insured and nominated in the policies. Since these forms of policies are protective merely, with practically no promise of return to the insured during his life, they are the cheapest form of policy.

On the other hand, endowment policies, or limited premium payment policies, which promise a definite return to the insured himself, at a time certain, or at an approximate time, are samples of investment insurance combined with protection, and on policies of these types the premiums are much larger, making them far more expensive to carry.

The American public is thoroughly sold on the value and necessity of Protective Insurance. The insurance premiums paid for the Protective feature of the policies, at the rates charged by most of the reputable life insurance companies, and practically all of them are of that class, is money well spent. An increasing number of American business men, however, are beginning to question, whether the additional premiums charged, for the Investment features of life insurance, might not be just as safely and far more profitably invested in other ways. For example: One of the leading life insurance companies will issue a $1,000, twenty-year endowment policy on payment of a semi-annual premium of $26.22. The same company will issue a twentyyear term on payment of an annual premium of $12.64, at the same age.

The twenty-year endowment is an Investment Policy, from which the insured will receive $1,000 at the end of twenty years,