The combined deposits of the Moscow banks for the year ending December 29, 1922, show a net increase over the deposits on December 31, 1921, of $131,000. The figures for the end against $2,460,000 for 1921.

The gain in deposits, accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the loans and discounts to the amount. This has had the benefit of increasing the reserve.

From the bankers' standpoint, the year has, despite its inadvertencies, demonstrated that the country banks, business interests generally, and farmers have passed through the financial crisis and are emerging slowly but surely on a solid basis that will ultimately prove highly beneficial.

They are proven to speak conservatively about the outlook for the year, although they are generally agreed that it appears to be better than any since the war depression.

As J. S. Heckathorn, of the First National bank succinctly put it: "From a national standpoint, the period of surfeited markets has practically passed and the demand has reached the place where the output is rapidly being brought up to normal in order to supply the market. For instance, labor has about reached the bottom in wage reduction and slightly on the advance upward. The steel mills are today working at 70 to 80 percent of their capacity and other industries are in similar condition."

Moscow and territory has come through the post-war deflation of  In the midst of the chaos, the banks have been able to avoid disaster and the farmers generally are cared for so far as the 1923 crop is concerned. 