[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
8
THE FARMERS’ AND MECHANICS NATIONAL BANK
OF PHILADELPHIA, PA.
427 CHESTNUT STREET
$2,000,000.00
1,348,000.00
Capital ... Surplus and Prolits
ORGANIZED JANUARY 17, 1807
$12,847,000.00
Dividends Paid
OFFICERS
Howard W. Lewis, President
Henry B. Bartow, Cashier	John Mason, Transfer Officer
Oscar E. Weiss, Assistant Cashier
ACCOUNTS OF INDIVIDUALS, FIRMS, AND CORPORATIONS SOLICITED PRESENT NUMBER OF STOCKHOLDERS 930
STATE BANK DF CHICAGO
ESTABLISHED 1879
S. E. Corner La Salle and Washington Streets
$1,000,000
1,400,000
20,000,000
Capital -
Surplus and profits (earned) Deposits -
OFFICERS
FRANK I. PACKARD, Asst Cashier C. EDWARD CARLSON, Asst. Cashier SAMUEL E. KNECHT, Secretary WILLIAM C. MILLER, Asst. Secretary
L. A. GODDARD, President JOHN R. LINDGREN, Vice-President HENRY A. HAUGAN, Vice-President HENRY S. HENSCHEN, Cashier
YOUR CHICAGO BUSINESS RESPECTFULLY INVITED
H. A. Blodgett, of Minneapolis, tells the North Dakota bankers an important trade secret
Winning New Depositors
closes in and curtails the territory of banks already established. New rivals appear on every hand to claim a share of the business in sight, and the business of the future. Is there a more urgent necessity to the bank than that of nurturing every possible client, and bringing him forthwith within the pale of its beneficent influence?
What better way to expand the agricultural and commercial interests of this state than to gather its truant dollars into its banks and set them about their business? The more freely your people deposit with you, the more generously can you pour money back into their industries. The more their money is pressed into service to move crops and carry on business, the less toll need you pay to Wall Street and the money centers.
Win a new depositor and you add his cash resources to the working capital of the community; his checks are contributed to the circulating medium, making his nimble dollar do, perhaps, the work of several; you have created another possible borrower, and a new and profitable client for all the services your bank has for sale.
The farmer, through the borrowed use of a sum of money, is enabled to improve his land and increase its productiveness. He thus attracts more money from remote corners of the earth than he could unaided. Bear a helping hand to many farmers in the same way, and the golden stream from the outside world will be greatly enhanced. Thus the money coaxed from hiding may become a powerful magnet which will draw golden ducats from afar off and lay them at your feet.
who wants to talk about himself when you want to talk about yourself.” I am here to talk about your business, not my own, and I promise you at the outset that I shall endeavor to stick religiously to my text, and tell you if I can, how every one of you can possibly win many more depositors, and incidentally have the pleasure of seeing your surplus and profits grow.
Some of you have read that delightful story, ,‘Widow O’Callaghan’s Boys,” good for young or old, and will recall that this honest woman delivered herself something after this fashion concerning the local banker, General Brady:
“There’s some as thinks the Gineral has a business. There’s them that calls him a banker. But what sort of a business is that, now? Jist none at all. All he does is to take in money and put it in a safe place where nobody can’t steal it, and hand it out again when it s needed, and lend a little now and then to somebody that wants it, and is likely to be payin’ it back agin. Annybody could do that. There’s no work in it, and by the same token it’s no business.”
There are many people in North Dakota, as there are everywhere, who hold to the Widow O’Callaghan’s views of the banker—■ good honest desirable citizens who ought to know better. Who will teach them differently if the banker does not?
It isn’t human nature to be content, and no banker here, I am sure, is satisfied that he has all the depositors he could take care of, or that he is getting all the business his territory is capable of yielding.
With the growth of the state competition
I counted myself fortunate indeed when I received a courteous note from your secretary, asking me if I would like to take a little of the time of this convention for the discussion of a subject which he happened to know lies close to my heart, and which is of prime importance to every banker who desires to see his business grow.
You may wonder why I who am not a banker, and possibly may never be dignified by such a title, should be so deeply interested in the subject of “Winning New Depositors.” In the past 21 years I have officiated professionally in a humble but more or less profitable way at the ushering into the world of some hundreds of banks, many of them now thriving financial institutions of your state, and though possibly I may have taken some of the life blood of these youngsters in getting them properly started, I trust that there are none who will say that I ever seriously “bled” them.
And so, as it has been my privilege these many years to be in a way a “Mellen’s Food” dispenser to my banker friends, I have been keenly interested in their problems, just as you bankers take a natural interest in the welfare of those clients of yours, to whom you may be said to bring succor when it is needed.
Further than this, I may as well confess that in giving particular study to methods by which I might help my banker friends secure more depositors, I have aided my own business indirectly, for the more depositors every bank client of mine has, the better opportunity I have to carry on a little flirtation with his expense account.
Someone has defined an egotist as “a man