21
THE CHICAGO BANKER
July io, 1909]
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*־y n addition to handling the active and dormant accounts of banks and bankers, we extend to financial institutions the facilities afforded by our thoroughly organized bond department, in which we furnish railroad, municipal and other high-grade bonds. Correspondence is cordially invited.
WILLIAM M. RICHARDS, Asst. Cashier LEVERETT THOMPSON, Secretary
O F F I CE R S
JOHN A. McCORMICK, Vice-President HOUSTON JONES, Cashier
LUCIUS TETER, President EDWARD P. BAILEY, Vice-Pres.
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ii	rv /—1 ¥ r\n Y * * had only 15 stars and 15 stripes, although there were 1 7 states, in 1810, when this Bank was started. <J It is now 99 years since The
*-‘*S	A	Bank of Pittsburgh was founded, and it has been in continuous existence ever since, uninterrupted by the violent financial disturbances
of the past century, and constantly increasing its resources and ability to serve its patrons.
It desires to extend its collection facilities and its business with other banks and invites correspondence.
J. D. AYRES, Assistant Cashier GEO. F. WRIGHT, Auditor
Capital and Surplus $5,400,000.00
J. M. RUSSELL, Assistant Cashier
OFFICERS W. F. BICKEL, Cashier
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WILSON A. SHAW, President HARRISON NESBIT, Vice-Pres.
people understood banking and bankers better there would be better times for both. I trust we have decided therefore, that advertising is not merely a question of putting something in the paper in order to show your public spirit or your desire to “stand in” with the editor.
Did you ever think how mighty poor a bank it would be which has no other claim upon the business world than the fact that ten business men had got together for the purpose of making money out of other people’s money?
Really, isn’t it rather silly? I trust we are agreed that in the majority of cases, these generalities about capital, surplus and deposits mean little or nothing to the people to whom they should mean the most. I submit to you that no man who sets down a list of names and figures of capitalization and surplus, and deposits has a right to expect a deposit of money. I submit to your own common sense, and if you please, I submit to you the results of your own investigation, that these facts alone influence but little the business of a bank.
Let us consider your statement for a moment. I know very well that you are required to publish a statement on the call of the comptroller. I asked a business man, a stockholder in a bank, what his bank’s statement meant. His answer was characteristic: “Tell, you the truth, I don’t know:	I never was much on
figures and I never tried to untangle it.” Outside of the expert—whom we do not consider —who can tell from a bank statement as published in newspapers, what that statement really means?
A banker once told me that it was just what he wanted—he didn’t want his depositors to know anything about his bank. He was an old style banker. The bank was his, and it was nobody’s business how he handled it. His attitude was a good deal like Commodore Vanderbilt’s. But we are finding out to-day that it is one thing to invite a man to go to the devil and quite another thing to get him to go. On one occasion I asked a man who worked with Mr. Tillotson of the Cleveland Trust Company, why he analyzed bis statement so that a man could understand it.
put his feet on the table. Do you think a public service corporation manager does this because he likes to? He does it because he has realized if he wants to continue to do business, he must do it. Probably there is not a man before me here to-day who could not be put out of business within twelve hours, if the people in Wisconsin decided they wanted him out of business. In no business save banking, is it so true, that business is sensitive; it goes only where it is invited and stays only where it is well treated.
I dwell on this in order that I may impress on you the fact that this question of public confidence, which must be based upon public’s knowledge of the truth, is a very real and active force of enormous power. We have understood this for years, but we thought ignorance was the best foundation for confidence— but now we know it is knowledge—that if
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Bank Advertising from the Standpoint of the Customer
(Continued from page 5)
It may be true that a corporation hasn’t a soul, but we know that it has a mind and body, that it is subject to the same mutations of fortune as men. You can’t ignore the sweep of public sentiment—the mob mind— even if you wanted to. After all, deep down in our heart of hearts we want people to believe in us—we want public confidence—and bankers must have it. It is this elemental fact lying at the bottom of our human relationships, which when brought home to some of those who have trampled on the rights of others, have driven them to suicide or made them outcasts among their kind, or drives them to more or less ingenious justifications.
Some may think this philosophy has little to do with the practical question of advertising of a bank. On the contrary it is the very essential of good advertising, because advertising when practiced in behalf of a line of business that calls for confidence must reflect the man and his principles who is that business.
We want to rid ourselves of the idea that advertising is printing copy in a newspaper once in a while. That is only the physical act. It is an expression of the bank—of the aims and ideals of the human men who are that bank—it is to all intents and purposes all that some will ever know of what that bank is.
Put that away in your minds and think about it, and you will find the man whose advertising has influenced you most, has been the man whom you have decided you knew best from the advertising he did.
To-day in every public service corporation which shows any signs of realizing the real meaning of our social unrest, there is a new rule. “Take the public into your confidence.” There is a constant endeavor to make the people understand, and for the first time in the history of those corporations, the newspaper reporter is not met with, “Nothing to say,” and an implied invitation to go to a hot place, but he is now taken into the private room, given a good cigar, and told figuratively to