The Transition from Building and Loan to Savings and Loan, 1890–1940

Building and loan management will meet its responsibilities to the twelve million owners of the building and loan business in America, and so conduct its affairs that the second century of building and loan will be one of unequalled progress, maximum service, and untarnished financial reputation. Morton Bodfish, History of Building and Loan in the U.S. , 1931 Bodfish was a vice president of the United States Building and Loan League, the national trade organization of the Building and Loan (B&L) industry, when he penned his prediction – probably in 1930 before the Depression gained real momentum. One year after his book was published, he was appointed by President Hoover as one of the five original members of the new Federal Home Loan Bank Board. During the next two years a system of federally chartered Savings and Loans Associations and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation were created. In three short years, and at breakneck speed, the federal government put in place the entire institutional and regulatory structure of the modern Savings and Loan (S&L) industry. Despite these efforts the B&L/S&L industry suffered even greater losses in their number, assets, and membership after 1934 than before. Bodfish proved to be dead wrong – what lay ahead in 1930 was not a second century of unequalled progress for building and loan, but a decade of demise.