Business & Finance: Bank Chief

When Daniel Richard Crissinger resigned as governor of the Federal Reserve Board a fortnight ago (TIME, Sept. 26), President Coolidge was obliged to look about for his successor. S. Parker Gilbert, agent general for reparations, was ineligible because of residence in the New York reserve district from which only one representative is permitted.* Walter S. McLucas of Kansas City declined. The President then appointed 45-year-old Roy A. Young, head of the Minneapolis reserve bank.š As hundreds of telegrams of congratulation poured on to his desk, the new appointee sat down to answer each one personally. “I consider it a great compliment the President of the United States has paid me. I hope he never will regret the confidence he has placed in me.” To close friends, he voiced regret at being obliged to leave his Minneapolis home for Washington. He has grown fond of the Minnikahda Golf Club*; where he has often swung along the course at a business-like clip, as likely as not telling jokes about his Scotch ancestors. “The only thing my Scotch blood doesn’t make me close about is my golf score. I’m not at all stingy about that. If I shoot 100, I feel I’m playing an excellent game for me. I love golf.” He likes duck shooting too but has no time for it. He has had no opportunity to travel out of the ninth Federal ReserveDistrict—Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, NorthernWisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He has a daughter, aged 13, another, aged 10. He was only 18 when he went to work as a bank messenger, because he could find no other job. And it has taken him twenty-seven years to reach the highest banking job in the land. For that success he quotes a platitude: “Observation and hard work.” Critics have been impressed with the quick, deliberate way he lights a cigaret and extinguishes the match, never requiring more than the absolutely necessary movements.

*Edmund Platt already represents that district on the board. š As governor of the Minneapolis bank he received $25,000 a year; as a member of the Federal Reserve Board he will receive $12,500. This membership must be confirmed by the Senate before the President can formally designate him the Board’s chief. *Here famed Robert Tyre Jones Jr. won the national amateur golf championship for 1927.