Business: Bigger, Better

Had certain U. S. bankers, who predicted a fortnight ago* that five or six branch banking institutions would control banking in this country foreseen last week’s news, they might have been even more vigorous in their condemnation of the McFadden branch banking bill and its Hull amendments.

This news, of such forensic value, was that the Irving Bank & Trust Co. and the American Exchange-Pacific National Bank, both of Manhattan, were merging. Directors approved the move; stockholders will soon vote. Together they have two main offices and 23 branches. Their combined capital is $735,000,000, third in rank after the National City Bank (capital $1,215,033,702 last December) and the Chase National Bank ($1,025,943,818 last February).

But monopoly is not the aim of the new institution. Chairman Lewis E. Pierson of the Irving Bank & Trust Co., who will be chairman of the merger, made that point clear: “While noteworthy from the standpoint of size, the chief importance of the merger will be placing at the service of customers an augmented banking power and facilities for world trade.”

Another merger of the week was that of the Central Mercantile Bank (C. Stanley Mitchell, President) with the American Bank (Julian M. Gerard, President). The new corporation, named the Central Mercantile Bank of New York, will have one main office with four branches, capital more than $45,000,000. Mr. Mitchell becomes president, Mr. Gerard chairman.

Behind the vast banking enterprises of today stand figures of whom the public knows little, and cares less. They seldom appear individually even in their old role of archvillain, Publisher Hearst and ilk having grown discouraged by repeated demonstrations of Capitalistic probity. As the technique of their profession has become sensitized, bankers themselves have been increasingly obliged to hide their personal lights beneath institutional bushels.

Nevertheless these figures exist and a very definite evolution of modern society they are. Their roots often strike back to early days of the U. S., as in the case of Lewis Latham Clarke, president of the American Exchange-Pacific National and executive committee chairman of the new Irving Trust combine. His ancestors were governors of Rhode Island, including that colony’s founder Roger Williams. The ancestors of Harry E. Ward, President-Elect of the combine, reached Massachusetts in 1630.

They have often entered banking as young men with little except a good education, working steadily to eminence rather than bringing spectacular fortunes out of other fields. Thus Chairman Pierson of the new combine worked for the Hanover National for 13 years before joining the N. Y. National Exchange (later the Irving Trust) as a clerk. Mr. Clarke was 12 years (1889-1901) in becoming assistant cashier of the American Exchange National though he was to succeed his father, Dumont Clarke, as president in 1910. President-elect Ward went straight from Yale to a bottom-level job with the Irving Trust, his rise to the presidency in 18 years (1901-19) being accounted exceptionally rapid.

Of these three men, Mr. Pierson, twice president of the American Bankers Association, has had most varied activities. He left banking for three years to direct a wholesale grocery house (Austin, Nichols & Co.). He has devoted time and energy to building up the foreign relations of U. S. business, through the Trade Acceptance Council, the National Foreign Trade Council, the Chamber of Commerce. France and Poland have decorated him. Privately, he is a sportsman—riding, yachting, fishing, golfing with the famed “Tin Whistles” of Pinehurst, N. C., and at the West Hampton, L. I., Country Club, of which he is president.

Mr. Clarke has been prominent in large extra-banking enterprises such as the American Locomotive Co., the Shell Union Oil Co., Postal Telegraph. As what banker does not, he enjoys golf, but belongs to as many scientific societies as country clubs. He likes society. Italy has knighted him.

Mr. Ward, youngest of the three (he is 47), divides his time sharply between his banking work and his play, exhibiting at the latter—on the Maidstone Links at East Hampton, L. L, and at the nearby Devon Yacht Club—the same vigor that has placed him high in the former.

*At the American Bankers Association convention in Los Angeles (TIME, Oct. 18).