[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
			
STATE BANK OF CHICAGO			THE FARMERS' AND MECHANICS' NATIONAL SANK OF PHILADELPHIA, PA. 427 CHESTNUT STREET Capital - - $2,000,000.00 ־ Surplus and Profits 1,348,000.00 ORGANIZED JANUARY 17, 1807 Dividends Paid - $12,847,000.00 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
^ ESTABLISHED 1879 S. E. Corner La Salle and Washington Streets Capital - - - $1,500,000 Surplus and profits (earned) 1,500,000 Deposits over - - 20,000,000 OFFICERS L. A. GODDARD, President FRANK I. PACKARD, Asst Cashier JOHN R. LINDGREN, Vice-President C. EDWARD CARLSON, Asst. Cashier HENRY A. HAUGAN, Vice-President SAMUEL E. KNECHT, Secretary HENRY S. HENSCHEN, Cashier WILLIAM C. MILLER, Asst. Secretary			
YOUR CHICAGO BUSINESS RESPECTFULLY INVITED			
			
jAl IN CINCINNATI Aik With Resources of TWENTY-ONE MILLION DOLLARS And every facility for the satisfactory handling of Bank Accounts NÄF correspondence invited			
Montana University Educating for Business
think of putting a man in your office and calling him a stenographer unless he had training in stenography, so it is plain common sense that you should not take a young man and put him at the business of banking, totally ignorant of the methods of banking common in the whole world, the elementary principles governing the various phases of finance. You would not wish such a man to be unable to tell what a bank note is, what the difference is between a greenback and a bank note; what the difference is between a piece of negotiable paper running for a certain length of time and a demand note. You would wish him to understand what exchange meant before he even got behind the counter. These are elementary things, but they are illustrations of what I mean, that if young men give time and study under competent instructors to these lines of thought it will assist men of business in finding well trained young men to enter into their succession. It is in every way desirable that a young man going into business enterprises, whether it be into the factory or into the railroad, or into the banking business, should have been studying the business into which he enters, so that he knows where things are coming out. Just to use a homely illustration of my own experience : When I was a young man living on a ranch, it became necessary to harvest a small field that we had on some outside land 80 miles from a railroad, and my father, who had been a practical farmer in his youth, said, ‘Well, the only thing to do is to cradle it.’ He could not cradle it, he was too infirm, and said I would have to undertake it. I could not use a cradle, and I could not detect when he got hold of it what the theory of the matter was. But I got an explanation from him that a man using the cradle would not give it a swing by main strength. Then he showed me how to hold the handles lightly, not gripping them hard, not making blisters. He said that it was unnecessary to make blisters, when you are at this kind of work, if you hold the cradle ‘so.’ Now it was a
who has his right arm tied behind him. But I am not going to treat that important subject, simply discussing business training in its larger and higher sense.
A Few Negatives
“Perhaps I had better begin by saying a few things negatively. In the first place, I have no notion, no idea whatever, that business training and business education is to be a substitute for business capacity; it is merely to help a man of capacity to become a better business man. In the second place there is no pretense or desire to teach the details of business practice; I would teach the significance of these things to the man of capacity in relation to the larger question of organization, supervision and administration. Some things business education cannot pretend to do—a man must have a gift for business as well as a gift for poetry to succeed in your field. I suppose it is a familiar fact, it must be familiar to every man engaged in the business of banking, that a large part of his equipment for business is a native talent and aptness for judging human nature and for working with human forces. You men who are bankers know that you have to decide by the look of a man’s eye, by the whole character as shown in his physical makeup, and by the things he does in the community, whether or not he is a man to be trusted. Frequently it is true that you will make loans, and make them as you ought to make them, without visible valuable collateral to secure the loan, simply on what you call the business standing of the borrower. That takes judgment, an innate quality which may be sharpened by experience, but something which no training or education can give.
“What business education would really aim to do is this:	In the first place is would supply
the reasonable demands of the men engaged in business enterprises for young men who have had some special training for the work that they are to do. Just as in your bank you would not
An interesting feature of the annual meeting of the Montana Bankers Association in Missoula was an address by Dr. C. A. Duniway, president of the University of Montana. The bankers were deeply interested in his address in which he said in part:
“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen:	My
subject is ‘Education for Business.’ In the very title lies a challenge. I do not know but that a great many of you, business men and bankers, would say at once, there can be no ‘education for business’ in the sense in which a professor would use that word. Many of you would say that the only education for business is training in business houses. I accept the implied challenge, and in the few minutes which I use of your time shall endeavor to show that there is at least a reasonable sense in which there may be true education for business. Like every academic man I must begin by delimiting my field. Business education in a sense is part of the great subject of vocational training, and it would include the work of the ordinary business college —purely a commercial institution of training for stenographers, bookkeepers and typewriters. It would include the training of farmers for the business of farming; it would include the training of engineers for your mines and factories; it would include the training of accountants, and it would include the training of bankers. But I do not intend to treat this entire field. I intend to devote myself to the subject of education for business in the ordinary sense of that word, that is for commercial occupations—the management, supervision and control of business enterprises. I leave out of consideration, therefore, the question of elementary business training for stenographers, typewriters and ordinary clerks and bookkeepers, important as these workers are. I may remark that I have just had a special lesson during the last two■ weeks on the importance of a man who can do that sort of thing well, because my secretary has been away and I feel like the man