Saturday, December 6, 1913, 2 p. m. 

 Ballroom, Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. 



ADDRESS. 



By Charles S. Calwell, 

 President, Corn Exchange National Bank, Philadelphia. 



We are here to consider a new banking system. Not merely a system 

 of getting deposits and making loans, but a banking system of helpfulness. 

 This movement is not new. Some bankers in the West have been very 

 active along these lines, but here in the East, until lately, we have been 

 overlooking the farmer, notwithstanding Pennsylvania has the largest 

 rural population of any state and that there is no better farming land 

 than right here in our four states. 



We are in this work because we expect it is going to pay us. It is 

 going to pay by increasing the prosperity of this section, but especially 

 it will pay by helping to remove what little prejudice there may exist against 

 banks. It does exist and it will exist as long as we sit in our back rooms 

 and only study credits and think of schemes for increasing deposits. We 

 have long thought that a banker's duty was to hear everything and say 

 nothing. But we have carried it too far. We have been straddling every 

 question. If a Democrat comes in we try to think of some Democrat we 

 once supported. If our customer is a Repubhcan, we change the subject 

 to the tariff, and to get a banker's name on a reform list requires action 

 by the board. I don't believe in mixing in politics, but I believe in 

 taking a decided stand on the questions of the day, especially those 

 questions that affect the general prosperity. Banking business will have 

 to be conducted in the future on broader lines. By helping others we 

 help ourselves, and the sooner we learn this the better for all. Now, a 

 mild and inoffensive way of showing the public that we are not altogether 

 selfish is to help along this movement for the bettering of agricultural 

 conditions. Just as I think that it will be but a short time before large 

 city banks have on their staff an engineer or efficiency expert for construc- 

 tive criticism of the plants and methods of their customers, so I think the 

 country banks have just the same opportunity for guidance of their custo- 

 mers and their problems. 



Mr. Calwell: I take pleasure in introducing Mr. Harris from 

 Champaign, Illinois, who is chairman of the Agricultural Commission 



(184) 



