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GREAT HOME MEN AND THEIR WORK Memories of Men Who Were Masters of Money-Their Strength Remains Public Security. There is scarcely a matter concerning the growth of Birmingham which can be discussed without bringing in the name of the late Dr. H. M. Caldwell, as the newspapers from time to time clearly demonstrate, for he figured very largely in all the material affairs of this city from its earliest days until his death a few years ago, and his name is still powerful to conjure with. In all questions of finance and investment and growth his name still is brought up, and the community has heard much of it in an honored way during the past week or two in banking and financial institutions. A lasting and splendid monument to Dr. Caldwell and some of those who have labored with him is the great bank at Nineteenth street and First avenue, the Birmingham Trust and Savings Company, or "The Trust," as it is popularly called. Dr. Caldwell was the prime mover in establishing this great institution fourteen years ago, and he became its first president, laying the lines of its after greatness with wonderful precision and broad and safe wisdom. This bank began successful because Dr. Caldwell and Paul H. Earle were at the head of it and were backed by a board of directors of great business sagacity and success. Weary of his burden, and conscious of his work of establishing the bank being well and wisely and securely done, Dr. Caldwell gave first place to Paul H. Earle, who continued as president until his death last Thanksgiving eve. Mr. Earle carried out the wonderfully successful policy of his famous predecessor, and was enabled to further increase the usefulness of and add to the extraordinary success of this bank, for Mr. Earle himself enjoyed the enviable distinction of being the most successful man whoever engaged in mercantile business in this city or district. For nearly twenty-five years the story of Paul Earle's life was, in large measure the business history of Birmingham, and for more than ten years Mr. Earle's honored and successful career was the story of this great bank. He knew his great work, and so wise was that work that during the panic of 1893 in the course of which nearly three thousand banks in the United States stopped cash payments, the "Birmingham Trust" continued to pay out dollar for dollar on all its obligations and checks of its depositors just the same as if "boom times" were at hand! That is extraordinary testinony to the wisdom of bank direction as exemplified in the Birmingham Trust and Savings Company. Dr. Caldwell and Mr. Earle, the two great presidents of this great bank, accumulated large private fortunes, and each 'died in his time the wealthiest citizen of Sirmingham. That means something of vital interest to all the people, for nothing is or can be of such vital concern as safe and wise banking institutions. This bank is now, fourteen years after it was founded, as Dr. Caldwell would have had, as Mr. Earle would have had it, and the remarkably strong board of directors now serving would have been just such a board as either of those strong men of the near past would have chosen.
