The excess of imports over exports caused some of the cautious citizens to warn the people to import less and manufacture more. New Orleans continued to be the principal market for the products of Western Pennsylvania, and the opinion prevailed that the southern metropolis was destined to be the greatest city in the world. It was before the day of canals and railways, and when the chief dependence of commerce was upon the waterways. Pittsburg's only access to the great markets of the world was by water via New Orleans, and its importance was therefore apparent to every discerning business man.

The year 1803 found the city sufficiently advanced in a commercial sense to require the aid of a bank. Scarcity of money had previously prevented the establishment of such an institution, and exchanges were effected by local merchants, aided by two or three brokers. Early in the year the directors of the Bank of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia made a formal proposition to the business men of Pittsburg looking to the establishment of a branch in the latter city, and soon afterward the following call for a meeting of the citizens appeared in the Gazette.

"The freeholders and other inhabitants, householders, are hereby requested to attend a meeting of the Corporation at the Court House, on Saturday, the 26th of March, at 10 o'clock P. M., in order to take into consideration a proposition of the directors of the Bank of Pennsylvania for establishing a branch within the borough, providing it is approved by the Corporation. William Christy, Town Clerk.'

In a later issue of the Gazette appeared the following:

"The Directors of the Bank of Pennsylvania have elected the following gentlemen directors of the branch bank about to be established at this place: John Wilkins, Jr., Presley Neville, Oliver Ormsby, James O'Hara, James Berthoud, Ebenezer Deuring, Joseph Barker, George Stevenson, John Woods, Thomas Baird, John Johnson and George Robinson. John Wilkins, Jr., was elected president, and Thomas Wilson, cashier. John Thaw was chosen teller.

January 4, 1804, Cashier Wilson gave notice that the bank would open for business January 9, and that the office hours would be from 9 a. m. to 3 p. m.; that each Thursday would be discount day, but paper for discount must be handed in on Wednes

13

day; that discounts would be made for periods of 60 days upon the personal security of two names, and that drafts on the parent bank would be issued at the rate of 1 per cent.

While the branch of the Philadelphia bank met the wants of the community for the time being, the development of the city made necessary the establishment of a home institution, and in 1810 a movement took definite form in the organization of the Bank of Pittsburg. About a month later, however, the legislature passed an act amending the restrictive act of 1808 in such manner as to make it virtually prohibitive to new institutions, forbidding, under heavy penalties, the incorporated banks organized under the act of 1808, to lend money, to receive deposits, or to do anything which the chartered banks might lawfully do. The Bank of Pittsburg immediately closed its operations, in compliance with the provisions of the act, and in everything submitted to the letter and spirit of the law.

Later in the year 1810 the president and directors memorialized the legislature to grant them a charter, couching their petition in such forcible terms as to make it one of the most noted documents of record in the early history of the commonwealth. It was the death knell to such summary legislation as had for the time kept the Bank of Pittsburg out of the commercial field, and opened the eyes of the people of the State to the commanding position which the new city at the head of the Ohio occupied. Even at that early date the city had a population of 5,000 inhabitants, and was engaged to a greater extent in useful manufactures, according to population, than any town in the United States. The petition plainly showed the urgent necessity for the legislature's fostering care for those industries.

The attention which the memorial attracted proved the beginning of Pittsburg's commercial rise, and made the Bank of Pittsburg the real foundation for the city's prosperity. The bank is still in existence and has a record second to no other financial institution in the United States, being the only bank in the entire country which existed prior to the Civil War without having suspended specie payment for a single day. Its history abounds in events and transactions of the most interesting character.