We ask you to remember:
That our customers can get along without us.
(There are in Greater New York nearly one hundred banks and trust companies, every one of them actively seeking business.)
We cannot get along without our customers.
A connection which, perhaps, it has taken us several months to establish, can be terminated by one careless or discourteous act.
Our customers are asked to maintain balances of certain proportions. If they wish to borrow money, they must deposit collateral. They must repay loans when they mature; or arrange for their extension.
If a bank errs, it must err on the side of safety, for the money it loans is not its own money but the money of its depositors. We (and every other bank and trust company) operate almost entirely on money which our customers have deposited with us. The least we can do, then, is to serve them courteously. They really are our employers.
Ours is a semi-public institution.
Every day, men try to interest us in matters with which we have no concern. It is our duty to tell these men, very courteously, why their proposals do not appeal to us. But they are entitled to a hearing. It may be that they are not in a position to benefit us, and never will be. But almost every man can harm us, if he tries to do so. And a pleasantly expressed declination invariably makes a better impression than a favor grudgingly granted. We ask you, then, to remember that our growth—and your opportunities—depend not only upon the friends we make, but the enemies we do not make.
Remember names and faces. Do something, say something that will bring home to those who do business with us the fact that the Blank Trust Company is a very human institution—that it wants the good will of every man and woman in the country.