Whether a bank is a savings bank or not depends upon its functions and not its name.1 A savings bank which is authorized to do a commercial banking business is an ordinary commercial bank;2 and a statute creating savings banks which were authorized to receive deposits and declare dividends was held to be within a constitutional requirement which provided that any banking law establishing banks, whether of deposit, discount or circulation, should be approved by a vote of the people of the state. The constitutional provision was not confined to stockholders who owned the bank.3 A savings bank formed for the pecuniary benefit of its members is not a benevolent or charitable society.4 But if formed merely for the investment of money, and the payment of the income therefrom, it is a trustee, and a court of chancery may regulate the distribution of its assets,5 but it cannot change, any more than the legislature can change, the terms of the incorporating act.6 But even in ordinary savings banks the claim of the depositor is a chose in action - it is not a bailment.7 It is immaterial, where the bank has engaged to pay a certain interest, that it has invested in stocks which have depreciated.8 But the managers have no right to profits as such where the profits are divisible among the depositors.9 In savings banks the depositors are not stockholders10 unless the form of the organization makes them so; the relation of debtor and creditor arises in most savings banks upon a deposit11 unless it be a special deposit.12

1 Huntington v. Savings Bank, 96 U. S. 388. See the remarks made in the opinion.

2 See Queenan v. Palmer, 117 111. 169, and Ward v. Johnson, 5 Bradw. 30, for this kind of a savings bank.

3 Stockton v. Mechanics' Sav.

Bank, 32 N. J. Eq. 163. But a better case is Murphy v. Pacific Bank, 119 Cal. 334.

1 State v. Lincoln Sav. Bank, 82 Tenn. 42.

2 Mitchell v. Beckman, 64 Cal. 117.