In addition to having clearing houses in our larger cities and towns, a number of very successful county associations have been organized. A county association takes in every bank in a certain county and the principle underlying such an organization is the same that applies to a clearing house in a city. The county clearing house association of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, provides an illustration of this sort of organization. This county organization, like all other clearing houses, was born of necessity. Lancaster, with ten banks and trust companies, and Lancaster County, with forty banks outside the city, had outgrown its customs and felt the necessity for something better. It was apparent that with each of the ten banks in the city keeping up daily correspondence with practically every bank in the county, and with each rural bank corresponding with nearly, if not all of the city banks and many throughout the county, there must be some better method than that of the Lancaster Clearing House Association, whereby labor, postage and annoyance could be reduced. About 1906, the representative of the Lancaster Clear-the House Association called a meeting of representatives from each bank in the county and presented the matter for consideration. They presented it in a spirit of fairness and to show good faith, proposed a committee of eight, three from the city and five from the county who should prepare a plan of operation, and agreed to abide by their action, at least until the plan had demonstrated itself a success or a failure. The committee met and in two hours' time had prepared a plan of operation that was not only workable but so highly satisfactory that it has not been revised, added to, or taken from to this day. The ten city banks were arranged in the order of their resources, and each was required to take over the clearing for a certain number of country banks located in the county. The average number would have been four, but the arrangement assigned five or six to the larger banks and two or three to some of the smaller ones. Then the country banks were asked to present first, second and third choice for the bank that should represent them, but in case this feature should fail, the Lancaster Clearing House Association had power to assign. With these arrangements completed, the workings are such that while a bank which formerly had ten correspondents in Lancaster City and several more in the county, now has one correspondent which receives all checks coming to the bank in course of business and drawn on any one of the fifty banks of Lancaster County. This means that with but one letter to its correspondent in Lancaster, the bank is able to send through the clearing house on the following day, all checks it may receive on any or all of the fifty banks constituting the association and have them at their destinations on the second day. This obviates the necessity of starting checks on an uncharted sea without the possibility of knowing their whereabouts or when they will reach their destinations. At the same time, the bank's representative in Lancaster honors and forwards to it all the checks drawn on it that may be presented at the clearing house by the other nine members, including all checks received from their correspondents in Lancaster County. At the end of the day, any amount in excess of $1,000 owing to the bank's correspondent or to the bank itself is paid by draft. That is, should the books show that it owes $2,600, it encloses with its remittance a draft for $2,000. Should the correspondent's books show them in the bank's debt, the plan is the same. They send their check for $2,000 with their remittance letter. Settlements are made in full once a week to verify the accounts. Aside from the advantages that come through the clearing of checks, these county associations have been of the greatest advantage in getting the banks together for consultation and the further development of their community and county interests.