Population and Bank Support

In their 1977 paper, Hill et al. The Kirtland Economy Revisited (BYU Studies Vol 17, 4, Article 2) argued that the idea of founding a bank such as the Kirtland Safety Society was an appropriate idea based on the size of Kirtland and the number of other banks in existence in other communities.

Kirtland at this time was one of the larger communities in northern Ohio---a number of smaller communities already possessed banks. Judging from the successful experience of other banks in Ohio, one with as little as $20,000.-- in paid-up capital, Kirtland probably could have supported a modest bank. (433)

In a footnote they go on to enumerate some of the locales with banks that Hill et al had in mind.

... smaller banks in northern Ohio included Warren (3), Ravenna (2), Canton (2), Salem, Youngtown, Elysia, Ashtabula, and Cuyahoga Falls. Cleveland, which had perhaps twice as many people [as Kirtland, RCK] had eleven [sic RCK] banks. (433 Fn 61)

In my dissertation,  where I discuss this argument (246), I argued that this exposition was misleading on multiple grounds. But in order to fully counter the claim by Hill et al, one needs to first explicate the argument structure. And in order to explicate the argument structure, we need to make clear that this argument is trying to support the larger notion that the creation of a bank, as endeavored by the Church leadership in 1836 was a reasonable thing to undertake and had all of the appearances of success on its side. 

So the argument structure goes something like this:

• Warren had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Warren had three banks.
• Raven had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Warren had two banks.
• Canton had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Canton had two banks.
• Salem (Ohio) had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Salem had one bank.
• Elysia had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Elysia had one bank.
• Ashtabula had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Ashtabula had one bank.
• Cuyahoga Falls had a smaller population than Kirtland.
• Cuyahoga Falls had one bank.

The inductive leap of this assumption then is that towns with smaller populations than Kirtland had between one and three successful banks in 1836. We will call this argument Min1-3

(Note: The bank of West Union, which is the one of $20,000 capitalization, is not in this list. Perhaps it was not possible to arrive at population data for West Union?)

The argument in the case of Cleveland goes in the other direction.

• Cleveland had double the population of Kirtland.
• Cleveland had twelve banks.

The inductive leap here is that Kirtland should be able to support six successful banks. We will call this argument Max6.

Combining these two inductive leaps Min1-3 and Max6, we can now create another inductive leap, to wit:

• Kirtland's population sized should have supported at least one to three banks (Min1-3) and possible as many as six banks (Max6).

We will call this argument Kirtland-1-3-6. 

Hill et al are arguing that the Church leadership made this same sequence of inductive leaps. They have no documentary proof for this, but it is a reasonable imposition: the members of the Church leadership were well connected with political leaders and the legislature; furthermore, they had taken out loans before and engaged in real estate speculation, a task that required banking connections during the boom times of the federal land sales [RCK15, 248f]. Assuming Kirtland-1-3-6 and the absence of any banks in Kirtland in 1836, at all, it was a reasonable idea to found one and to expect it to succeed.

The first problem is that the argument is prefixed by the assumption that Hill et al interpreted the data given in Coover correctly. Unfortunately, as I argued in my dissertation [RCK15, 247], that is not the case. Coover's list gives all the banks known for Ohio between 1803 and 1866, not just the banks operating in 1836 time. In fact, since Coover was a collector of banknotes, all that can be said is that at some point someone issued a note with the name of a bank located in one of these cities (and some people made notes for non-existent banks, as Coover pointed out). 

As I pointed out in my dissertation [RCK15, 247], the following banks have to be removed from the list, because we know nothing about when and how successfully they operated:

• Two of the three banks in Warren.
• Both banks in Ravenna.
• One of the banks in Canton.
• The bank in Salem.
• The bank in Youngstown.
• The bank in Elysia.
• The bank in Ashtabula.
• The bank in Cuyahoga Falls.
• Ten of the twelve banks in Cleveland.

In terms of inductive evidence that is a slaughter. 

But there are further problems. There are two key unstated assumptions in this argument:

1. Population size is a good predictor for bank success.
2. Past success is a good predictor for future success.

The first is wrong on the observation, as spelled out in my dissertation, that a lot of the money in Ohio banking was from out-of-state, both financiers of the East Coast [RCK15, 244] as well as Europeans doing import/export business with the United States. In the 1830s, the United States was effectively a third-world country, running a huge trade deficit on its import of goods and export of raw and somewhat processed materials. Because these problems were common to all of the frontier states, the situation was the same in Michigan for example.

The second one seems like a reasonable slogan, but one could only have agreed to that assumption with respect to a bank if one was ignorant of the then-brewing storm regarding small bills in general (New Jersey and Maine in 1835 forbidding small bills, Virginia & Maryland & Pennsylvania purging small bills from their monetary system at the same time). Furthermore, the no-bank Democrats had just won dominance in the legislature of Ohio, they had been cool on charters for bank for a while now, and they had passed no charters in 1836 by the summer, pointing to the unused potential for capitalization in the existing charters [RCK15,234f]. Ohio was also pressuring its bank during the spring of 1836 with threats of taxation should they not strive to remove the small bills from circulation, with all $3 bills phased out by July 4, 1836. 

Perhaps even more importantly, President Andrew Jackson on July 11, 1836 had issued his famous specie circular via the Treasury, which eliminated local banknotes as method of payment for purchasing federal lands and insisted on hard specie. Professional cashiers left the frontier banks after this circular, unless their fianciers promised additional monetary support, as Henry Dwight of Massachusetts did to H.K. Sanger, who was cashier at the Bank of Michigan [RCK15,244].

Post Scriptum

It is not entirely clear when the Church leadership decided to go ahead with the plan for the Kirtland Safety Society. Oliver Cowdery was already traveling to New York to inquire into credit for printing plates in August of 1836. The revelation promising resolution to the financial plights (v5) that is now Doctrines & Covenants 111 was given in Salem, Massachusetts, August 6th, 1836. The letter that reports the decision was printed in the Messenger & Advocate in September 1836.  

Points that I did not make clear with reference to this argument in my dissertation include that the Kirtland Safety Society was anything but modest [RCK15, 250], and the number of Cleveland banks in the research by Coover on Ohio Banking Institutions from 1913, on which the observations were based, is twelve not eleven.

Argument Structures around the Kirtland Safety Society

While historians want to be both educated and corrected by their sources, it is often difficult to pin down that that exactly means. In the following, I want to look at a few examples of how this plays out in the case of the economic history of the Kirtland Safety Society (this is Chapter 10 in my dissertation).

The backbone of course is the chronology. Many narratives already fall apart due to not aligning with the basic chronology of the matter. Of course the selection of what elements to include in the chronology brings us back to the problem of enplotment.

It is important to realize that a chronology is not a sequence of dates, but a sequence of dated events. The distinction is crucial, because dates are just chronometric units, while events have actors and properties and are enmeshed in a event sequence, as well as a geometric positioning. The chronometric units have a canonical order, but it is independent of all semantic contents---which is precisely what makes them units.

Perhaps it is best to first to tease apart the pieces that can go into a historical argument. For an intentional action, we have to presuppose some kind of script, that is, a codification of the "usual" way to do this. This would be the usual way from the point of view of the contemporaries, of course, not from the point of view of the historian. 

The "usual way" is typically distilled in some form from another event that has a similar structure. As Eduard Meyer pointed out (1912) [cited in the dissertation], it is this compare-and-contrast operation that is at the root of the historical research effort for distinguishing the common from the unusual. In the Kirtland case, I used the Owl Creek Bank, which did occur in Ohio about two decades before the Mormon arrival, as well as the Old Bank of Michigan, in which Joseph Smith~Jr's uncle Stephen Mack had participated. In the end it was the cross-comparison between these three instances that provided the fodder for the historical reconstruction.

These three elements were underpinned on the one hand by a history of banking in Ohio, mainly a sequence of state legislature actions and bank foundations (which had to be chartered by the legislature), and a history of the more global economic settings both in Ohio proper and in the US. This was the place for wealthy East Coast magnates and European importers, mainly from England, that had a strong influence on the money supply. This was also the place for Jacksonian interventionism at the national level and the ins and outs of the federal land sale that had such an impact on the monetary supply. All of these lines had their own event sequence with its own "arc" so to speak, mostly expressed as supporting or blocking specific aspirations on the legislative side and injecting or removing money on the financiers' side. 

The final element was the chronology of the creation and dissolution of the Kirtland safety (anti-)banking society itself. The comparison with the other banking charters in Ohio as well as with the Owl Creek Bank highlighted the inversion of the order of steps (charter last) as well as the enormous leverage that had been prototypical of other bank failures in the past and would eventually be outlawed in 1839 by the legislature, requiring 1:3 at the most.

For all of these elements, the observation of the overdetermined asymmetry of causation was in effect. For example, only a small fraction of the notes issued by the Kirtland society survived, supporting reconstructive efforts such as simulations how many bills of which type might have been issued. Also, the stock subscription book survived, allowing to determine which families of the Mormon elite had taken out the most stock and subscribed how much of their money. Some newspaper editorials and similar statements survived, but many other actions and their direct and indirect effects remain inaccessible, lost to time.

Some Birthday Stories

Consider this story template to generate yes/no questions:

On May 12, [2020//1930/1890], [Emma/Charles] celebrated their [10th/20th/40th/80th] birthday in London. When their sibling [Charles/Emma] ate the [cake/pony/Faberge egg/iPhone], the birthday child cried. Does that surprise you?

Stories are surprising when the mix of ingredients does not go together. Some of these incongruencies would be temporal: An iPhone in 1930 (or a dodo bird at any of the offered points in time, having become extinct in the 16th century already). 

Some of these incongruencies would be structural: eating a pony or a Faberge egg is hard work and could not be accomplished quickly. 

Some of these would be social conventions surrounding emotions: a 40-year old man in 1890 London, that is Victorian society, would be expected not to cry over the loss of a birthday present, but a 40-year old woman may well be expected to. 

Some of these might be unusual but acceptable: though a Faberge egg cannot be eaten (despite what it name seems to imply to a noun tagger), it is also an odd present for a 10-year old (possibly excepting upper aristocracy). Eventually, as the age of the celebrated person increases, the presence of a sibling itself becomes unlikely without additional information.

Meandering and the Asymmetry of Overdetermination

The meandering nature of historiographical reconstruction has occurred to anyone who has worked in that field at all. One starts out at a general topic, such as the sources of a historical painting or the origins of Mendelian experimentation, and finds oneself, a couple of units of effort later, in the middle of contemplating the household receipts and textual editions (not to mention X-rays of the painting under consideration) or computing the total number of pea plants that the Moravian monetary garden (plus glass house) might have held or the names and origin of Mendel's four assistants (mostly lay brothers).

How did one get there?

Perhaps the most straightforward suggestion is afforded by David Lewis and his observation on the asymmetry of overdetermination of actual worlds (1973). The observation here is the plurality of traces that causal events leave and the point is to allow the philosopher by comparison to establish the causal relationship with respect to the effects. 

At issue is not the correctness of Lewis' observation per se but the proposal that actions in the real world that are causal leave a plurality of traces that extend into the historical record in a bewildering variety of ways. (The image of ripples on a pond is usually exercised at this point in the discussion.) All the same, time is the great destroyer and as the spans increase and other ripples chase across the pond, the traces become effaced. The artist's studio has disappeared, and so have his tools, materials and assistants; the Mendelian fields and glasshouse, should they have survived at all, were preserved only due to the conservative nature of the institution where he experimented. The historian is thus faced with "temporal cluster bombing" that works counter to the very tracing of the effect chains the historian wishes to undertake. At the same time, if the event was "big" enough (the extinction of the dinosaurs by meteorite comes to mind) the large number of traces prevents the erasure of every single detail---too much shocked quartz, too much iridium, too little volcanic activity in the Deccan traps.

My mother still remembers where she was and what she was doing the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, even though she was then an Austrian teen. It would be difficult to erase all traces, to spill damnatio memoriae on all the causal lines, that reverberated through the global village of modern media when that US president died. Diaries, letters, mementos, not to mention an avalanche of conspiracy theories all take their origin in that event. 

It is this situation that is both the possibility of performing historiographical research over the ages and the impossibility of focusing the ontology of investigation up front, as the lack of readier-made traces and the ability to decide between competing interpretations will push the historian farther and farther down the causal chain to refute some of the interpretations (and herein lies the underdetermination of historical reconstruction, as Tucker pointed out) and strengthen the others (where the notion of strengthening may be related to Lewis' similarity metric, a point that needs further analysis). Here Lewis' points of world become relevant again. 

Life of Aventinus

In the first volume of the Collected Works of Aventinus (actually Johannes Turmair), there is a biographical sketch that provides interesting tid-bits that are worth noting.

Reading Notes

• Aventinus had contact to Conrad Celtis circle in Vienna and their Danubian society during his studying in Vienna.
• In 1516, Aventinus founded a similar society in Ingolstadt which included Bavarian chancellor Dr Leonhard von Eck, who was the "head and protector" (p.XV) of that association. However, the association was only active until 1520, and the authors blame the rabies theologica of the theologian Dr Eck in Ingolstadt for this (ibid).
• 1517, wie Herzog Ernst becoming the bishop of Passau, Aventinus was elevated to court historian for the Dukes Wilhelm and Ludwig (p.XVI).
• After two years of data collection (1517-1519) for his Historia Baiorum, Aventinus spent 1519 to 1521 in Abensberg, where his sister took care of him, to write the first draft, immediately followed by a second draft (p.XVIII). Occasionally he interrupted his work, for example, to meet with Chancellor von Eck in Regensburg (ibid).
• November 1522 he begins with the translation of the Historia into the vernacular (p.XIX)
• Aventinus makes another influential friend in the Cardinal and Archbishop of Salzburg, Matthaeus Lang, who keeps him at Salzburg for two months in the Spring of 1523 and will remain his friend even into the 1530s (p.XX).
• In 1524, the dukes raised his salary from 60fl, which he had received already for tutoring Ernst, to 100fl annually, provided he gave them control over the printing of the chronicle and would not accept offers from other dukes without notifying them (p.XXI).
• Aventinus managed to glide through the Peasant Revolt of 1525, which the dukes quickly battered down, and enjoy life in Abensberg in 1526, now with the official order to translate his work into German (p.XXII).
• In 1527, he began to frequent Regensburg, because there was no one in Abensberg that he could discuss matters with (ibid); the authors suggest it was the beginning of Aventinus being pulled into the question of the Reformation (p.XXIII).
• Unsurprisingly, as the Introduction of his work shows, he thinks of history as a moral and political effort (p.XXVI).
• In his moral crusade, his preferred enemies are the clericals, and especially the monks, and his warning against them extends even into Anti-Semitism: "Beware with equal care vis-a-vis a preacher, a Jew and a wolf." (Sigh ... :P) (p.XXIX).
• In his crusade against the church Aventinus also reveals a crusade for German Nationalism, even though he is employed by Bavarian dukes, for the German empire and the emperor (p.XXXI). "Deutschland ist nach seiner Ansicht in das Erbe des römischen imperium mundi eingetreten, "die vierte und letzte Monarchie der Daniel'schen Weissangung, an deren Fortbestand die Weltdauer geknüpft ist" (ibid).
• "Sonderinteressen zu verfolgen und eigene Politik zu treiben verurtheilt [sic] er stets als Unrecht und Untreue gegen die Gesamtheit." (p.XXXII) 
• For this reason, Aventinus criticizes the aristocracy for their focus on their special interests and advantages (p.XXXIII), leading him to demand public justice and free discourse (p.XXXIV).
• The three external enemies are the Pope, the French and the Turks (p.XXXV).
• For Aventinus, Religion is primarily about Justice, and he can praise the Romans and the Ancients for being just (p.XXXVII) --- including Alexander the Great.
• In the discussion of his historiographical achievements, the overly strong dependence on the forged Chaldean book of Berosos of Annio of Viterbo (Giovanni Nanni) is a black mark (p.XLI). His friend Beatus Rhenanus exposed the work as a forgery, but Aventinus either did not share his convictions or died before he could (p.XLII).
• The publication of his works was blocked by the two dukes (p.XLVI) since 1522, when they had forbidden the departure from the old faith, as supportive as they had been of reformatorical writings earlier, and there was just too much critical writing in Aventinus' books.
• Dr Eck of Ingolstadt got the dukes to execute tough punishments for the lapsed, which cost several anabaptists their life (ibid).
• 1528 was a troublesome year for Aventinus, the Turks were back in Hungary and Carinthia and were sending people into slavery (p.XLVII).
• Aventinus had friends in Regensburg, two of the cities' Stadtschreiber, as well as the Abbot Minzer, and there had been both the Jewish pogrom as well as the beginnings of the Reformation, both related to Dr Balthasar Huber, the preacher at the cathedral (p.XLVIII).
• But then (ibid) the preacher Nicolaus Georgius Fabri, a friend of Aventinus, was arrested in Landshut, where he was the chaplain of Duke Ludwig, and this struck fear into Aventinus, who fled to Regensburg. More preachers were imprisoned, 
• Aventinus himself was imprisoned on October 7th, 1528 (p.XLIX), but the Chancellor Leonhard von Eck quickly intervened to free him again, eleven days later, from jail, and Aventinus quickly returned to Regensburg (ibid).
• Aventinus had been an active Catholic during his time as tutor of Prince Ernst, and he prayed the breviary every day with him in 1513 (p.L).
• Aventinus knew too much history to believe in the indulgences and was too much a critic of the clergy and the monks, but he may not have ever left the Faith, comparable to Dr Konrad Peutinger and other supporters of Church reform (p.LI).
• During this time, he was sick and deeply discouraged and only found comfort in his work on the Germania Illustrata (p.LII).
• Aventinus tried to influence the matter by marrying Barbara Fröschmann, a Suebian girl from Niederrieden, December 1529 (p.LIII), but the expectation for this marriage as a source of calm in these confused times apparently did not materialize. However, the evidence for Aventinus being unhappy with his wife comes only from his biographers (p.LIV), and they had two children (two of which died quickly), and were able to buy a house in Regensburg for 150fl without selling the Abensberg estate. So clearly it was not a financial problem. And the inventory at his death (middle of the long footnote on p.LV-LVII) of old books, some from the 9th century, is impressive.
• In 1530, Aventinus was looking for a new position, and Philip Melanchthon suggested to him to try his friend Matthaeus Lang in Salzburg (p.LVII), instead of going to Saxony or even Wittenberg.
• His old friend Chancellor Dr von Eck helped him out and hired him as the tutor for his son Oswald at Ingolstadt (p.LVIII), a task he kept up until Christmas 1533, when he caught cold on his way back to Regensburg (ibid) and died January 9th, 1534.
• The publication of his main works was suppressed for many years after his death (p.LIX): the German Chronicle's Book I was printed in Nuremberg in 1541, and the Bavarian Chronicle in 1566 in Frankfurt am Main. 

Discussion

• When the authors write: "Wie unverständig es war, seine Mahnworte zu verachten, zeigte die schon im Jahre 1529 erfolgte Belagerung Wiens durch die Türken." (p.XXXVI) then this skips the fact that the pamphlet against the Turks was reworked in 1529.