Oct. 10 — It will not be necessary to discuss at any length with this convention of practical bankers the merit in favorable public opinion of the individual banking institution. We may presume that without exception bankers realize the importance of public confidence as it relates to the solvency and management of the particular corporation.
The banker holds the integrity of his institution inviolate, knowing favorable public opinion is part of his stock in trade, without which the monetary capital might as well not have been invested.
When the good opinion of the public is superseded by distrust of the bank or the probity of officers or directors, its career as a commercial factor is terminated with an abrupt slam of the doors; the examiner reigns supreme in silent halls where speculation or careless investment have brought woe to the once proud financier, who must sit, crushed and humiliated, amid the ruins of unprofitable assets, like Grief upon a monument, looking at Despair.
I wish to ask your consideration of a subject equally as important, but not as universally and diligently followed, and that is, public opinion of banking as a business or profession — public opinion of the bank in the abstract; a subject regarded by this Association, however, as of such vital importance that a competent committee has been intrusted with the duty of enlightening the general public upon the functions and uses of banks, to the end that any ideas of mystery in the purposes and aims of banking institutions may be dissipated in the light of reason and understanding; that their practical benefits in the handling of credits, in the economical direction of capital into proper commercial channels, in the enlargement of its use through system and consequent benefit to all the people, may be understood and recognized.
No more important work was ever undertaken in the history of this Association, and I trust the efforts of the Bureau of Education may be so prolific of good results and that infallible antidote for prejudice labeled "Education" may be administered by "Doctor" Cornwell and his eminent staff of trained nurses in such heroic doses that in time even the good-natured old hat money skeptic may begin to see in the modern banking institution — transacting daily an amount of business without the use of actual money which, if performed by coin or its paper substitute, would make his wildest dreams of "per capita" look like the proverbial "thirty cents" — a real benefit, convenience and necessity to business interests; and then, perchance, "His silver hairs will purchase us a good opinion, and buy men's voices to commend our deeds!"
Public opinion today is the predominant, governing influence; it directs all interests, commercial or otherwise; its depression is the voice of the people, its approval the charter of success, its support invaluable.
This is likewise an age of materialism, in which commercial interests often dominate in the settlement of great public questions; influence the destinies of nations, and even threaten to partition territory and to move emperors and kings at will upon the chessboard of diplomacy.
Without considering the questions of sentiment or morals involved in the general strenuous advancement of things mercantile, it is evident that the caprice of rulers, the differences of religion and race, the lust for mere authority over men, which for centuries have inspired the course of events, are now subserved in great measure to the accumulation of corporeal property; and with commercial interests such an important factor, and public opinion such a puissance in our present civilization, we find antagonism between these components, the people's will. "The manifestation of public interests" looks askance at the growing energy of commercialism, and controversies arise as to methods by which trade and commerce are carried on or expanded.
