USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 44
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
To this list the following additions were made, in 1890: Chemical Trust and Savings; in 1891, Bank of Commerce, Commercial Loan and Trust Company, State Bank of Chicago, Central Trust and Sav- ings Bank, Industrial Bank, Milwaukee Avenue State Bank, Royal Trust Company, Globe Savings Bank, Garden City Banking and Trust Company, and Homestead Loan & Trust Company.
Most of these banks passed through the crisis of 1893 without change. The Bank of Illinois disappeared from the list, and the Chemical Trust and Savings was changed to a national bank, which failed. The year 1896 was marked by the suspension of the Central Trust and Savings, the Dime Savings, the Globe Savings. In the fol- lowing year the Bank of Commerce was discontinued, its assets being purchased by the Union National. In 1898 the International Bank was purchased by the Continental National, and the Commercial Loan and Trust by the Royal Trust Company. The Prairie State Loan and Trust Company was merged under the new Prairie State Bank in 1897. In recent years the most conspicuous failure among state banks was the Milwaukee Avenue State Bank, in 1906. The failure was notable not so much for the aggregate loss involved as because the creditors were largely among the poor classes of the northwest side, most of them foreigners.
Of the state banks during the early period of Chicago banking the most influential have been mentioned, but reference should be made to the Old Merchants, Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank, better known as the "Bee Hive," which was established in 1861, and, after a two weeks' run in 1877, was found to have but sixty-two cents in the vaults. The State Savings Institution went down about the same time. D. D. Spencer, who formerly had been connected with the Cook County National, was president of this institution.
Before the fire of 1871 there were seventeen national and twelve state or private banks in Chicago. The combined capital employed by the national banks was $6,550,000, and by the other banks, $6,950,- 000. The surplus of the national banks at that time was $3.000,000, and the aggregate of deposits in the twenty-nine banks was a little less than $35,000,000.
Two years later, in June before the September panic of 1873, a table of the thirty national, state and private banks then in business,
,
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
indicates that while the total banking capital had decreased to a little less than twelve millions, in other respects the banks were in better con- dition than before the fire, the surplus and undivided profits amounting 1
to about four and a half millions, and the deposits to over forty mil- lions.
From the conditions of Chicago banking as presented by the above . figures, it is possible to contrast later growth by comparative state- ments that seem almost incredible. At the close of 1885 the fourteen national banks alone had deposits of over seventy-one millions, an increase of three hundred per cent since 1872. In 1890 the deposits in state and national banks were $130,224,654. This amount, large as it is, was only a beginning, for in spite of the hard times of the nineties deposits went on growing, shooting above the two hundred million mark in 1897, thence in the following year to three hundred million, in 1903 made a total of half a billion, and in 1907, just before the panic, the combined deposits in the seventeen national and thirty-one state banks then reported equaled over seven hundred million dollars. The capital, surplus and undivided profits of the banks show a corre- sponding growth. In October, 1893, the twenty-four national banks were capitalized at $21,300,000, and had surplus and undivided profits of over fourteen million. The capital stock of the state banks in 1892 was twelve and a half millions, with surplus and undivided profits of six and a half millions. By May, 1905, there was a wonderful increase, especially by the state banks. By that time the thirty-four state insti- tutions had combined, capital of $23,750,000, and the profits and sur- plus were slightly less than twenty millions. The same date found the fifteen national banks represented by $24,600,000 capital, and over eighteen millions in surplus and profits. The growth in capitalization represents concentration rather than aggregation. In 1871 there were seventeen national banks, the same number as in 1907. But in 1871 the national banks had only $6,550,000 capital, while in 1907 the capi- tal was a total of $27,950,000, showing an increase of four hundred per cent on the average for each bank.
Statistics that will indicate the enormous aggregate power of Chi- cago in finance are contained in the following table of national and state banks, showing the deposits, loans and cash resources of each at the close of business September 23, 1908:
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
NATIONAL BANKS.
Deposits
Loans & Dis.
Cash Resources
Bankers
$ 21,166,268
$ 12,896,429
$ 9,519,834
Commercial
45,691,137
29,908,472
17,838,739
Continental
69,151,043
46,399,544
29,804,653
Corn Exchange
58.524,847
37,043,238
23,294,555
Drovers Deposit
5,731,955 869,338
4,063,900
2,282,967
National Produce . .
656,455
346,660
First National
105,564,867
65,038,528
46,435.352
First of Englewood.
2,224,478
1,696,167
452,208
Fort Dearborn
11,057,891
7,110,285
4.396,462
Hamilton
7,245,963
4.344,834
2,778,817
Monroe
1,141,452
709, 115
493,904
National City
9,270,496
6,917,582
3,926,583
National Republic .
20,914,342
14,512,933
9,678, 166
Live Stock Ex. Nat.
8,595,212
6,704,156
3,340,753
Oakland
1,002,020
902,300
171,100
Prairie National
1,486,1 57
1,110,904
641,521
Total
$369,637,466
$240,014,842
$155,402,274
STATE BANKS.
Deposits.
Loans & Dis. Cash Resources.
American Trust
29,126,898
16,853,569
17,909, 149
Austin State
1,040,437
821,595
298,280
Central Trust
13,347,540
8,711,824
4,137,848
Chicago City
1,654,513
1,452,890
693.952
Chicago Savings
3,894,853
2,559,036
958,216
Citizens' Trust
132,404
119,744
30,286
Colonial Trust
3,110,895
2,723,620
1,036,643
Cook County State.
308,312
237,899
90,214
Drexel State
1,524,521
1,184,117
287,371
Drovers' Trust
1,800,780
1,301,700
255,319
Englewood State . .
728,332
622,444
210,267
First Trust
35,274,418
15,008,996
11,953.722
Foreman Brothers
6,500,388
5,497.640
2,329,077
Harris Trust
9,221,616
2,478,136
5,150,297
Hibernian
20,615,494
14,237,016
5.219,938
Illinois Trust
78,654,806
48,899.414
29,015,946
Kaspar State
2,167.940
1,937,509
409,88 I
Kenwood Trust
595,000
735.312
97,896
Lake View Trust . .
613.317
720,86I
119.347
Metropolitan Trust.
3.995,955
3.251,585
930,154
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
Deposits.
Loans & Dis.
Cash Resources.
Merchants' Loan
31,980,734
27,334,595
22,504,40I
Mutual
2,147,582
1,537,499
683,069
North Side
435,763
316,160
129,903
Northern Trust
26,107,500
9,871,099
10,099,19I
People's Trust
984,45I
1,031,939
133,338
Prairie State
6,263,978
4,026,743
1,175,147
Pullman Loan
2,083,819
1,693,843
722,224
Railway Exchange ..
757,648
584,040
300,56I
Royal Trust
4,630,297
2,424,909
1,840,865
Security Bank
1,607,796
1,383,214
256,712
State Bank of Chi. ..
19,080,352
14,400,567
5,429,104
Stockmen's Trust
814,819
638,861
277,956
Stock Y'rds Savings
1,872,985
1,043,566
324,283
Union Bank of Chi.
829,384
672,560
236,000
Un. St'k Y'ds State
733,721
631,330
207,405
Union Trust Co ....
12,491,890
7,530,010
3,766,249
West Side Trust . .
1,248,632
1,200,782
266,419
Western Trust
7,098,820
5,220,018
2,298,733
Woodlawn Trust
632,840
608,994
134,829
Total
$336,111,430
$211,505,636
$131,950,182
While state banks during the last thirty years have grown, in re- sources and liabilities, much more rapidly than the national banks in the corresponding length of time, so that the strength of the two classes of banks is now about equal, the savings banks as a special institution have not reached the same status in this city as elsewhere. Savings departments are now features of all state banks. The Hi- bernian Banking Association originated with the Merchants' Asso- ciation in 1867, and was chartered the following year. John V. Clarke was founder of both institutions, and guided the Hibernian Bank through the hard financial years of the seventies when several other savings institutions failed, and remained president of the bank until his death in 1892. He was succeeded by his son, John Vaughan Clarke, who is still president of what is claimed to be the oldest sav- ings bank of Chicago. Its deposits amount to $20,000,000.
To do justice even in a measure to a history of banking and fi- nance in Chicago, would fill many books. In this review, we are ex- pected to cover but a part of a book, in fact, but a limited number of pages.
In the vicinity adjacent to the Union Stock Yards, a number of
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
banks have been started and are meeting with success. Six institu- tions at this time are adjoining the stock yards and depending upon that class of business principally. In other sections of the city out- side of the central district, there are a number of banks, usually with $200,000 capital, but a review of them is not possible here. A number of state banks in Chicago in the central district, under ca- pable management and having a capital of $1,000,000 have interesting histories certainly worth more than a passing notice, were the space permitted; notably, the Union Trust Company, organized in 1869 by Samuel Rawson, who, as president, is succeeded by his son. F. H. Rawson, showing thirty-nine years of continued success; also the Western Trust and Savings Bank, successor to a banking business established in 1873, reorganized and successfully managed by J. E. Otis and Walter H. Wilson, president and vice president respectively.
In 1879, Haugan and Lindgren, then young men, started a private bank in a small way, with a few thousand dollars capital. From this plant, the State Bank of Chicago was incorporated and has grown to be one of the strong institutions of the city, having $1,000,000 capi- tal, $1,000,000 surplus and deposits of $19,000,000.
The American Trust and Savings Bank, organized in 1889, has shown large growth in the handsome new bank building and under the direction of President Edwin A. Potter.
Foreman Bros. Banking Company, with $1,000,000 capital, $500 .- 000 surplus, and a successful business, enjoys the unique distinction of having but three stockholders, Edwin G. and Oscar G. Foreman owning 4,950 shares each, and Geo. N. Neise, cashier, 100 shares.
N. W. Harris is the pioneer in dealing in high-grade bonds with unbroken eminent success and for years a recognized leader. His business was incorporated in 1907, in the name of Harris Trust and Savings Bank.
The records of the Chicago Clearing House Association, more than those of any individual bank, index the growth of Chicago's banking and business. A central institution for making exchanges and settling balances between the city's banks was first established in 1865, and from the beginning of business on April 6th until Decem- ber 23rd, the total clearings were about $315,000,000. William F. Coolbaugh was the first president. Mr. Coolbaugh was an influential figure in Chicago banking during the sixties and seventies. He
456
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
1
opened the banking house of W. F. Coolbaugh & Co. in 1862, and in 1865 this was merged into the newly organized Union National Bank, with Mr. Coolbaugh as president. At its organization the Clearing House comprised nineteen members and in 1870 the Chicago Clearing House Association was formed, which in subsequent years, besides its regular functions, has exercised a large influence in regu- lating and maintaining high standards of banking.
From less than half a billion dollars in 1866, the clearings of Chi- cago banks grew to over twelve billions in 1907. The balances alone during the past two or three years have approximated the total amount of clearings in 1870. The figures for ten-year periods will show the expansion of trade and finance :
Clearings-
1870, $ 810,676,036. 1880, $1,725,684,894.
1890, $4,093,145,904.
1900, $6,799,535,598.
The total of $12,087,647,870, the amount of clearings for 1907, shows that the increase has been nearly doubled within the past seven years.
The present officers of the Chicago Clearing House Association are Joseph T. Talbert, president ; H. A. Haugan, vice president, and W. D. C. Street, manager. Mr. Street is also secretary and treasurer of the board.
The members of the Clearing House committee are James B. For- gan, John J. Mitchell, Orson Smith, Ernest A. Hamill and George M. Reynolds. This committee is charged with grave responsibilities and at times is confronted with problems of the most serious nature, affecting financial conditions, financial institutions or individuals.
Second only in volume and strength to New York City, the Chi- cago Clearing House Association is a strong factor in the world of finance. Conditions could arise under which its action or the posi- tion taken by it would have great weight and influence throughout the universe.
Early in 1907 the association devised a system of examination and supervision of all the Chicago banks enjoying the privileges of the Clearing House, whether members direct or not. Examiners were employed and the plan has met with such endorsement that it is being
INK NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
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457
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
adopted by the clearing house associations of many of the other lead- ing cities of the country.
The history of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank is largely the history of one man, whose career is so intimately identified with its J. J. existence and progress that this institution may be regarded as a monument to the financial ability of MITCHELL. John J. Mitchell. It is seldom that history and bio- graphy so coincide in illustration of the sententious generalization- "An institution is but the lengthened shadow of a man."
The Illinois Trust and Savings Bank was organized in 1873, only two years after the fire, and during the year of the severest panic ever endured by Chicago banking houses. One of the organizers was William H. Mitchell, who rather reluctantly yielded to the ambition of his son to enter the practical world of business and finance in- stead of continuing his education through the university, as the father had desired. At the age of twenty John J. Mitchell became a messen- ger boy in the new bank. Observant, modest, cheerful and capable of unusual and continuous concentration, ambitious and having a quenchless thirst for knowledge, the young man was always looking ahead to duties superior to those which engaged his immediate at- tention, and, without neglecting the present, he was always in readi- ness to assume a more responsible position than the one which he filled. In 1875 the bank was moved to Clark street, between Wash- ington and Madison streets, and Mr. Mitchell, then a teller, had al- ready come to be recognized as one of the most popular and thor- oughly posted men connected with the institution. In 1878, upon the retirement of L. B. Sidway, president of the bank, and the election of H. G. Powers to succeed him, Mr. Mitchell was advanced to be as- sistant cashier.
The following two years formed a crisis in the affairs of the bank. The capital stock was reduced from $500,000 to $100,000, and some of the directors favored dissolution of the institution. Mr. Mitchell brought forward a plan for enlargement of the business on a con- servative basis, and owing to his influence in the board rooms, his plans were adopted and the downward tendency was stayed. In 1880 Mr. Powers retired from the presidency. Mr. Mitchell was then twenty-six years of age, but because of the ability he had shown in conducting the bank through its critical period, and in spite of
458
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
the opposition of his father and a few of the other directors (solely on the ground of his age), he was chosen to the head of the bank's affairs, being one of the youngest bank presidents in the history of Chicago banking. Energetic and unhampered work soon had its results, and the deposits of the institution reached $1,000,000-a wonderful showing for a new bank of those days. In 1888 the busi- ness had so increased that larger and more appropriate quarters were demanded, and the ground floor of the Rookery building was chosen. The capital stock had now increased to $2,000,000-a sum twenty times greater than when Mr. Mitchell first became identified with the bank. For twenty-seven years he has now been at the helm of its affairs, and unimpeded progress has been its record. The home of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank is now the magnificent structure erected in 1897, at the northeast corner of Jackson boulevard and LaSalle street, costing nearly $750,000, and considered one of the handsomest bank structures in the new Chicago.
The president of this bank, who was born in Illinois in 1853, is the son of an eminent Chicagoan. His father, William Hamilton Mitchell, was born in Belmont county, Ohio, March 9, 1817, his par- ents having removed from a Scotch-Irish settlement in Pennsylvania, in 1800, and located in the section of the Buckeye state named above. He was a California forty-niner, was a builder of the original line of what is now the Chicago & Alton Railroad, and for many years has been prominent in banking and business affairs of Chicago. John J. Mitchell was reared in the midst of comfort and liberal advan- tages, and, although the household was old-fashioned, it was progres- sive and dominated by sound principles, both intellectual and moral. Education, especially, was held by the parents at a high value, and the son, whose life lines are here traced, was sent to the Maine Wes- leyan Seminary, at Kent's Hill, when he was sixteen years of age, and after a two-years' course there, entered the Waterville Classical Institute in the same state. It was shortly after this, and without de- laying his career for a university education, that he entered the bank just organized in Chicago, and began his connection with finance that has been described.
Besides directing the affairs of this great institution, Mr. Mitchell is vice president and chairman of the Western Board of Control of the Audit Company, of New York, as well as a member of its ad-
459
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
visory committee ; trustee of the American Surety Company, of New York; a director of the Chicago & Alton, Kansas City Southern, Mexican Central, Burlington, and Rock Island railroad companies, and also the Pullman Company, the Northwestern Elevated Railroad Company, the Union Elevated Company, Western Union Telegraph Company, United States Brewing Company, Commonwealth-Edison Electric Company, Illinois Trust and Safety Deposit Company, Mis- sissippi River Bridge Company, Frank Parmelee Company and the Continental Trust Company and the First National Bank of New York.
Mr. Mitchell was married February 11. 1890, to Louise Jewett, daughter of James R. Jewett, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their children are Gwendolyn, William H . John J., Clarence B. and Louise. Although a member of numerous clubs, Mr. Mitchell is not actively identified with any of them, preferring the domestic recreation in which the home circle participates. The beautiful family residence is at 5012 Woodlawn avenue.
The Mitchells of Chicago, father and son, hold a phenomenal record in the banking history of the country. At the age of fifty-
WILLIAM H. three John J. Mitchell, the younger, has held the
MITCHELL. presidency of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, one of the leading financial institutions of the coun- try, for more than half of the total period of his life, and his father, William H., who was one of its founders, twenty-seven years ago, and even then a man long past middle age who had acquired a stand- ing in the primal development of the west, is still connected with that institution as its first vice president. At the age of ninety-two the senior Mitchell is still a power in the modern financial world, as he was in the pioneer times of the early fifties, when he was one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Alton and a promoter of early packet lines and railroads.
William H. Mitchell was born on a farm in Belmont county, Ohio, March 9, 1817, the son of James and Elizabeth ( Mccullough) Mitch- ell, who were among the earliest settlers of southeastern Ohio. He comes of Scotch-Irish stock, his first American progenitors coming from a Pennsylvania settlement known as Scotch Ridge. The early life of William H. was spent on his father's Ohio farm, but when he was about twenty-three years of age he made his first business ven-
460
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
ture by navigating a flat boat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, where he disposed of his cargo of flour to such good advantage that within the following eight years he made several simi- lar trips. In 1848 he removed to Illinois and, with his brother, en- gaged in the transportation of freight from Quincy to New Orleans. Two of these trips, in which flour was taken from the Quincy mills to the southern port, proved so profitable as to really constitute the basis of Mr. Mitchell's fortune. Toward the close of 1848, with his brother, John, he bought the business of the Alton Manufacturing Company, which was engaged not only in milling but in loaning money and trading lands. Under the new proprietorship all but the milling trade was dropped, and that proved very profitable. In 1849 leaving the business in his brother's hands, Mr. Mitchell set out for California by the overland route and ox-team travel, his journey oc- cupying I10 days, and after spending about fifteen months in trading with the miners, returned home by the Panama route.
Returning to Illinois in 1852, Mr. Mitchell at once became an ac- tive promoter and stockholder in the Alton Packet Company, whose steamboats run between St. Louis and Alton, but not long after both he and his brother sold their interests in the enterprise, as well as in the Alton Manufacturing Company. They then engaged in the construction of the Alton & St. Louis Railroad, but before the line was completed it was purchased by the Chicago & Alton Company. While a resident of Alton Mr. Mitchell also engaged quite extensively in farming. He was instrumental in organizing the First National Bank of Alton, and was elected president after the death of Isaac Scarrett, its first head. After fifteen years of successful business the bank went into liquidation, having paid good dividends throughout and finally paying its stockholders $1.60 on the dollar.
Mr .. Mitchell's masterly management of the Alton bank brought him into most favorable association with the financiers of Chicago, and in the spring of 1873 he became one of the organizers of the Illi- nois Trust and Savings Bank, soon after locating permanently in the city, in 1874, being elected second vice president. At the death of John B. Drake, November 12, 1895, he assumed his present office.
In politics Mr. Mitchell has been either a Whig or a Republican, and has been a lifelong Episcopalian-for many years a member of the Trinity church, of Chicago. He is not a club man, the recrea-
461
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
tions of his later years being largely confined to simple country pleas- ures and light agricultural pursuits.
Mr. Mitchell has been thrice married-in 1853 to Mrs. N. Small, in 1858 to Miss Barnes, of Wellsburg, Virginia, and in 1868 to Mrs. Jennie L. Plaisted, of Westport, Maine. The surviving children of the first marriage are John J. Mitchell and Mrs. Chauncey J. Blair, while Elizabeth, wife of Dr. Charles Adams, of Kenilworth, is of the second union, and Guy Hamilton, Hortense Lenore and Marguerite Mitchell, of the third.
When, in the spring of 1897, the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank completed its palatial home on the northeast corner of LaSalle street and Jackson boulevard, extending north to Quincy, a decided depar- ture was made in the construction of bank buildings in the United States. A classic Greek temple, standing diagonally from the board of trade building, it is located midway in the territory covered by the commercial, financial and mercantile activities of Chicago-a magnificent and fitting memorial of the city's power, as well as of her artistic aspirations and realizations. Unlike most of the great banks of the city and the world, the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank is not buried in some massive office building, but stands clearly forth in its own graceful outlines. The credit for this innovation, as well as for many of the original features of the financial policy of the institution which has reached the position of a national power in its field, is chiefly due to the clear mental vision and the untiring energy of John J. Mitchell.
The Illinois Trust and Savings Bank was organized May 7, 1873. The bank commenced business on the northeast corner of Madison and Market streets, with a capital stock of $100,000, its first president being L. B. Sidway. In 1875 a change of location was made to Clark street, between Washington and Madison, and in 1878 it occupied the old Fidelity Bank building on Randolph street. During that year President Sidway retired from the presidency and H. G. Powers as- sumed the management, thus continuing until the commencement of Mr. Mitchell's administration in 1880. In the meantime the business of the bank had been increasing, although its affairs were in rather a precarious condition when Mr. Mitchell assumed the presidency. On July 1, 1873, about two months after its organization, its deposits amounted to $24,058, which, by January Ist of the following year,
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