PLAN No. 690. HOW HE BECAME A BANKER
When I knew him at college he was a man of wonderful and unusual strength and good nature. He was as democratic as a person could be, and was liked by all who knew him.
If you were to pick out a banker in the crowd at school, he would be the last man, perhaps, that you would think would follow the banking business. After his college course he went into the stock business. He was well liked by all of the stockmen in the district in which he lived, and he had an acquaintance extending through the entire Northwest. But the stock business did not particularly appeal to him. He then entered into other lines of work and finally became closely associated with a man engaged in the banking business. This man had taken over a bank in one of the farming communities and asked this party whether he would like to spend a part of his time in this little bank and see what he could do in the way of assisting it. This work interested him from the beginning. He immediately took possession of the bank as though it were his own and began to build it up. In a short time he had doubled its deposits. His record was so unusual that the head of the bank in the city became interested, and as his showing continued the president of the bank became convinced that he should be in the city bank, so he made arrangements for him to come. He went at things with the same untiring energy in the city bank, as he had in the country bank, with the results that the deposits were greatly increased.
I remember one day going into this large bank and I was somewhat surprised at seeing him as one of the managing officers of the bank. I asked him how it came that he was there, and he told me that he had been associated in the banking business for a number of years. The position which he had obtained did not in the least effect his pride and he possessed the same spirit, which manifested itself so agreeably in his school days. He said he had been helped, and that it was his desire to help others as he had been helped—that was his attitude in the banking business. Instead of possessing the ordinary cold and distant attitude of the average banker, he was the opposite. In his former work among the stockmen of the Northwest he acquired a large acquaintance, and they all thought a great deal of him, and had confidence in the institution with which he was connected. They rather preferred to deal with a bank with which he was connected.
Your friends often determine whether you are to be a success or a failure.