Article Text
Page Three John J. Mitchell, Head of $230,000,000 Bank, Gives His Formula for Success in Business When He Became President Deposits Were $400,000 By L. E. Schaefer OME years ago a surgeon named Osler was quoted S as saying that all men past sixty years should be painlessly removed from further competition, as worn out and impossible. Dr. Osler has since denied saying anything of the sort. John J. Mitchell was asked last week, on the date of his seventy-second birthday, when a man on active duty in such a job as his begins to get old. "Well," said the president of the Illinois Merchants Trust Company, who last month celebrated his fifty-second year with the institution, "some men are old and worn out at fifty. I was seventy-two years old on November 3 and I ceased feeling that I was growing old twenty-years ago. I feel as young today as I did twenty years ago. I have my enthusiasms just as keenly, enjoy and do my work as well as ever, I believe, and feel that I have a long way to go before I will be an old man." For forty years John J. Mitchell was president of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank. In October, 1910, he resigned as president of the bank to become chairman of the board of directors. In 1923 the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank and the Merchants Loan and Trust Company were merged, the new organization taking the name of the Illinois Merchants Trust Company. After a lapse of thirteen years— 1910 to 1923-Mitchell was re-elected head of the bank, taking the place of the late president, Edmund D. Hulbert, who died earlier in the year. To become president of the merged banks Mr. Mitchell stepped down from the higher post of chairman of the board, an action that has happened only once previously in the history of American banking. John J. Mitchell was born in Alton, Illinois; educated there and in an academy at Maine. His father, William H. Mitchell, established the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank in Illinois in 1873. When he was still a young man John Mitchell started to work in the bank as a messenger at the salary of twenty-five dollars a month, spending two hard-earned years at that particular work, which was a mixture of pedestrianism and clerking. Mr. Mitchell then became bookkeeper, then teller, then assistant cashier and finally, after one long jump, president. He was twenty-six when he became president, but the bank then had only $100,000 capital and $400,000 deposits. Now the capital of the bank totals $45,000,000 and the deposits $230,000,000. When asked how he managed to be seventy-two years old and still be almost as spry as a young man Mr. Mitchell sat back in his chair, pulled on a cigar and said: "I might say it was by hard work, but that would not be the whole truth. The formula for success, if I have it right, includes hard work, perseverance, a natural aptitude and a keen love for your work. This last, I believe, is indispensable. "It's love of your work that keeps you going, keeps you advancing in spite of obstacles. "It's love of my work that gets me out of bed at a quarter of seven every morning and puts me back in again before ten o'clock at night. If you love your work you will do all of the things necessary to keep you fit for it. "I am at my desk every morning at 9:35 o'clock and stay there until 3:45 in the afternoon." Mr. Mitchell stopped for a moment, pulled silently on his cigar, gazed out of the window, then he resumed: "A rational life without restraint and extremes; a good poise, that little things are not permitted to annoy; plenty of work; the health and ability to do that work within working hours. "The plainer a man's life the more he gets out of it," he added. "I'm an optimist, too. Always have been. I remember once a long time ago I was going into the Union League Club as an old friend of mine was coming out. Stocks had been going bad in New York. He stopped and asked me if I thought everything was going to the dogs. "But,' he replied, 'stocks are certainly going there.' 'Well,' I said, 'things haven't hurt anybody yet.' "And then he said I reminded him of a cartoon he had seen the day before. It pictured an optimist sitting in the stern of a canoe, with a pessimist in the bow, and the craft was headed over Niagara Falls. The pessimist shouted that they were done for. The optimist grinned and remarked casually that nothing had happened to him yet. And that was the way I felt about the financial situation that day. "I never take the bank home with me. When I finish my day's work in the office the office is forgotten. That is a good rule for anybody to follow. A man should have some fad, some hobby in addition to his family and his home that will give play to the creative instinct. At my farm, near Lake Geneva, I raise cattle and chickens, sheep and horses. They're expensive-don't pay their boardbut I get a lot of pleasure out of them. "Here is my schedule," the banker replied. "Three months in California, three months in the city and six months on the farm. I come in every morning that I am on the farm, except Saturday and Sunday, and I go back every night. I travel 150 miles a day during the week, and I like it. I can read my paper carefully, digest what it has to tell me. "Most important of all, I believe, is a home. Not just a house, a happy home. Mrs. Mitchell and I have always been plain people and our home life is simple and plain-some call it old-fashioned. We have raised three boys, two of whom are in business and a third just beginning. And two girls. Our home is still our home, and they like to come there and they like to bring their friends, SO I guess our plain home is not a failure." When asked about his start in the banking business, Mr. Mitchell said: "Let's see: I was twenty years old and my salary was SO small that I had to cut out cigars. I was promoted to the position of general bookkeeper after several years of being a messenger boy. Then I was made teller and bookkeeper combined-we had only one teller at that time. At twenty-six I was made president, being chosen as a last resort. "Well, we have weathered some storms since thenpanics and wars, and other disasters. But I believe any young man of today has the same chance I had if he sticks to his job and keeps his eyes on the position ahead." One day several years ago, shortly after Mitchell was made president of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, he returned from luncheon to find a crowd of excited depositors standing in line from the door to the paying teller's window. A curious throng was on the sidewalk outside. A run on the bank had begun. They kept open all that day and until three o'clock the next morning, paying every person in full who had a book, although under the rules they could have required a written agreement and thus stopped the panic. When the run failed to abate a worried subordinate approached Mr. Mitchell for advice. "Keep the bank open," was Mr. Mitchell's order. "Keep it open until the last depositor who wants to make his withdrawal is satisfied. Forget about closing hours." The run ended at 3 o'clock the next morning, and Is 72, but Does Not Expect to Retire for 20 Years the weary paying tellers left their cages. On the day following the depositors returned with their money, a little sheepish at their earlier fears. "That incident," according to financial men of that and this day, "made the bank." There had been a number of bank runs all over the city and country. One of them had been on the Mitchell bank at Milwaukee. The newsboys had called their extras that the Mitchell bank had failed, and it was believed that it was the Illinois Trust and Savings bank. That started the run. The older leaders of LaSalle street recall that Mitchell's father-a heavy stockholderprotested strenuously when his son was elected to the presidency of the bank. His son, he asserted, was too young for the position. Perhaps it was this which caused the youthful bank president to adopt little eccentricities of dress which made him appear older. But his administrative ability soon overcame his father's fears. In addition to the banking field, Mr. Mitchell is decidedly interested in the railroad situation. His charities are far greater than his less intimate associates suspect, but he has an aversion to publicity about them. "I could tell you a great deal about them," said a subordinate with a twinkle in his eye, "but I don't dare. Mr. Mitchell doesn't like it.' One official spoke of Mr. Mitchell as the "calmest person he ever had seen in a pinch." "There with times with the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank," he said, "when some important decision had to be made quickly. Subordinates might be flurried. The coolest man in the bank was the one on whom responsibility restéd-President Mitchell." Besides being president of the Merchants Trust Company, Mr. Mitchell is president of the Corn Exchange National bank and on the board of directors of several railroads. The experience that President Mitchell garnered in his fifty-two years as a banker is summed up in eight sentences that he believes embrace the fundamentals of finance and economic wisdom. Those eight sentences in gold letters several feet high, forming a part of the mural decoration of the main banking room of Mr. Mitchell's institution, were given their final touches on November 3 of this year-the veteran banker's seventy-second birthday anniversary. These inscriptions, culled from the literature of the world by C. W. Barron, at the request of Mr. Mitchell and Stanley Field, set forth sound principles of oconomics -the "bread and butter" principles that make for progress. The inscriptions follow: All the progress of men and nations is based upon sacredness of contracts.-C. W. Barron. A fertile soil with industry, and easy transportation, for men and things from place to place, make a nation strong and great.-Bacon. Human wants can be satisfied only by goods abundant and cheap, and these can be made with high wages for efficient production:-Leverhulme. In the family, as in the state, the best source of wealth is economy.-Cicero. Capital is what you and I have saved out of yesterday's Hartley Withers. The wealth of a nation is not in prices, but in production and reserves in store and service.- W. Barron. America has a system of banking which surpasses in strength and in excellence any other banking system in the world.-Sir Edward H. Holden. Private credit is wealth; public honor is security.Letters of Junius. It is the belief of Mr. Mitchell that if sound finance could be set forth on bank walls, in the double service of decoration and education, fundamental principles in business might be more deeply wrought into the heart and the life of the nation. Mr. Mitchell isn't nearly ready to retire yet. A year ago he stated he thought he would be ready "in about twenty years." But last week he admitted that he and Mrs. Mitchell had made "some globe-trotting plans." He quickly added that he couldn't get away for awhile yet, and confided he had compromised by planning his usual vacation in California this winter.
