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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 JOHN CHARLES CORCORAN 
 
 Founder of 
 Trustees Svstem Service
 
 The GOAL of the BUILDERS 
 
 A Story of 
 
 Trustees System Service 
 
 By 
 
 GUY MORTON BRIGGS 
 
 Editor 
 
 The Industrial Banker 
 
 OPPORTUNITY is rightly called the loon 
 of American citizenship. But how often 
 has not Opportunity passed by some Aver- 
 age Man's door because of the lack of a 
 little money to make it possible for him to 
 grasp it and put it to profitable use in his 
 affairs? Industrial Banking is the modern 
 lever that enables the worker to recognize 
 and grasp his opportunity. 
 
 Published by 
 
 Trustees System Publishing Corp. 
 
 Chicago
 
 Copyright, 1921, 
 
 BY 
 
 TEUSTEES SYSTEM PUBLISHING CORP. 
 
 H%MMONO PRESS 
 W. B. CONKEY COMPAMlf 
 
 CHICAOO
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter page 
 
 I. The Man and the Idea 5 
 
 II. The Vision of Service 12 
 
 III. A Story of Progress ... * 19 
 
 IV. How ]VIen Use the Service 29 
 
 V. Character a Sound Collateral .... 38 
 
 VI. The Modern Industrial Bank .... 44 
 
 VII. Capital OP "The Man Who Works" . . 54 
 
 VIII. Marketing an Ideal of Service .... 64 
 
 IX. The Corporate Business Structure . . 73 
 
 X. A Dependable Credit Service 82 
 
 XI. Writing Insurance That Insures ... 89 
 
 XII. Service in Home Buying 96 
 
 XIII. The Trustees System Personnel . . . 102 
 
 XIV. Telling ]\Ien the Story 109 
 
 XV. The Goal of the Builders 118 
 
 550014
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Man and the Idea 
 
 ONE day, early in the year 1914, a young man 
 in Birmingham, Alabama, had one of those 
 wonderful thoughts that come, now and 
 then, to intellects of genius, and which seem to be 
 born into the world at opportune times to ease 
 the strain of difficult living for the great mass of 
 over-burdened men and women. 
 
 This young man was John Charles Corcoran, 
 one day to be known as the founder and guiding 
 head of that remarkable company of workers 
 whose business association prospers under the 
 name TRUSTEES SYSTEM SERVICE. 
 
 He was born at Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, 
 November 22, 1883. It was a little village on the 
 Wisconsin River, and the life of this boy was that 
 of a farmer lad, with all a farm's limitations in 
 that early period of his country's history. His 
 father, a small carpenter, had never gone to school 
 a day in his life; but it was his ambition to give 
 to each of his seven children a high school edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Little John Corcoran early learned all about 
 the value of money. He never did have any quan- 
 tity of it that he felt free to spend on the interests 
 of childhood. From the time he was eleven he 
 
 5
 
 G THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 earned his own way, bought his own school books, 
 and in time of vacation stowed away in a little 
 savings account enough to pay for clothing and 
 the other necessities that sent him through school. 
 
 His first job was soliciting the enlargement of 
 photographs across the countryside, but he made 
 a success of it. Many other jobs followed, for he 
 was interested in everything he saw, and he pur- 
 sued each new interest with a tireless energy. 
 Those early days are dotted, therefore, with ex- 
 periences as clerk, salesman, newspaper reporter, 
 factory and mill employe, farm hand and timber- 
 worker; and the year 1914 found him engaged in 
 the real estate business in Birmingham, Alabama. 
 
 If they were difficult years, they were soon to 
 have a particular value to him; and it is worthy 
 of note that the level of his daily efforts was that 
 from which the world's thinkers have always 
 come. P.erhaps an unusual influence was guiding 
 him. He was learning life, how men worked and 
 lived. At first hand, he was made familiar with 
 that ever-present struggle of the Average Man to 
 rise above and conquer his environment. 
 
 In Birmingham he found a set of conditions 
 that deeply stirred his interest. The city was 
 then, as now, an industrial center, typical of scores 
 of other busy communities in our country. It 
 swarmed with armies of working men and women 
 whose earnings were in the form of weekly wages 
 or salaries.
 
 THE MAN AND THE IDEA 7 
 
 It also swarmed with regiments of loan sharks 
 and pawnbrokers; and there was a sinister rela- 
 tion between the parallel existence of these money 
 leeches with the armies of earnest and thrifty 
 workers. They offered the only financial assis- 
 tance available to the worker in any time of his 
 sudden need or greater opportunity. No one else, 
 in fact, had ever thought of offering him a real 
 money service of any kind. 
 
 Why was this? 
 
 Aside from the ethical question of usury, it 
 seemed to Mr. Corcoran that there was no sound 
 business reason why a liberal, just and profitable 
 loans service should not be provided for the wage 
 and salary earner, as well as the man in business 
 life. 
 
 Yet banks, even as conducted upon the broad 
 and liberal plans known in America today, plainly 
 made no effort to touch this field. They were or- 
 ganized for service in a comparatively restricted 
 way, and so hedged about by rule and law that 
 they could not reach beyond their customary busi- 
 ness and financial circles, even if they would. 
 
 Only the savings bank opened a welcoming 
 door to the footstep of ''The Man who Works." 
 Yet even here his only resource in the day of 
 emergency was the paltry sum of the savings he 
 might have been able to pile up through arduous 
 months or years. No matter how honest and 
 worthy his character, no matter how thrifty and
 
 8 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 ordinarily independent, the Average Man, witiiout 
 property wliicli might be mortgaged, found no one 
 willing to lend money to him but the loan shark 
 and pawnbroker. 
 
 Mr. Corcoran looked about him and made a 
 study of the loan shark and his client. Birming- 
 ham doubtless in that day was no worse than 
 many another large industrial city in the vicious 
 character of its loan shark problem, and certainly 
 no worse than scores of cities at the present time, 
 where no adequate effort has been made to curb 
 the evil and institute a really helpful and rival 
 service. 
 
 He found the office of the usurer wide open 
 upon every corner, thriving in every office build- 
 ing. Literally by the hundred, they squatted at 
 every point of vantage, preying like leeches upon 
 the worker's misfortunes and necessities, sucking 
 up the lifeblood of his earnings, and leaving him 
 little chance to escape from their clutches, once 
 he was within their power. 
 
 The sight of the nefarious traffic sickened the 
 young investigator. He went about the streets, 
 watching the continual streams of those who en- 
 tered the den of the usurer, noting the heavy lines 
 of worry, illness and sometimes desperation in 
 their faces, with a heavy heart. He was stirred 
 as he had never been stirred before, and with all 
 his friendly nature he yearned to do something 
 to help these people.
 
 THE MAN AND THE IDEA 9 
 
 Gradually it was borne in upon his mind that 
 there were two distinct classes among those who 
 sought the loan shark's door; but the one class 
 was enormously greater in number than the 
 other. 
 
 The first was made up of the chronic borrower, 
 the down-and-outer, the potential deadbeat and 
 the man who was always in hard luck. Their 
 borrowings were of paltry sums, merely a few 
 dollars to tide them over until payday — their 
 excuse usually some insignificant emergency which 
 received but scant consideration at the loan 
 shark's hands. 
 
 But the second and far the more numerous 
 class, so numerous, Mr. Corcoran found, in fact, 
 as almost to hide the drifting human derelicts 
 from view, was made up of men and women 
 exactly like himself. 
 
 They came from those great armies of steady 
 and habitually industrious workers employed in 
 the stores and offices, foundries and workshops, of 
 the great city. They had homes of their own in 
 many cases, children, and usually good employ- 
 ment at their profession or trade. They were 
 earnest, thrifty citizens, bent steadfastly upon 
 the worthy ambition to get ahead in life, ordi- 
 narily amply able to carry their financial obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 But misfortune had fallen upon tliem. Unfore- 
 seen emergencies had developed in their lives and
 
 10 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 daily fortunes. Thrown suddenly into debt 
 through illness, death in the family, temporary 
 unemplojanent, or other mishap, in their un- 
 familiar and sometimes desperate trouble they 
 had no recourse save the charity of friends or the 
 hard conditions of the loan shark. 
 
 Perhaps there had once been a small bank 
 account, which was long since entirely used up. 
 Perhaps there were payments being made on a 
 home, and these had already become overdue. 
 Perhaps there lay in the books of the doctor, the 
 hospital and the merchants who had supplied them 
 with the necessaries of life, bills which had ac- 
 cumulated through long months of ill-fortune, and 
 which the borrower now sought to clear off be- 
 cause he was an honest man. 
 
 Because he was an honest man! 
 
 In that moment, as in the twinkling of an eye, 
 J. C. Corcoran got the essence of the great idea 
 upon which he was eventually to build the won- 
 derful Trustees System Service for honest men 
 and women. 
 
 For it was plain that the Honest Man must 
 be the foundation of the loan shark's profitable 
 business, as well as that of every other. If the 
 loan shark had to depend upon the chronic bor- 
 rower, the down-and-outer and the deadbeat for 
 any appreciable portion of his gains, he could 
 not remain in business long. 
 
 In fact, it has always been the vociferous claim
 
 THE MAN AND THE IDEA 11 
 
 of the money shark that it is because of losses 
 sustained through loans made to "deadbeats" 
 that he cannot do business except at usurious 
 rates. He confidently depends upon recouping 
 these small and occasional losses out of the fat 
 profits taken from the payments faithfully made 
 to him by the Man of Honor. 
 
 But J. C. Corcoran, in that swift, illuminating 
 moment, saw the tremendous possibilities of a 
 service that should reach out to serve only honest 
 men. It should be so organized that it would make 
 its appeal directly to the thrifty, industrious, con- 
 scientious citizen whom we know in America as 
 "The Man who Works." 
 
 Mr. Corcoran believed absolutely in the sin- 
 cerity and dependability of this man. He was 
 confident, not only that a liberal, just and non- 
 usurious loans service could be provided for him, 
 but that when this was done the worker himself 
 would respond in the full spirit in which such 
 service was offered, meet fairness and sympathy 
 with an equal understanding and honor, and that 
 a mutually friendly, helpful and profitable busi- 
 ness would be the certain and triumphant result.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Vision op Service 
 
 IT is evident to any thinking man that the usual 
 banking house is a class institution. Its offer 
 
 of service is only to those who already have 
 acquired a goodly portion of the wealth of the 
 world. Some form of mortgageable property, 
 either real property, stocks or bonds, deposits in 
 banks, or the assets of a going business, must be 
 presented to it before credit will be extended to 
 any borrower. 
 
 Nor is the savings bank essentially outside the 
 same narrow class circle. While it readily re- 
 ceives the savings of the smallest wage earner, 
 none of the total of its savings fund is available 
 to anyone who cannot present mortgageable col- 
 lateral in a ratio of at least two for one. 
 
 There is no intent here, however, to pick a 
 quarrel either with banks or their methods of 
 operation. On the contrary, it is plain that class 
 banks are necessary. The institution that might 
 be planned to serve perfectly both the wealthy 
 financial interests of an average American com- 
 munity and also the far greater mass of smaller 
 men and women, would have to be a colossal affair, 
 beyond the scope of anj'lhing hitherto planned or 
 imagined. 
 
 12
 
 THE VISION OF SERVICE 13 
 
 But for every person to whom the ordinary 
 banking house extends its loans service, there are 
 probably ten others who could use such a service 
 to their advantage, if only it were available to 
 them. 
 
 Even a casual glance at figures covering the 
 distribution of wealth in the United States will 
 enable anyone to realize this fact. Of the total 
 wealth in our country in 1921, estimated to be 
 300 billions of dollars, ninety-five per cent of it, 
 or more than 285 billions, was owned by but five 
 per cent of the people. 
 
 Conversely, therefore, the great ninety-five 
 per cent of the people owned only 15 billions of 
 the total wealth. Reduced to individual figures 
 among the 105 millions of people who in that year 
 went to make up the ninety-five per cent of our 
 country's citizens, we see that the average wealth 
 of the individual was then less than $150. 
 
 But wealth, even among this great ninety-five 
 per cent, is not distributed evenly. There are 
 many human derelicts to whom a dollar is only 
 something to be spent as soon as possible. These 
 always have been drifters, and they always will 
 be. Money gravitates into the hands of those 
 who realize its value and who have a thrifty con- 
 cern for the sound upbuilding of their fortunes. 
 
 Fortunately the great mass of our country's 
 citizens are of this latter class. They are neither 
 the beastly rich nor the abjectly poor. They are
 
 14 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 intelligent, self-respecting, earnest men and 
 women, industrious, steady workers, upon whom 
 the present greatness of our nation has been built 
 and its future may safely depend. 
 
 Although they have no great quantity of 
 wealth, each one of them is in the way of becoming 
 a man of means. They are little financiers, with 
 the steadfast ambition to grow bigger than they 
 are. Many of them are young, with all the hopes 
 and confidence of youth, eager to establish homes 
 and firesides of their own. They have their 
 wages, their brains, sometimes even a little sum 
 laid by in the savings bank. Daily in increasing 
 thousands they throng to and from their work, 
 their minds bent upon honest service, their hearts 
 and energies reaching out in all directions for 
 growth and greater opportunity. 
 
 Yet not one — or, at least, scarcely one — in a 
 thousand of these worthy people, either in time 
 of adversity or of opportunity, alike, can find 
 credit accommodation at any bank. 
 
 It was the dream of J. C. Corcoran to bring 
 to everyone of these splendid men and women a 
 broad and really helpful money service which 
 should adequately and peculiarly fit their needs. 
 His vision comprehended a remarkable class bank, 
 at which * ' The Man who Works ' ' should find both 
 a loans and a thrift service paralleling in every 
 way that enjoyed by the business man in his own 
 commercial bank.
 
 THE VISION OF SERVICE 15 
 
 His great Plan, in fact, embraced an entirely 
 new and revolutionary arrangement of financial 
 service. He saw the end of that day when any 
 community must center its progressive life solely 
 about any single bank or group of banks, whose 
 favor might be extended to a limited few, while 
 the vast majority of the people went entirely 
 unconsidered and unserved. Instead, he had the 
 courage to plan for a community where there 
 might be two vast financial influences, the one 
 properly serving men of wealth and the interests 
 of Big Business, but the other reaching out with 
 sympathy and understanding into the multitudes 
 of smaller homes of men and women who work 
 and serving and helping the people. 
 
 Being frankly devoted to the service of 
 workers — of average men and women — this "In- 
 dustrial Bank" should in every way consult their 
 own special interests. Its organization, plan of 
 finance, methods of operation, its very character 
 of thought and conduct, should be solely from the 
 point of view of the worker. And its actual serv- 
 ice should be the most liberal, easy and personally 
 helpful to the borrower that sound business prin- 
 ciples, the safety and integrity of the institution, 
 and a decent profit upon the money invested would 
 allow. 
 
 Realizing that any unselfish and idealistic pro- 
 gram, such as he proposed, would of necessity find 
 small favor with that type of financial mind whicli
 
 16 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 seeks the greatest possible profit under the law, 
 Mr. Corcoran turned confidently to the workers 
 themselves for encouragement. His eager mind 
 conceived a great co-operative association of these 
 workers, who should finance with their small sav- 
 ings their own credit system for loans service. 
 
 The details of this unusual financial plan will 
 be dealt with in their proper place, with all the 
 remarkable interest and value they deserve; but 
 it should be recorded here with emphasis that 
 Mr. Corcoran found among the people a sympathy 
 and a readiness to support his undertaking, which 
 far exceeded the modest hopes he originally en- 
 tertained of such co-operation. 
 
 The actual plan of his Industrial Bank was 
 modeled, for stability and strength, as nearly as 
 possible along the lines of the usual national and 
 commercial bank, but its methods were far more 
 liberal in almost every way. The ideal held con- 
 stantly before his mind was a loans service with- 
 out the shadow of usury, and which should effec- 
 tively rea«h and serve as many of the people as 
 possible. 
 
 Therefore no mortgage, assignment of wages 
 or property collateral of any kind was to be asked 
 of any borrower. Loans in moderate amount 
 were to be offered to any man or woman who was 
 steadily employed and whose reputation for in- 
 tegrity — whose simple honesty — was unquestioned 
 in the community where he might reside.
 
 THE VISION OF SERVICE 17 
 
 Thus character and earning capacity were to 
 be the two single requirements. Honesty was the 
 real security. Mr. Corcoran 's abiding faith in the 
 fundamental sincerity of average men and women 
 was to be put to the test as the basis for a great 
 loans service. 
 
 He planned to determine this question of char- 
 acter through a careful system of credit reports ; 
 and when it should be established that the in- 
 dividual was to be trusted, and that his employ- 
 ment was such as to enable him eventually to re- 
 pay the debt, the loan should then be made as 
 readily as a sale might be over a merchant's coun- 
 ter; provided only, of course, that the money re- 
 quired was to be used for a worthy purpose. 
 
 Moreover, time-payment privileges were to be 
 extended so easy as to fit the convenience and 
 income of any borrower. Loans were to be 
 scheduled over an entire year, or more, as the 
 borrower might elect; and as these partial pay- 
 ments were promptly met on the due dates, sav- 
 ings interest was to be allowed at the current 
 bank rate upon them. 
 
 But the scope of this unusual service was to 
 go even further than this. The single end and 
 aim of this Industrial Bank was to be a genuinely 
 helpful, unselfish service, in no case a handicap 
 or a burden. Care should therefore be taken to 
 see that no borrower, through a mistaken sense 
 of ability or pride, should in any case contract to 
 
 2 — June — 21
 
 18 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 make larger installment payments than might 
 readily be handled out of the margin left from 
 his usual wages or salary. To this end, before 
 any loan was attempted, a careful schedule of the 
 borrower's income and maximum expenses was to 
 be made out through consultation with the bor- 
 rower. 
 
 Thus men and women were to be helped, un- 
 obtrusively and sincerely, through giving them 
 liberal and dignified opportunities to help them- 
 selves. The loans service proposed was to be in 
 spirit and in fact a real Thrift service. The 
 vicious and notorious business of the money shark 
 should be fought with the golden weapons of 
 truth, fair dealing and honesty.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A Story of Progress 
 
 FOR the practical carrying out of this great 
 plan of service, Mr. Corcoran took a single 
 small office on a modest floor of the First 
 National Bank Building, in Birmingham. 
 
 It has been aptly said that this office contained 
 little more equipment than ''a desk, a chair, and 
 a big idea. ' ' But the man at the desk had youth 
 and enthusiasm, and he also had a splendid con- 
 fidence in the worth and ultimate success of the 
 business of service which he proposed to establish. 
 
 It is a well known and singular fact that the 
 world has almost always looked askance at the 
 ideas of genius. New things are a good deal of 
 a shock to people who are comfortably settled in 
 their ways. The more special knowledge a man 
 may have on any subject, the more reluctant he 
 always is to acknowledge that any better way of 
 doing a thing ever can be found. 
 
 Nor did Mr. Corcoran, when he presented his 
 scheme for a great Industrial Bank, discover any 
 failure in the application of this general rule. 
 It was a plan that startled capital. Instead of 
 realizing promptly that a stable and widely in- 
 fluential Bank of the People must prove to be an 
 additional power in the upbuilding and progress 
 of all the community, there were some financial 
 
 19
 
 20 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 interests which chose for a time to see in the new 
 plan only an obstacle to their own larger develop- 
 ment and profit. 
 
 Fortunately all this wholly mistaken opposi- 
 tion has long since disappeared. Men of every 
 kind have come to understand that the Industrial 
 Bank has filled a long felt want in the life of every 
 community where it has been established, and that 
 it supplies a vital and diversified service to aver- 
 age men and women which the usual banking house 
 never could attempt. 
 
 Bankers today are frequently among the first 
 to send to the Industrial Bank clients for loans 
 service whom they have been unable to supply; 
 and through a mutual respect and appreciation of 
 dignified service a substantial bond of real co- 
 operation has been drawn between them. 
 
 Birmingham, in 1914, however, held many men 
 of wealth who professed to find far more serious 
 flaws in the new banking plan than any mere 
 rivalry for business. They said, in the first place, 
 that money to finance the enterprise never could 
 be found; and in the second place, if sufficient 
 capital ever should be discovered to start such a 
 visionary and plainly impractical scheme of loans 
 service, the business structure must soon fall to 
 the ground of its own weight, because men and 
 women without mortgageable property were not 
 to be trusted with money! 
 
 Only a ''Dreamer of dreams," they said, ever
 
 A STORY OF PROGRESS 21 
 
 would propose to build a great business structure 
 upon any such unstable foundation as a simple 
 belief in men's honesty. 
 
 But the proof of the pudding, to quote a very 
 old and homely proverb, always has been in the 
 eating of it. When men smiled at the ideas of 
 J. C. Corcoran in that spring of 1914, they did 
 not comprehend that they were attempting to dis- 
 count one of the most astute and clever minds of 
 their generation. 
 
 He readily understood that attitude of venera- 
 tion towards profits which usually controls the in- 
 vestments of capital, and he had no intention of 
 hampering the high quality of his service with 
 the sinister influence of any large and powerful 
 stockholders. 
 
 His scheme of organization, therefore, passed 
 completely by men of wealth, for he rightly 
 deemed them unnecessary to his purpose. In- 
 stead he went directly to the wage and salary 
 earner, men of moderate means but of intelligence 
 and solid character, whom he invited to become 
 partners with him through the investment of a 
 small part of their earnings to form the great 
 fund for Trustees System Service. 
 
 These men would be able to understand the 
 high faith which he himself had in average men 
 and women. They were, in fact, precisely the 
 same kind of men and women whom his service 
 was meant to serve. They would be more liberal
 
 22 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 in their ideas and expectations of the legitimate 
 earnings of money, and he might expect them, 
 not only to be genuinely interested in the sei*\'ice, 
 but to be inspired with a desire to make truly 
 eifective and helpful the business in which their 
 investments should be engaged. 
 
 With such broad conceptions as these, then, 
 he laid his original business plans. He first in- 
 terested a few close friends, whose faith in him- 
 self, perhaps, w^as the principle influence which 
 drew their support, but who nevertheless could 
 deeply appreciate the unusual character of the 
 service he wished to render. With these friends 
 as a courageous nucleus he formed his first little 
 company, and then set out to carry his plans to 
 the people themselves. 
 
 Nor was he disappointed with the reception he 
 received at their hands. It seemed only neces- 
 sary to tell men the nature and purposes of this 
 wonderful service to make them immediately sup- 
 porters and friends. 
 
 The borrower instantly saw what great op- 
 portunity it offered him for financial betterment. 
 The merchant and professional man perceived 
 that such an unusual service would provide count- 
 less easy ways for the honest debtor to clear off 
 obligations which chafed his pride and sense of 
 independence. And the financier and man of pub- 
 lic spirit recognized in Trustees System Service 
 another vital force, like themselves, working along
 
 A STORY OF PROGRESS 23 
 
 broad and constructive lines for the solid better- 
 ment of all the people in the community. 
 
 The financial phases of the plan also appealed 
 to men as a sound and profitable undertaking. 
 They realized that the organization, under skill- 
 ful management, should have no difficulty in mak- 
 ing profits in ways precisely similar to those of 
 national and commercial banks. 
 
 Moreover, it was plain that a company of such 
 shareholding partners, each of whom, from a per- 
 sonal point of view, was so closely and vitally in- 
 terested in the business, must be bound together 
 in a manner the most truly and effectively co- 
 operative, and that results therefore should be 
 correspondingly great. 
 
 Thus success attended the enterprise, even 
 beyond the confident hopes of Mr. Corcoran and 
 his early associates. It will be remembered that 
 the year 1914 was the first of the great World 
 War, and that many a fair business which might 
 seem to have had every chance for stability and 
 certain growth, nevertheless crumpled up and 
 disappeared before the tempest that swept that 
 dark financial sky. Truly it was a time that tried 
 the souls of business and of men, and nothing 
 could better gauge the caliber of a young and 
 experimental company than this test of supreme 
 endurance. 
 
 But Trustees System Service not only sur- 
 vived, it grew through the storm with an aston-
 
 24 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 isliing assurance and vigor. Friends multiplied, 
 shareholders among the earnest, thrifty workers 
 of the community leaped in number from hun- 
 dreds to thousands. Business and professional 
 men voluntarily came strongly to its support, and 
 every financial interest soon realized a worthy 
 partnership with it in stabilizing the best interests 
 of all the industrial life. 
 
 Within the year the original little business 
 office was far outgrown, and the System moved 
 into the first of its spacious ground floor loca- 
 tions on First Avenue. This, however, was only 
 the initial advance, and Birmingham only the 
 beginning of the sturdy organization that was to 
 make its consistent and triumphant march down 
 the years. Inspired with a consciousness of up- 
 leaping power and influence, it soon became evi- 
 dent to the management that it was only the 
 part of wisdom to prepare for such wide growth 
 and expansion as the first modest hopes of its 
 founders had never dreamed possible. 
 
 Plans were therefore drawn for an organiza- 
 tion of really national importance and scope. 
 Louisville, Kentucky, in time was selected as the 
 seat of the first new Industrial Banking branch, 
 and in the establishment of this office an experience 
 very similar to that in Binningham was enjoyed. 
 Both the worker and the business man rallied to 
 its support, and its success was an accomplished 
 fact almost from the first day of its existence.
 
 A STORY OF PROGRESS 25 
 
 Thence the organization spread rapidly to 
 Indianapolis, and beyond that, in time, to Chicago. 
 But it would be only a story of infinite repetition 
 to record how each new office was established 
 and advanced in power of service and financial 
 strength. In every case success Avas built on that 
 honest faith in the integrity of the worker which 
 inspired the founder of the great service in the 
 first days of his vision in Birmingham ; and in no 
 instance was it ever necessary to limit the liberal 
 terms and methods he had established. 
 
 Opportunity was sought, on the contrary, in 
 all possible ways to make the service only the 
 more easy and attractive to average men and 
 women. The move into the vast field of Chicago 
 offered the System probably the most splendid 
 opportunity of its career. 
 
 This is the nation's greatest industrial city. 
 Its wide districts teem with the prolific energy of 
 factory and office, warehouse, foundry and mill. 
 From end to end on the south and north, and 
 from the lake far out into the western horizon, 
 stand the homes of the workers in these industries, 
 crowding one upon another, endlessly, thousands 
 upon thousands of little households. 
 
 They are the homes of "Men and Women who 
 Work," whose earnings are measured in the form 
 of weekly wages or salaries. Everyone of them 
 is a potential friend and user of Trustees System 
 Service !
 
 26 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 Two flourishing offices had already been es- 
 tablished here, but with the opening of the re- 
 markable year 1920 a new vision dawned for the 
 great service organization. Encouraged by mul- 
 tiplying successes and by the rapid stabilization 
 of general business conditions after the war, a far- 
 reaching plan of expansion was begun. The es- 
 sence of this new plan is to place a Neighborhood 
 Industrial Bank in every industrial center, in 
 every busy community of workers, across the 
 whole of this great city. 
 
 Five new" branch Industrial Banks were there- 
 fore planned immediately and carried into com- 
 plete organization during the latter part of the 
 year 1920. They are located as points upon a 
 great circle, scattered north, northwest, west, 
 southwest and far south, so that they are fairly 
 representative of what the Chicago organization 
 is planned to be, and with the two original 
 branches in the loop and the southwest form the 
 framew^ork for that vast network of service sta- 
 tions which the future years mil undoubtedly see. 
 
 Chicago is a city of 2,700,000 people. It is esti- 
 mated that there are more than 540,000 individual 
 homes. The achievement of this splendid plan 
 calls for a friendly blanket of service, which shall 
 be thrown over the whole of this vast community 
 and bring close to the fireside of every ''Man who 
 Works" an assurance of sympathy, understand- 
 ing and real financial assistance in any time either 
 of his emergency need or greater opportunity.
 
 A STORY OF PROGRESS 
 
 27 
 
 I9l4-n,115.94 
 
 I91S-$ 38,80148 
 
 1916 - $61,789.60 
 
 1917 -$141,190.33 
 
 1918 - $172,782.12 
 
 
 .'^tteiWa^y"fr4^"< 
 
 LOANS RECORD OF TRUSTEES SYSTEM SERVICE
 
 28 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 And beyond these lie the thousand other com- 
 munities of our country and nation, made up of 
 the same kind of thrifty, forward looking workers 
 and friends, who only await the opening of similar 
 service stations in their own neighborhoods to 
 avail themselves of the wonderful opportunities 
 these will surely bring. 
 
 For wherever there live men and women, 
 wherever there are households engaged in that 
 old, old struggle to w^est a little daily advantage 
 from the difficulties of work and life, wherever 
 there are children, wives and husbands subject to 
 illness and the many misfortunes against which no 
 strength and no loving foresight can shield them 
 or render them immune, there, if opportunity shall 
 ever be given them to know about it, you will find 
 devoted friends and thrifty users of Trustees 
 Svstem Service.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 How Men Use the Service 
 
 THERE is an old prejudice in the minds of 
 most people against going into debt. It is 
 almost as old as the world itself, and dates 
 from that day when the creditor, under the law, 
 had the right not only to seize the debtor's goods, 
 but also the man himself, and even his wife and 
 family, and sell them for the satisfaction of the 
 debt. 
 
 Nor has it been so very many years since this 
 was still the custom; for as late as the time of 
 Charles Dickens, men and women were thrown 
 into prison in England because they could not pay 
 their debts. 
 
 It has been a long time since our own splendid 
 country enacted laws which recognized the just 
 rights of liberty and of property alike, but the 
 practice of usury has really been little affected by 
 them. It could not be affected merely by passing 
 laws. Only a rival and powerful service, offered 
 upon such fair and liberal tenns as had never 
 been known before, could expect to deprive usury 
 of any of its victims or ease in any adequate 
 degree the burdens of those driven to its doors 
 by the lash of urgent need. 
 
 Only within very recent years, however, has 
 
 29
 
 30 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 any such ideal of service dawned upon the con- 
 sciousness of men. In the meantime the loan 
 shark and pawnbroker have successfully plied 
 their trade, each year fastening upon new thou- 
 sands of unfortunate men and women a slavery 
 only a little less difficult to bear than that of the 
 dark and ruthless ages. 
 
 Eightly, then, the yoke of debt has been held 
 by men in bitter fear. It is one of the chains of 
 habit, born of long experience of evil times. But 
 there are two impulses of the human heart today 
 stronger even than the fear of debt. 
 
 The first is the love a man has for his home 
 and fireside. The second is his worthy ambition 
 to win for himself such a measure of financial 
 independence as shall preserve this home and his 
 loved ones from all peril of time or adverse 
 circumstance. 
 
 These are the twin forces that make the world 
 go round. They are behind every worthy per- 
 formance, have been the chief incentives in the 
 building of home, state and nation. They are 
 the joint power making for stabilization, and are 
 the single reason for the steady march of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 To put the essence of it all in a single word, 
 no better can be found than that fine word 
 "Thrift." Under the banner of Thrift the work- 
 ers of the world discount every old fear and un- 
 dertake any new endeavor. The world is being
 
 HOW MEN USE THE SERVICE 31 
 
 carried forward by them faster today than it ever 
 went before. They are seizing opportunity in 
 ways which no man had ever imagined pos- 
 sible, and numberless are the devices and agencies 
 which are being found to help them build their 
 lives with newer strength, security and larger 
 happiness. 
 
 One of the greatest of these new means to 
 Thrift is the co-operative Industrial Bank, such 
 as has been established under the name of Trus- 
 tees System Service. With every passing day 
 men come to fuller understanding of the value of 
 this broad Thrift service. The little business that 
 was started as a ''visionary" and so-called "ex- 
 periment" has taken its place as one of the largely 
 helpful institutions of our country, bringing count- 
 less opportunities to "The Man who Works" in 
 each of the many communities where it has been 
 established. 
 
 There is no better way to answer the ques- 
 tion, "How do men use this service?" than to 
 give some practical story examples of interesting 
 experiences, taken from the daily files of the 
 Trustees System Industrial Banks. 
 
 In Birmingham there was a young mechanic 
 who had been "up against it" for a long time. A 
 severe illness of his own had forced him to quit 
 work for months, and no sooner had he returned 
 to the foundry than his wife was taken to the 
 liospital for a serious operation. This was ex-
 
 32 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 pensive, his small savings were swept away, and 
 he still found himself owing the doctor, grocer, 
 butcher, almost everyone with whom he did busi- 
 ness at all. 
 
 Feeling that his credit standing in the com- 
 munity was almost irreparably ruined, he went 
 about to his creditors asking for time and promis- 
 ing to pay each debt as he could. But his grocer 
 was a member of the Trustees System organiza- 
 tion, and told him about the Thrift Loans Service. 
 By going to the nearest Industrial Bank he se- 
 cured a loan at moderate cost covering the entire 
 amount of his debts ; with this he paid in full all 
 his creditors, and then without any inconvenience 
 slowly repaid Trustees System in small install- 
 ments taken out of the margin left from his usual 
 wages. 
 
 A young girl in Chicago had a great talent for 
 music. But her parents died, she had to go to live 
 with relatives, and as soon as she w^as old enough 
 was put out to earn her own living in a factory. 
 At night she gave piano lessons to a few pupils 
 at their homes ; and these, pleased with her talent, 
 brought others, until at length she was able to 
 devote all her time to teaching. But she longed 
 for a studio of her own, where there should be a 
 beautiful instrument responding with all the soul 
 of music to her touch, and where hundreds of 
 students should come for lessons where now she 
 was able to teach only a score. By going to Trus-
 
 HOW MEN USE THE SERVICE 33 
 
 tees System and taking advantage of its Service 
 this vision became an accomplished fact, and she 
 was able to repay her loan with ease. 
 
 The advantage of ready cash with which to 
 purchase and secure discounts is a common reason 
 heard for loans in Trustees System offices. A 
 carpenter of Chicago secured the money with 
 which to buy the sewing machine he wanted to 
 give his wife at Christmas. Another mechanic 
 eased the drudgery of w^ashing of all its heavy 
 backache through the purchase of a modern elec- 
 tric washing machine. Every day furniture is 
 bought somewhere by young people who, having 
 the courage to join their lives in some happy little 
 flat or cottage, secure the furnishings through the 
 means of a Trustees System loan, which can then 
 be paid out of their joint earnings carefully saved 
 from month to month. 
 
 A bank clerk had saved enough money to start 
 his son in college. But fire destroyed his home, 
 which w^as not insured for enough to cover all 
 replacement costs. For a time it seemed the boy 
 would have to give up his education, at least for 
 a year or two; but the father heard of Trustees 
 System Service, investigated, and through one of 
 its Cliaracter loans was able to send his son back 
 to the university on the appointed day. 
 
 A professor of history in the high school found 
 his salary barely sufficient to provide necessities 
 and a little pleasure now and then. When the
 
 34 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 second tiny baby arrived in his home his joy was 
 clouded with apprehension, for there seemed noth- 
 ing to do to meet the emergency but resort to the 
 pawnbroker. He gathered on the top of his desk 
 his watch, his cuff links, and the engagement ring 
 his wife prized above all other gifts ; then he began 
 a search through the newspaper for the address 
 of a possible money lender. But he never found 
 one. Instead, his eye lighted on the advertise- 
 ment of Trustees System Service, and through the 
 Industrial Bank, on the solid collateral of his 
 Character, he secured a loan that enabled him to 
 pay his debts on time and also to preserve his 
 independence and self-respect. 
 
 The service has helped innumerable men and 
 women to buy their owm homes, through provid- 
 ing a part of the first installment payment de- 
 manded. It has provided the cost of new roofs, 
 of repainting, of installing furnaces and of making 
 additions and various other improvements. 
 
 A coal dealer in Chicago instituted a popular 
 partnership with the Industrial Bank by securing 
 its assistance for hundreds of people who realized 
 the thrift of laying in winter supplies of coal dur- 
 ing summer months w^hen the price was very low. 
 
 There is a church in Louisville, a large part 
 of the cost of which was financed through the aid 
 of the Trustees System Industrial Bank. Pay- 
 ments on the mortgage were to be promptly met. 
 The people gathered together, each indicated w^hat
 
 HOW MEN USE THE SERVICE 35 
 
 part of the total sum needed he would be willing 
 to assume, and loans were then arranged through 
 Trustees System covering each of these amounts. 
 
 A private secretary in Chicago attributes her 
 present responsible position and large salary to 
 the fact that a Trustees System Thrift loan sup- 
 plied her with means to attend a business college 
 and so secure the education which started her 
 career. 
 
 There is another young woman, living in a 
 suburban home, who financed her family out of 
 serious difficulties in an unusual way. Her father 
 had died, leaving little more than a mortgage; 
 but there was still a home and a few acres left 
 out of what had once been a flourishing farm on 
 the border of the city. She was intelligent, ener- 
 getic, and held a position of trust in the business 
 office of a great factory. She racked her brain for 
 some way in which she could make additional 
 money to keep her mother in the old home. At 
 length she borrowed a sum from Trustees System 
 which enabled her to purchase several cows, and 
 with these she installed a dairy which was tended 
 by two of her young brothers. Within a few years 
 she not only paid off the loan to Trustees System, 
 but her energetic management of the business 
 made profits which eventually cleared off the 
 mortgage as well. 
 
 Many a man has bought a business with which 
 he was familiar through the assistance of the
 
 36 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 Trustees System Industrial Bank. A case in 
 point is that of a ladder man in the city fire de- 
 partment. He was awarded a cash prize for ex- 
 ceptional bravery, and this opened up to him the 
 possibility of purchasing a little grocery and 
 delicatessen business. With some help from 
 Trustees System he was entirely successful. 
 While his thrifty wife conducted the little store, 
 he retained his job at the fire house until the 
 loan was repaid. 
 
 Another young man, returning from school to 
 help his father with an old established business 
 in Birmingham, and realizing that the store 
 needed many modern appointments and better 
 methods to make it largely profitable, got the 
 money through the Industrial Bank to carry out 
 the new plans with entire success. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that Trustees System 
 Service may be of advantage to any man or 
 woman, no matter what his station in life may be. 
 The examples cited are offered only as typical 
 cases, and fall far short of adequately covering 
 the wide range of instances in which the Indus- 
 trial Bank daily serves its clients and friends. 
 
 They come to the office of Trustees System 
 Service, asking loans for a multitude of things, 
 almost everything, in fact, for which money may 
 be used advantageously at all; and no one is 
 turned away who has a real legitimate need of 
 money service, and who can qualify in the two
 
 HOW MEN USE THE SERVICE 37 
 
 simple requirements of personal honesty and an 
 earning capacity sufficient to insure repayment 
 of the loan.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Character a Sound Collateral 
 
 1% TO truer saying can be found than this, that 
 \ what a man goes about looking for in others, 
 what he expects to find, that he most surely 
 will find. The world is a mirror in which we see 
 the likeness of our own thoughts, incentives and 
 actions. 
 
 Hatred begets hatred ; love inspires love. Sus- 
 picion and distrust are worthy of no other ad- 
 versaries. Truth, sincerity, confidence, trust, are 
 really the basic sentiments of every human heart. 
 
 J. C. Corcoran has always held some deep and 
 rugged beliefs concerning Character. He believes 
 that the average man and woman are fundamen- 
 tally honest. He holds that the human heart or- 
 dinarily loves truth and sincerity. Where lower 
 instincts of men's natures are in control, they are 
 usually inspired by fear, and by that old primi- 
 tive distrust of self which comes from knowledge 
 that the individual has often had to fight to live. 
 
 Given, then, a fair and even chance among the 
 vicissitudes of life, the Average Man almost al- 
 w^ays will prove himself worthy of confidence and 
 trust. 
 
 It is a noble conception of Character ; but it is 
 nothing new in the world. Had the lower, evil 
 
 38
 
 CHARACTER A SOUND COLLATERAL 39 
 
 instincts of mankind been in control, civilization 
 never could have made the tremendous strides 
 forward that it has. The fact is that mankind has 
 progressed just to that degree in which confidence 
 and trust in fellowmen have been established in 
 the world. 
 
 Every transaction of business turns upon a 
 belief in the sincerity of some individual. It is 
 unavoidable, for if the question of credit never 
 arises, still the real honesty of goods or of services 
 always lies in the balance. It was so when ancient 
 nomadic tribes bartered their herds on far eastern 
 plains, and it is so today when the parcel of 
 goods is exchanged for money over the mer- 
 chant's counter. 
 
 Credit is usually held to be the great test of 
 Character, but it is not so wonderful as it seems. 
 For credit symbolizes simple honesty, and honesty 
 is not the exception, but the rule. Credit would 
 be extended far more often than it is if men could 
 realize truer conceptions of their fellows. 
 
 Some years ago J. P. Morgan, the elder, 
 startled the financial world by saying that he had 
 that day loaned a man a million dollars without 
 a penny of collateral. 
 
 But J. P. Morgan shrewdly knew that he held 
 the best collateral in the world to secure this 
 loan — he had tlie man's Character. 
 
 At all times the banks of our country liave 
 many millions of dollars out in loans whicli are
 
 40 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 secured principally by Character. Of course, tliey 
 hold notes of individuals, and statements of going 
 businesses, but the fundamental dependence, after 
 all, upon v.-hich they base their contidence that the 
 loans will be repaid is a belief in the honesty and 
 the ability to pay of men themselves. 
 
 The difference between the idea of credit as 
 exemplified in the usual national and commercial 
 hank and as it works out in the Industrial Bank 
 is scarcely a real difference at all. It is measured 
 more by the size of loans than by methods of any 
 consequence. Just as credit is extended to the 
 business man upon knowledge of his Character 
 and evidence of the assets of his business, so in 
 the Industrial Bank credit is extended the small 
 borrower upon his proven reputation for integrity 
 in the conmaunity and a knowledge of his regular 
 earning capacity. 
 
 The Industrial Bank recognizes that there is 
 no essential difference between the two men. Each 
 is controlled by the same hopes, ambitions and 
 fears, is steadied and strengthened by the same 
 principles of conduct, has relatively as much to 
 gain or lose as the other. 
 
 The difficulty, if difficulty it may be called, met 
 by the Industrial Bank in its system of credit 
 extension comes from the necessity for a most 
 thorough and peculiarly intimate credit informa- 
 tion about the ludividual. 
 
 Banks loan their funds principally to men
 
 CHARACTER A SOUND COLLATERAL 41 
 
 wkose cjedit standing and business assets are well 
 knowTi. The man who cannot readily furnish in- 
 dubitable proof of his credit standing is not ac- 
 commodated at any bank. The bank's service is 
 distributed among a comparatively small group 
 of clients where immediate knowledge is to be 
 had of any change in the stability of the loan. 
 Close touch is kept also through the brief life of 
 each loan. 
 
 In the present stage of Industrial Banking in 
 America, it is impossible to know quickly and 
 easily the credit standing of all workers. A vast 
 organization of the Industrial Banking system 
 must come before any parallel covering credit in- 
 formation could be drawn with the national or 
 commercial bank. However, the future holds 
 many possibilities much more intricate than this, 
 and in its proper place the subject will be taken 
 up with all the interest and value it deserves. 
 
 Industrial Banking finds its methods of secur- 
 ing information upon the would-be borrower best 
 exemplified by the large mercantile house, or de- 
 partment store. Here is a set of conditions almost 
 exactly parallel with small loans service. 
 
 The purchaser of goods asks credit, perhaps 
 in the sum of a few dollars, perhaps to a total of 
 several hundred. References are obtained. If the 
 sum is sufficiently large, perhaps a note is taken 
 with certain names in the way of endorsement, on 
 all of which careful information is secured. Pres-
 
 42 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 eiitly there is a complete story on file, giving a 
 composite picture of the debtor and his friends, 
 their abilities, their stations and earnings in life, 
 their Character and prospects. 
 
 Without this definite knowledge not a dollar's 
 worth of goods may be taken out of the store. 
 But with this knowledge complete, confidence is 
 established, trust is given, because experience has 
 shown that the man is honest! 
 
 Upon this broad and solid basis of loans serv- 
 ice the Trustees System of Industrial Banking 
 was first erected in Birmingham. It has never 
 been changed, except to make it even more liberal 
 and recognize more broadly still that average men 
 will meet any obligation of trust within their 
 power. 
 
 In those early days the System was weak finan- 
 cially, was only a struggling experiment as a busi- 
 ness. It was located in a city where conditions 
 for loans service were considered even more 
 hazardous than usual. But it had the courage to 
 loan every dollar that it had available on the 
 terms and conditions which its founders felt to 
 be just. 
 
 At the end of that first year the men w^ho had 
 taken those loans were scattered in twenty-six 
 states — but the installment payments contracted 
 for in their notes never faltered. They all paid I 
 
 Experience, therefore, showed then, and it has 
 steadily continued to show through all the remark-
 
 CHARACTER A SOUND COLLATERAL 43 
 
 able history of Trustees System Service, that 
 Character is a sound collateral. Industrial Bank- 
 ing in America, as exemplified through this great 
 service organization, may confidently place its 
 trust in the honesty of average men and women. 
 The workers — the great ninety per cent of our 
 country's citizens — wherever they have had the 
 opportunity to use this service, have responded 
 in the full spirit in which the service was offered 
 to them. 
 
 Today in everyone of the chain of Trustees 
 System Industrial Banks moderate loans are regu- 
 larly made to men and women on the simple col- 
 lateral of Character.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Modern Industrial Bank 
 
 MENTION already lias been made, not only 
 that the usual banking house is a class in- 
 stitution, but that such class banks are both 
 wise and necessary. Although limited in scope 
 through their narrow organization, these very 
 limitations make for more effective and valuable 
 service to the particular group of individuals they 
 may wish to serve. 
 
 In fact, although banks are usually spoken of 
 as falling into two large general classes — first, the 
 great institutions, commercial in character, serv^- 
 ing the interests of big and little business, and 
 second, the industrial banks or associations 
 planned broadly to serve the interests of average 
 men and women — the first is subdivided further 
 still. 
 
 To mention only a few groups, there are the 
 Cotton banks of the south which make a special 
 study of the vast planters' interests; the Drovers' 
 banks of Chicago and other points which render 
 a particular service to cattle and live stock in- 
 terests; and the small State, or neighborhood 
 banks scattered about in large cities which reach 
 out to the smaller business men of the community. 
 
 Still other illustrations are the banks specializ- 
 ing in farm loans, established under the Farm 
 
 44
 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL BANK 45 
 
 Loans Act ; and the great Federal Reserve Banks, 
 which are nothing more than institutions catering 
 to the peculiar needs of banks and bankers them- 
 selves. 
 
 Each of these groups has but one object in 
 view, a fuller and better service to meet the re- 
 quirements of the special interests it serves. Each 
 single bank in each group has identically the same 
 object, to serve as completely as possible the 
 wants of its own particular circle of clients. 
 
 These great class banks have succeeded won- 
 derfully in their object. Almost everyone is in 
 some degree familiar with the tremendous value 
 of the service they render to business. Our 
 American banks are approached in organization 
 and effectiveness by no others in the world, and 
 it is directly due to the service so lavishly ex- 
 tended by them that the business interests of our 
 country have been able to reap their phenomenal 
 successes of recent years. 
 
 Business, therefore, the approximate ten per 
 cent of the people, is amply served. It is to bring 
 to the great ninety per cent of the people a similar 
 service that the Industrial Bank has been or- 
 ganized. Trustees System Service has a potent 
 slogan which says: 
 
 "WHAT NATIONAL BANKS HAVE3 DONE} FOR BIG BUSINESS, 
 TRUSTEES SYSTEM IS DOING FOR "THB MAN WHO WORKS.' " 
 
 The big objective before the Industrial Bank
 
 46 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 is such a broadly liberal money service as shall 
 be fully as effective and valuable to the average 
 man and woman in building their financial lives 
 as other class banks have been to the man who has 
 won wealth in business life. 
 
 There is no better way to gauge this parallel 
 service than to inquire just what is the service 
 which banks render to business men. 
 
 The first thing that the experienced and wise 
 business man does upon moving into a new com- 
 munity is to identify himself with at least one 
 representative banking house. He may purchase 
 a few shares of its stock, if these are to be had, 
 in order to make his connection the more per- 
 sonal. But he will at least make himself known 
 to the officers of the institution, give them com- 
 plete information about his business, his life and 
 resources, and thoroughly establish his identity 
 in their minds. 
 
 He does this because he know^s that he will 
 soon have occasion to come to this bank and ask 
 credit for loans service. No man is so big that 
 he is able to finance completely all of his business 
 deals w^ithout assistance, and he desires to be so 
 solidly established in the confidence and friend- 
 ship of his bank that he can depend upon it to 
 help him in the day of his emergency. 
 
 In time, then, he discovers a need, perhaps, to 
 enlarge his business, to take advantage of dis- 
 counts in the purchase of goods, to finance new
 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL BANK 47 
 
 fixtures that will aid in stimulating liis trade ; or 
 perhaps he finds himself in some kind of a diffi- 
 culty, where he has sustained losses through fire, 
 or burglary, or through a sudden slackness in his 
 trade during a period of hard times. What, now, 
 is the first thing he does? 
 
 He hurries to his bank for consultation. This 
 bank is the strong, able, dependable house towards 
 which he confidently turns both in the time of 
 prosperity and of threatened disaster alike. He 
 has trusted it by placing his moneys in its keep- 
 ing, he has often before consulted it and taken 
 its advice. It has known him through a period of 
 time, and it is thoroughly familiar with his busi- 
 ness, his character and his prospects. Experience 
 has demonstrated repeatedly that it is his staunch 
 and true friend. 
 
 Now, if the occasion is a worthy one, this bank, 
 therefore, will freely extend the credit he asks 
 for; and it will do the same thing again and again, 
 a thousand times, year in and year out, just so 
 long as his business and his own conduct warrant 
 it in such service. 
 
 There are a score of other services of an allied 
 and valuable character rendered to the business 
 man by his class bank, which it is unnecessary 
 to go into here; but in every case the service 
 planned in the Industrial Bank is parallel and 
 equally valuable with it. 
 
 The average man and the business man are
 
 48 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 alike in all essential particulars. The one may 
 have his business as an asset, but the other has 
 his profession or trade of equal permanent value. 
 The one may be known as a careful and conserva- 
 tive trader in the mercantile world, but the other 
 has his own record of steady, conscientious work- 
 manship in the factory, office or mill. The one 
 may have a reputation for discounting his bills 
 of merchandise, but the other has a similar reputa- 
 tion for meeting his obligations promptly on pay- 
 day, and his character is unassailable. 
 
 Nor are these men essentially different in their 
 capacity and need for honest loans service. 
 Modern Americans have laid for evermore that 
 old bugaboo which is the senseless fear of debt. 
 They realize that judicious borrowing for con- 
 structive purposes is the surest road on which to 
 climb to higher levels in the world. Money is 
 always worth far more than the rental cost men 
 have to pay banks for the use of it. 
 
 Average men, therefore, are taking advantage 
 of the generous service of the Industrial Bank 
 wherever it has been established, just in the same 
 ways and for the same purposes as big and little 
 business men use their own commercial banks. 
 They are using it daily with an avidity and under- 
 standing of its resources that promise a wonder- 
 ful record of progress among workers during 
 future years, to be matched only by the progress 
 of business men through their own class banks.
 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL BANK 4& 
 
 The very great majority of the stockholders of 
 the Trustees System Industrial Bank are workers,, 
 not men of wealth, but average men and women 
 who have put a little of their savings in the in- 
 stitution towards which they turn for assistance 
 and friendly advice in the day of their perplexity 
 and need. The great fund of the Industrial Bank 
 is held in trust for the use of these and other 
 workers, who come to it day in and day out, year 
 in and year out, asking their moderate loans with 
 which to accomplish some worthy ambition and 
 lift their lives above the common run of men. 
 
 The terms of these loans are purposely made 
 easy, so that the debt shall never be a handicap 
 or burden, but on the contrary a positive help 
 and advantage in meeting the problems the aver- 
 age man and woman must daily meet. There is. 
 not in the life of any worker a legitimate and 
 thrifty need for money service which the Indus- 
 trial Bank is not equipped to supply, and not a 
 difficult problem in his home or business life which 
 this bank does not stand ready to help him with 
 if he will only come in and ask for counsel. 
 
 Each branch of the Trustees System Indus- 
 trial Banking vService is like a great consulting 
 bureau for advice and assistance in personal busi- 
 ness management. Men of all kinds bring to it the 
 financial problems which they have been unable 
 to solve, and no one is turned away who can 
 qualify in the two simple requirements of per-
 
 50 THE GOAL OP THE BUILDERS 
 
 sonal cliaracter and a moderate and steady earn- 
 ing capacity. Courtesy and service rendered here 
 are in no wise different, either in quality or effec- 
 tiveness, from the courtesy and service extended 
 big business men in their own great class banks. 
 
 Moreover, just as in the one, so in the other, 
 the average man and woman find a score of 
 smaller but equally vital subsidiary services at 
 their convenience in the Industrial Bank, in addi- 
 tion to the fundamental one of a broad loans 
 service. 
 
 The first of these is an opportunity to become 
 a shareholder and part owner of the business 
 through the purchase of a small portion of the 
 Industrial Bank's securities. It should be said 
 ■emphatically of Trustees System Service that no 
 obligation to purchase stock, or other require- 
 ment of a similar kind, is demanded of the bor- 
 rower in order to secure approval of his applica- 
 tion for a loan. But the opportunity to acquire 
 this stock is open to him, if he is able to avail 
 himself of the thrifty privilege. 
 
 Many thousand earnest men and women every 
 year do take advantage of this chance to become 
 investors, and thus, through the Industrial Bank, 
 find a double opportunity to build the nucleus of 
 ^ future comfortable fortune. 
 
 Another large subsidiary service, established 
 for the especial convenience and advantage of 
 the Industrial Bank's shareholders and friends.
 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL BANK 51 
 
 is that furnished by the Trustees System Insur- 
 ance Agency. This agency supplies any kind of 
 policy or bond, in standard companies, to fit the 
 exact requirements and abilities of the purchaser. 
 
 The fact has been demonstrated repeatedly in 
 the insurance field that policies are now and then 
 sold by careless agents upon which not a dollar 
 could ever be recovered in damages. Insurance 
 is one of the most technical commodities that any- 
 one can buy. Many good policies are filled with 
 obscure clauses which, unless thoroughly ex- 
 plained and understood by the purchaser, are 
 likely to cause him to invalidate the insurance 
 through ignorance. Only a thorough understand- 
 ing of these clauses by the insured, and a most 
 careful writing of the policy by a conscientious 
 agent seeking to fit the business to the exact 
 requirements of the case, can avoid all these pit- 
 falls. 
 
 The great incentive in the establishment of 
 the Trustees System Insurance Agency is to pro- 
 vide such a friendly and dependable service in 
 the writing of all policies that any man or woman, 
 regardless of technical knowledge or education, 
 can positively know that life or property, when 
 insured through this agency, is thoroughly and 
 adequately covered. 
 
 Each branch of the Trustees System Service 
 is provided with an efficiently organized Bureau 
 of Information, to which anyone is invited to bring
 
 52 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 his insurance policies for the purpose of having 
 them examined, free of charge, and thus learn just 
 how effective the coverage may be. 
 
 Still another important service rendered by 
 the Trustees System Industrial Bank is the assis- 
 tance offered the worker in buying his home. 
 The home is the basic structure of our country 
 and nation. Many a man never could have had a 
 home of his own if he had not gone deeply into 
 debt in order to acquire it. Many a man dare 
 not attempt so great an enterprise because of the 
 need of a little money to help him over the first 
 difl&cult year or two, which is always the heaviest 
 strain. 
 
 Every man without a home yearns with all 
 his heart for the good chance to come his way 
 which will enable him one day to buy the fair 
 little cottage of his dreams. 
 
 The great commercial class banks cannot serve 
 these men. In the past they have had but one way 
 to reach their goal. This has been the long, 
 arduous road which leads through the savings 
 bank, piling up slowly month by month or week 
 by week a few dollars through a long period of 
 years, until at last a sufficient sum has been laid 
 by to meet the large initial payment demanded by 
 the home builder. 
 
 Today, through the Industrial Bank, oppor- 
 tunity is widening this door, and the man who has 
 succeeded in saving a moderate sum finds a help-
 
 THE MODERN INDUSTRIAL BANK 53 
 
 ful hand outstretched to aid him in realizing his 
 ambition. The service of the Industrial Bank is 
 now effective in establishing thousands of new 
 homes every year for men and women who work. 
 
 Thus, through its many phases, the Trustees 
 System of Industrial Banking reaches out to touch 
 with new life and hope the homes of the great 
 ninety per cent of our country's citizens. It 
 brings to them a friendly sei'vice that effectively 
 meets all their principal needs. For the Average 
 Man, in the conduct of his personal business 
 affairs, does four things — 
 
 Buys or Rents a Home, 
 
 Insures his Life and Property, 
 
 Borrows Money, 
 
 Invests his Surplus Savings — 
 
 And Trustees System serves the Average Man 
 in each of these personal business affairs.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Capital of ''The Man Who Works" 
 
 CAPITAL is a word that has a noble sound. 
 We are accustomed to accord to it much 
 respect and not a little envy. But the prin- 
 cipal reason is that we have formed the habit of 
 persistently looking out at the possessions of 
 others, rather than in at the many things we own, 
 and may still own ourselves. 
 
 The total wealth of our country in 1921 was 
 estimated to be 300 billions of dollars. This 
 wealth had all been produced practically within 
 three centuries, for in 1620, when the Pilgrim 
 Fathers landed at Plymouth Bay, they invested in 
 a howling wilderness that, as a business proposi- 
 tion, might have been called little short of worth- 
 less. The income from this property — our coun- 
 try — each year is now more than 60 billions of 
 dollars. 
 
 It is true that of this total wealth, ninety-five 
 per cent is owned by but five per cent of the 
 people; but the five per cent of it that is owned 
 by the ninety-five per cent of the people still runs 
 to quite a tidy sum. In 1921 it was 15 billions 
 of dollars. 
 
 Capital is wealth of any kind or quantity. 
 And money, which is merely "fluid" capital, is 
 
 54
 
 CAPITAL OF ''THE MAN WHO WORKS" 5& 
 
 the handy token, the symbol or sign representing 
 this wealth, which men pass from hand to hand 
 in completing their daily transactions. 
 
 A single dollar or a single pound of coal is 
 capital, just the same as a million dollars or an 
 entire coal mine is capital ; and labor, the potential 
 result of efforts put forth by healthy brains and 
 muscle, is the best kind of capital there is. 
 
 Without labor not a dollar of the 300 billions 
 of our total wealth could have been piled up dur- 
 ing the last three centuries. Without labor not a 
 dollar of the 60 billions of income expected to 
 come out of it could be produced this year. 
 
 By the last census figures it is seen that with 
 the opening of 1921 there were approximately 
 47,000,000 workers — wage and salary earners — 
 in our country. They were the producers of the 
 60 billions of wealth made during the previous 
 year; and they and their families were also the 
 owners of the 15 billions which then represented 
 five per cent of the total wealth of our country. 
 
 Yet only ten per cent of them owned a savings 
 bank account. 
 
 To speak more accurately in figures, there 
 were on January 1, 1921, 11,427,556 persons in 
 the United States who were depositors in savings 
 banks. They owned a total in deposits of $6,536,- 
 470,000; and their average savings account was 
 $571.99. 
 
 This sum, during the single year 1920, had
 
 56 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 jumped forward by $634,000,000 ; and for the two 
 years since January 1, 1919, the total increase 
 had been $1,118,000,000. But the number of sav- 
 ings bank depositors, during the same two years, 
 had increased by only 60,543. 
 
 It will readily be understood that practically 
 every dollar of this money placed in savings banks 
 was owned by "The Man who Works." Big busi- 
 ness and professional men, financiers, do not place 
 their money in savings banks for the reason that 
 they have far more profitable things to do with it. 
 They are interested in business, manufacturing, 
 and the promotion of new ideas. They have their 
 funds in stocks and partnerships, places where the 
 returns from skillful management are the largest 
 possible. 
 
 Big business men are, in fact, the principal 
 borrowers from savings banks, because they 
 realize that the profits to be made out of bor- 
 rowed capital are immeasurably greater than the 
 rental cost they have to pay banks for their loans. 
 
 The worker, on the other hand, if he saves at 
 all, usually does place the surplus of his earnings 
 in savings banks. His reasons for doing this are 
 three-fold, and may be summed briefly as follows : 
 
 Unfamiliarity with business and consequently 
 a total ignorance of the reasonable earning power 
 of money. 
 
 A deep-seated conservatism, born of this ig- 
 norance, which makes him hesitate fatally over
 
 CAPITAL OF "THE MAN WHO WORKS" 57 
 
 investment, until he ends by accepting a pittance 
 from the savings bank for the service of keeping 
 his money "safe." 
 
 And, finally, the mistaken idea that large earn- 
 ings are only to be made by large capital, and 
 that it is therefore useless for him to think of 
 investing his small savings, because opportunity 
 to do so profitably cannot be found in sound enter- 
 prises. 
 
 These very reasons account for the fact that 
 out of 47,000,000 workers in our country, only 
 1114 millions of them, ten per cent of the whole 
 people, have a savings account. Practically 
 everyone of these workers could save money if 
 he would. The average savings each worker 
 should make each year is ten per cent of his 
 income. 
 
 When, therefore, the worker has gained a fair 
 knowledge of business and business methods, has 
 realized that there are multitudes of sound busi- 
 ness enterprises where invested money is skill- 
 fully and safely handled in the making of rea- 
 sonable profits, and learns that many of tlie best 
 of these are not only available to him, but that 
 they are business organizations of such a nature 
 and purpose that lie can be closely and heartily 
 interested in their ideals of service, then undoul)t- 
 edly the capital of ''The Man who Works" will 
 be enlisted in these enterprises to an extent and 
 volume undreamed of hitherto.
 
 58 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 One dollar has all the potential qualities of 
 any other dollar. It is only when that dollar 
 stands alone that it can seem insignificant. Ten 
 dollars, fifty dollars, one hundred dollars make 
 each a pleasant company. One thousand, one 
 million dollars can be seen and admired as far 
 as the human eye can carry. 
 
 What the worker needs to realize above every 
 other single thing today is the tremendous fact 
 that his thriftily saved earnings — his ** fluid" 
 capital — when organized into working units, as the 
 capital of Big Business is organized, is capable 
 of the same usefulness and the same kind of 
 profits in exactly the same proportion, dollar for 
 dollar. 
 
 Let us take, for example, an industrial com- 
 munity of twenty thousand workers. Suppose, as 
 a basis for very conservative estimate, we place 
 the surplus these average workers can easily save 
 and invest each month at $10. If these twenty 
 thousand workers, then, should be clubbed to- 
 gether where they make a common investment 
 saving of $10 each per month, this would mean a 
 fund of $200,000 every month, or a grand total 
 of $2,400,000 in a year. 
 
 We have but to multiply these figures by ten 
 for ten communities, or by one hundred for one 
 hundred communities, and so on, to realize what 
 stupendous possibilities for profitable investment 
 lie before the capital of *'The Man who Works."
 
 CAPITAL OF "THE ]VIAN WHO WORKS" 59 
 
 It is only because we do not appreciate, nor 
 even understand, the opportunities whicli even the 
 most moderate thrift will unlock at our doors, that 
 it has been possible to say of Americans that 
 "ninety per cent of them are only a year away 
 from the poorhouse, and fifty per cent of them 
 are only a week away from it. ' ' 
 
 Perhaps this is only a flippant epigram; but 
 the figures compiled by insurance companies are 
 indisputable, which show that out of every one 
 hundred men taken at the age of twenty-five only 
 five of them at the age of sixty-five are living on 
 their income, five are working, and fifty-four are 
 dependent on friends, relatives or charity for their 
 support; thirty-six are dead. 
 
 The ladder of individual success has three 
 plain steps in it. The first is. Earn; the second 
 is. Save ; and the third. Make what you save earn 
 for you other profits — in other words, Invest. 
 
 Put your dollar ON THE JOB and it will faith- 
 fully work for you. This is all that the Big 
 Business man does, all the multi-millionaire can 
 possibly do. This, in fact, is exactly what the 
 borrower does every day when he takes from the 
 savings bank the funds that the worker has de- 
 posited there for safety and puts them at work 
 to earn new profits for himself. 
 
 This is all that any man ever did to make the 
 fortune that thousands envy today. 
 
 Numerous are the instances that might be
 
 60 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 cited of wealth that grew from small investments. 
 There is that familiar story of James Couzens, 
 the poor Detroit bookkeeper, who borrowed $100 
 to complete an investment in Ford's ''visionary" 
 scheme to make a buggy run without a horse to 
 pull it. In twelve years this $100 made for him 
 over five hundred times its original value. 
 
 Alexander Bell tinkered for years with his 
 miraculous invention which men sneered at as a 
 "tinkling toy." Many of his early helpers re- 
 fused to take a little of his telephone stock as 
 part pay for their labor, but those who did pres- 
 ently found themselves wealthy. 
 
 The stories of the Kodak, the Talking Machine, 
 the Safety Razor, the Cash Register, the Sewing 
 Machine, the Moving Picture, Breakfast Food, the 
 Electric Lamp, the Air Brake, the Pullman Car, 
 the Automobile — they are all alike, different only 
 in name and incidentals. 
 
 Every invention, every right and well organ- 
 ized business, every honest enterprise, is a solid 
 part of the 300 billions of wealth that has been 
 produced during the 300 years of our country's 
 history. They and the stalwart men behind them 
 are what have made our country great. To be a 
 part of them, to gain wealth through them, men 
 had only to make the distinction between hind- 
 sight and foresight and apply it. 
 
 What, then, are the opportunities open to the 
 average man — the worker — today?
 
 CAPITAL OF "THE MAN WHO WORKS" 61 
 
 What Happens to 100 Men 25 Years Old 
 By the Time They Reach the Age of 65 
 
 36 ARZ DEAD 
 
 5 UVE ON THEIR INCOME 
 
 5 ARE WORKING 
 
 r* A ARE DEPENDENT on their fHeiult, reUdre* or 
 ^^ charity for lupport. 
 
 An imreatmcat of tsn per cent of their ••mingt 
 would h«ve kept them out of tbi< dew. 
 
 THE CHART OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE 
 
 These figures are based oa facts gathered by the great Insuranoe Companies
 
 62 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 We have seen that the wealth produced in our 
 country every year is approximately 60 billions of 
 dollars. In 1900 the total wealth in our country 
 was only 88 billions of dollars. In 1912 it had 
 grown to 187 billions ; in 1921 it was 300 billions. 
 
 It is growing today in precisely the same way. 
 Some new thing, some new idea, some new applica- 
 tion of service, is being born every day to increase 
 our wealth and make us better citizens. 
 
 More profitable inventions were produced last 
 year than in any year before; more will be pro- 
 duced next year. 
 
 Our population during the last decade in- 
 creased by more than 13 millions, more than a 
 third of whom are workers — producers of wealth. 
 
 Production figures are in any current almanac 
 which show that in mines, agriculture, manufac- 
 turing, transportation and every other great in- 
 dustry our country is leaping forward with giant 
 strides. 
 
 '*It is a grave mistake," says Charles M. 
 Schwab, ''to think that all the great American 
 fortunes have been made; that all the country's 
 resources have been developed. Men make oppor- 
 tunity. Every great industrial achievement has 
 been the result of individual effort — the practical 
 development of a dream in the mind of an in- 
 dividual. 
 
 No truer words were ever spoken. The vast 
 untouched resources of our country will be de-
 
 CAPITAL OF "THE AIAN WHO WORKS" 63 
 
 veloped by men with new ideas. The future for- 
 tunes will be made by men who have the courage 
 and confidence to step forward and take them. 
 And that larger future probably holds no greater 
 aid to the worker in seizing opportunity than 
 Trustees System Service offers him through the 
 modem Industrial Bank.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Marketing an Ideal of Service 
 
 WHEN it became generally known in Bir- 
 mingham, early in 1914, that Mr. J. C. Cor- 
 coran was about to organize a company to 
 establish his new type of loans service, there 
 were many people who thought to dissuade him 
 from his purpose by predicting that he never 
 would be able to raise the necessaiy capital. 
 
 These were the same men who had contended 
 that people without property, or without other 
 recognized business collateral, were not to be 
 trusted with money. 
 
 They now found fault with the basic financial 
 plan of the young organization. This plan, in 
 order to be effective and helpful to a wide range 
 of men and women, called for the enlisting of 
 large sums of money; and because Mr. Corcoran 
 chose to go for this money to the workers them- 
 selves, financiers could see no result for his efforts 
 but failure. 
 
 They said that the wage and salary earner 
 was unfamiliar with investments and business 
 methods, and that he could not be persuaded to 
 put his savings in securities that promised rea- 
 sonable and moderate returns. He had been 
 taugkt to deposit his money in savings banks for 
 
 64
 
 MARKETING AN IDEAL OF SERVICE 65 
 
 safety, and to be content with the current interest 
 rate of three per cent, or perhaps four per cent 
 a year. 
 
 If he should take his money out of the bank, 
 it might be to speculate in some get-rich-quick 
 scheme with the hope to gain a fortune over night, 
 but he would not be willing to invest it conserva- 
 tively in the expectation of more slowly accumu- 
 lating but solid business profits. 
 
 Moreover, these men of affairs said that 
 average men and women would not *' stick to- 
 gether." Assuming that any large number of 
 them might be persuaded to put their money in 
 the securities of a corporation, they would not 
 realize either their responsibilities or their privi- 
 leges, and would not staunchly support either the 
 business or each other. 
 
 It would, therefore, be only folly for Mr. Cor- 
 coran to attempt to enlist the capital of workers, 
 because they would not give to the new enterprise 
 that thorough co-operation which is essential not 
 only to the success of any single partnership, but 
 which is the life of the corporation — the multi- 
 plied partnership — as well. 
 
 There is only one way, of course, to deny a 
 calumny, that is, to prove it a lie; and there is 
 only one way to controvert the prophecy of failure, 
 that is, to build an enduring success. 
 
 The founders of Trustees System Service had 
 an abiding faith both in the honesty and the in-
 
 66 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 telligeiice of average men and women. They were 
 undeterred by any prophecy of failure, for they 
 realized, as perhaps few others did in that day, 
 the wonderful possibilities for profitable invest- 
 ment of the capital of "The Man who Works." 
 They thoroughly believed in the integrity of the 
 worker's support, once it was enlisted, and they 
 were confident they had a plan of business organi- 
 zation and an ideal of service that would effec- 
 tively enlist this support. 
 
 Those men who prophesied failure for the 
 young Trustees System organization were of the 
 old school of financier. Their experience had 
 truly been such as to give them ample grounds 
 for a pessimistic view. But the reason lay, not 
 so much in the fault of the worker, as in the old, 
 narrow, prejudiced views and methods employed 
 by these financiers themselves. 
 
 Both banking and business organization have 
 undergone tremendous changes w^ithin a compara- 
 tively few years. They have been forced to do so, 
 both by the need to find new sources of capital 
 to take the place of those already being drained 
 away, and by the rapid success of many young 
 and far more liberal organLzations which, like 
 Trustees System Service, have been willing to 
 give to the small investor a full and active part- 
 nership in all the profits made. 
 
 The day, fortunately, has long gone by in 
 America when the w^orker and his dollar were
 
 MARKETING AN IDEAL OF SERVICE 67 
 
 looked upon merely as chattels to perform a day's 
 work for as small a wage as possible. With, the 
 passing of the old political and industrial boss 
 controlling a community's affairs, a new and bet- 
 ter era brightly dawned. America at last began 
 to think of the welfare of the individual, and today 
 a ^* right and well organized" business offers the 
 savings and personality of the worker the same 
 rights and privileges as those of any big business 
 man. 
 
 In fact, the gauge of modern business success 
 largely has become the ability to interest, hold in 
 confidence and profitably use the capital of aver- 
 age men and women. 
 
 Mr, Corcoran and his associates had no need 
 to cater to the narrow ideas and prejudices of 
 large holders of capital. His plan struck boldly 
 out to show the average steady worker that with 
 the exercise of the most ordinary thrift he could 
 purchase a partnership in a profitable business, 
 and pay for it on a partial payment plan so liberal 
 and easy that it would allow him to invest his 
 moderate savings from month to month as he 
 made them. 
 
 First, however, he sought an opportunity to 
 really INTEREST men and women in the ideals 
 and purposes of the great Service that had been 
 established. 
 
 No one was more keenly aware than he of the 
 vital necessity for this personal interest. For it
 
 68 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 was upon human interest, upon genuine human 
 sympathy with the needs of average men, that he 
 placed his confidence in the eventual upbuilding 
 of a great structure of business. 
 
 He needed the little sums of invested savings 
 of many thousand thrifty workers, but he must 
 have their co-operation as well. AVithout this co- 
 operation the savings alone could be of little real 
 value to him. 
 
 And certainly no proposal of service could be 
 better calculated to arouse heartfelt co-operation 
 than his great loans plan. Men are most in- 
 terested in that which they understand and which 
 touches them most closely in their daily living. 
 Here was a plan of helpful loans service made so 
 liberal and easy, so broad and humanly friendly, 
 that all men and women who work might use 
 it again and again to their increasing advantage 
 and profit. 
 
 For who has not felt a need of money unsat- 
 isfied? "Who has not listened to the discourage- 
 ment of friends burdened with the load of care 
 and debt? What merchant, what professional 
 man, has not upon his books the numberless ac- 
 counts of honest men who lack only opportunity 
 and a little time to clear them all away and win 
 back their independence and self-respect? 
 
 The history of Trustees System Service has 
 been a splendid denial of that old calumny that 
 average men and women ''will not stick together,"
 
 MARKETING AN IDEAL OF SERVICE 69 
 
 and also of that other lie that they will not invest 
 their money in a conservative business. 
 
 From, the day its securities were first offered, 
 worker and business man, professional man and 
 banker alike have rallied to its support; and no 
 better augury of the future could be had than the 
 long years of success behind it, the sturdy and 
 far-reaching present business structure, and the 
 increasing thousands of those earnest, devoted 
 people who every year are glad to add themselves 
 to its roll of staunch supporters, shareholders 
 and members. 
 
 Men and women are not sought as members 
 of Trustees System primarily from the point of 
 view of money investment. Not everyone who 
 may wish to do so can purchase these shares. 
 The quality of the individual purchaser is the most 
 important consideration, and character and earn- 
 ing capacity are as carefully scrutinized as in the 
 case of the borrower who has made application 
 for a loan. f 
 
 It is often of far greater value to interest a 
 single small investor in the purchase of a single 
 share of stock than to bring in the cash money 
 of a score of individuals whose purchases miglit 
 run to many thousands of dollars. 
 
 The Trustees System Service organization 
 does not offer to anyone the hope to gain a for- 
 tune over night. It is not in business just to see 
 how much money it can make — if that were true
 
 70 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 it would get into the loan shark class, where it 
 properly would belong. It is a business formed 
 to make legitimate profits, but it has a philan- 
 thropic soul. Its shareholders have seen the 
 vision of its lofty service to mankind — or else they 
 have not become shareholders. They are people 
 who truly believe that ''giving" is more impor- 
 tant than "getting," and that Service is the 
 greatest thing in the world. 
 
 Not only in spite of this, but largely because 
 of this, it has built up since 1914 a tremendous 
 business organization, w^hich offers to average 
 men and w^omen one of the soundest and most 
 advantageous opportunities to profit that is avail- 
 able to them. It is fundamentally a thrift busi- 
 ness, an association of workers engaged in sincere 
 co-operation to secure, both for themselves and 
 for others, mutual benefits and profits. 
 
 Every man and woman — every thrifty worker 
 — owes to himself a debt that Trustees System 
 Service can help him pay. This debt is the obliga- 
 tion to become financially independent, to estab- 
 lish a financial reserve of such size that no mis- 
 fortune can ever overtake or destroy him. 
 
 It is a debt that can be paid in no other way 
 than by the methodical investment of a man's 
 savings during the years when his vigor and his 
 abilities are at their best. 
 
 Nothing can be more interesting than the table 
 of figures that shows what a man's savings, when
 
 IVIARKETING AN IDEAL OF SERVICE 71 
 
 AMOUNT SAVED DURING HIS SOth YEAR WILL INCREASE TO *7oi.oi 
 
 " " " " 494 " " « « „,_j, 
 
 " " " " 48th " •• « « g^^, 
 
 " MM" 47tl, M " U U g93J7 
 
 u u u u 4g(J, u u u u »49J0 
 
 M MUM 4gjjj « u « i< 1008^4 
 
 « * " " 44A " " « « ^„,^ 
 
 " " " " 43„1 " « M « „3gj, 
 
 " « M " 42nd " M MM J209.72 
 
 ** M M u ^j^ u u u u I28SJ2 
 
 *• " " " 40th " " u u I366.S* 
 
 39th 
 38th 
 37th 
 36th 
 35th 
 
 34th 
 33id 
 32iKi 
 3la 
 
 30th 
 
 29th 
 28th 
 27th 
 26th 
 25th 
 
 1451.01 
 1541.70 
 1638.06 
 1740.42 
 1849.20 
 
 19,475.52 
 
 1964.79 
 2087.58 
 2218.05 
 2356.68 
 2503.98 
 
 30,606.60 
 
 2660.49 
 2826.75 
 3003.42 
 3191.13 
 3390.60 
 
 24th " 
 
 23id " 
 
 22wi " 
 
 21«t " 
 
 20lh " 
 
 45,678.99 
 
 3602.52 
 
 " 3827.67 
 
 " 4066.89 
 
 4321.08 
 
 4591.14 
 
 66,088.29 
 
 POSSIBLE GROWTH OF INVESTED SAVINGS 
 
 The chart provides that at twenty years old a man starts savinf> one dollar 
 a day, 300 days in the year, invests these savings as made in an investment 
 paying 6%% dividends, and reinvests all bis dividends. He stops saving at 
 fifty years of age.
 
 72 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 carefully and conservatively invested, can amount 
 to during a given period of years. Suppose that 
 a man were to start at twenty years of age, saving 
 $1.00 a day for 300 days in the year, and were to 
 invest these savings in a security that paid 6I/4 
 per cent, and re-invest the dividends, until he was 
 fifty years of age : 
 
 At the age of sixty-five, the amount accumu- 
 lated from his fiftieth year would, it is estimated, 
 total $701.01; the amount accumulated from his 
 fortieth year would total $11,255.13; the amount 
 accumulated from his thirtieth year would total 
 $30,606.60; and the entire amount accumulated 
 from his twentieth year would be $66,088.29. 
 
 It PAYS to save; it PAYS to invest. The 
 ideal investment for the worker is the security 
 which makes him a full partner in all the profits 
 earned, and in which his interest will have a 
 double value from the fact that it is a business 
 where his heart can be invested as well as his 
 money — ^like Trustees System Service.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Coeporate Business Structure 
 
 ONE of the greatest leaders in our American 
 business world, a man noted for his extraor- 
 dinary liberal, broad and fair-minded out- 
 look upon all industrial life, has said: 
 
 "The one test of the permanent worth of any 
 idea or enterprise is whether or not it can be 
 used by all the people. A thing that is good for 
 only a few men is really no good at all. The best 
 things are those which give aid and comfort and 
 pleasure to all the people." 
 
 There can no limit be put upon the interpre- 
 tation of this great idea. Its application is uni- 
 versal. Since the world began the exclusive cus- 
 tom, the narrow privilege and the preferred right 
 have invariably given way before more liberal 
 ideas. Nothing can survive which may not be 
 used by the majority of men and women. 
 
 Business is no exception to this excellent rule. 
 The modern business which does not make in- 
 creasing efforts to render far-reaching service is 
 already doomed. The modern business which is 
 founded upon the principles of service and which 
 is devoted to an unselfish giving of that service 
 is the best kind of business there is. 
 
 It also will be most successful, because it will 
 
 73
 
 74 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 have the unstinted approval and friendly support 
 of all men and all women. 
 
 It is the good fortune of Trustees System 
 Service to be founded upon one of the most unique 
 and unselfish conceptions of service that perhaps 
 ever have gained wide fame in the world. More- 
 over, the financial plan of its organization em- 
 braces one of the most liberal business associa- 
 tions in which men are interested today. 
 
 The business instrument is, of course, the cor- 
 poration. It is a common habit to rail at corpora- 
 tions, and because of the iniquities of some large 
 and exceedingly powerful organizations to there- 
 fore damn them all. But the truth is that cor- 
 porations not only may be, but many of them now 
 are, great and beneficent institutions, so organized 
 and so conducted that the utmost in efficiency and 
 service is enjoyed both by those who are finan- 
 cially interested in them and those who are em- 
 ployed by them, as well as the public at large. 
 
 The corporation is the greatest and most effi- 
 cient agent of business that ever has been devised. 
 It derives its power from the state, whose author- 
 ity comes from the people. A creature, therefore, 
 of the state, it is a legal being empowered to act 
 as a natural person; but it has the advantage of 
 being able to carry on business in perpetuity, a 
 thing no individual or partnership could ever do. 
 
 In laying the plans for the business structure 
 of Trustees System Service, Mr. J. C. Corcoran
 
 CORPORATE BUSINESS STRUCTURE 75 
 
 and his associates took as a base several broad 
 and general principles, each of which they felt to 
 be endowed with all the elements of unquestioned 
 justice. 
 
 The first of these was perfect equality. Just 
 as the service they proposed to make possible 
 should be effective and valuable in the lives of 
 all men and all women, so the great business itself 
 should be equally profitable to all those who might 
 become financially interested in it, and should give 
 to each of these a voice proportionate to his in- 
 terest in the direction of the company's affairs. 
 
 The second great principle was universal op- 
 portunity. Not merely a few immensely wealthy 
 and powerful individuals were to be invited to 
 provide the capital and share in the profits of 
 the enterprise ; but a plan must be devised which 
 would open the door to every worker, and make 
 it possible for him to become a full thrifty part- 
 ner, co-operating and helping to build up the busi- 
 ness in which he and his friends were to be 
 personally and vitally interested. 
 
 The third, and always the highest principle of 
 all, was absolute unselfishness. Trustees System 
 Service must not be confused as a philanthropy. 
 It should be organized and conducted as a legiti- 
 mate business, striving to make a fair and rea- 
 sonable profit. But it could never be forgotten 
 that in the Trustees System ideal of service there 
 would never be any room for grasping methods.
 
 76 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 or for that littleness of soul in the individual 
 which is willing to take an unfair profit at the 
 expense of the man who is down. 
 
 Working under these great principles, it was 
 impossible not to devise a corporate plan of ex- 
 ceptional attractiveness and value. The corporate 
 shares were issued in moderate values which made 
 them within the means of every man and woman ; 
 and an easy partial payment plan was devised 
 which might spread the installments (if the in- 
 vestor so desired) over a long period in much 
 the same manner that the average borrower might 
 meet the easy payments on his loan. 
 
 Moreover, the organization of these shares pro- 
 vided for the payment of cumulative dividends 
 from date of full pajTuent ; and each share held a 
 full participating right with every other share in 
 all the profits earned by the corporation. 
 
 The essential picture of the great Service or- 
 ganization thus formed can be gained in no better 
 way than by offering here once more, as in a 
 previous chapter of this record, the example of 
 that thrifty community where many workers are 
 interested in a common saving plan and united in 
 a common investment purpose. 
 
 Here are ten, or perhaps twenty, thousand 
 heads of families, each of whom sets aside out of 
 his surplus earnings a small sum each month. Let 
 us suppose this average sum to be only ten dollars. 
 But it is joined "svith a like sum saved and in-
 
 CORPORATE BUSINESS STRUCTURE 77 
 
 vested by each member of the whole company, 
 who have united their capital in a common fund 
 for service and for profit. 
 
 The individual sums may seem small, but col- 
 lectively they grow within the year to a tremen- 
 dous and powerful capital, in the ownership of 
 which each worker in the company has a propor- 
 tionate part, both of capital and of earned profits, 
 according as he put into the original fund. 
 
 Ten dollars per month, so saved and so in- 
 vested by each of ten thousand men and women, 
 make $100,000 every month, and $1,200,000 in a 
 year. Ten dollars per month so saved and in- 
 vested by tw^enty thousand w^orkers make $2,400,- 
 000 in a year. 
 
 The picture of these earnest and thrifty work- 
 ers is not complete in any community until it 
 shows in the center the friendly structure of an 
 Industrial Bank, in which these savings are in- 
 vested, and to which anyone of them can come 
 with any perplexity or financial problem and con- 
 fidently expect the kind of assistance that will put 
 him surely on the upgrade again. 
 
 The practical working out of this great finan- 
 cial plan is what has built the corporate business 
 structure of the Trustees System Sei-vice organi- 
 zation. It is unnecessary to detail again the steps 
 by which it has gained the power and eminence 
 it displays today. Every business organization 
 is the result of evolution, expansion, made neces-
 
 78 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 sary by the growth of its success and the spread- 
 ing effectiveness of the service it renders. 
 
 In the case of Trustees System Service addi- 
 tional problems were encountered from the fact 
 that almost every state in the Union has a dif- 
 ferent law covering the loaning of money to 
 workers. These show how vital the lawmakers 
 have always considered this question to be, but 
 they are at the same time unmistakable evidence 
 that laws, no matter how carefully drawn, never 
 will really protect the average man, desperately in 
 need of money, from the loan shark. 
 
 Trustees System Service has endeavored to 
 make profitable use of every just law and oppor- 
 tunity as it found them. New companies were at 
 first found necessary to handle the business as 
 it spread from state to state, and each was planned 
 as a separate entity, loosely joined to the whole 
 body of the Service organization. 
 
 Soon, however, as the true vision of its great 
 destiny became clear to the management, a strong, 
 able and flexible business structure was evolved, 
 which is the efficient working plan today. 
 
 At the top is the Industrial Loan & Guaranty 
 Company, organized with an authorized capital 
 stock of $1,000,000. The province of this com- 
 pany is the financing and promoting of the 
 various branches of the Trustees System Service. 
 It is served by the Securities Department of the 
 organization, and it also directs the advertising
 
 CORPORATE BUSINESS STRUCTURE 79 
 
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 80 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 and publicity of the Service, including the publica- 
 tion of the Industrial Banker, the official journal 
 of Trustees System. 
 
 The Trustees System Service Corporation is 
 the operating and holding company of the organi- 
 zation. It has active control and direction of all 
 the working branches and departments of the 
 Service, scattered throughout the various states 
 where the Trustees System of Industrial Banking 
 is known. The rapid development and extension 
 of the System, with the marvelous efficiency of 
 its many branches, is largely due to the flexible 
 management established under the working of this 
 great directing company. 
 
 Grouped under its control, first, are the Loans 
 Departments, whose business is the fundamental 
 one of the Trustees System ; second, the Insurance 
 Departments, with active branches in all Trustees 
 System offices; third, the Credit Departments, 
 wliose organization reaches throughout the com- 
 plete Industrial Banking system; and fourth, the 
 General Department devoted to a Realty and 
 Home Buying Service. Each of these three latter 
 divisions is described and its work dwelt upon 
 with the care and attention it deserves in a sepa- 
 rate part of this record. 
 
 In each case these subsidiary businesses of 
 the Trustees System of Industrial Banking have 
 been the outgrowth of some especial need or op- 
 portunity to serve in a larger way the men and
 
 CORPORATE BUSINESS STRUCTURE 81 
 
 women who are its personal clients. They have 
 been evolved as the business spread, gaining in 
 experience and effectiveness with such tremendous 
 strides that within a few years they have become 
 large and profitable feeders to the parent organi- 
 zation, and such valuable servants of workers that 
 many friends have been made through their minis- 
 trations alone. 
 
 On an adjoining page a diagram is produced 
 which will give the reader a comprehensive idea 
 of the organization of the Trustees System Busi- 
 ness structure. By a study of this diagram he will 
 readily understand the simplicity and effective 
 operation of its far-flung and powerful Service. 
 
 Let it also be remembered that this business 
 structure is not just a great and soulless corpora- 
 tion, operating like some juggernaut of business 
 to render a minimum of service and then gather 
 to itself all the profits it can possibly make. 
 
 It is, on the contrary, an association of men 
 and women, human and warm-hearted Average 
 people, workers in the thousand industries and 
 offices of every busy community of this great 
 country of ours. They are banded together, first, 
 for service; second, for profit; and through their 
 personal co-operation with each other they have 
 built within a few years a vast partnership busi- 
 ness, which functions as a corporation in the most 
 efficient and unselfish service that men have ever 
 banded themselves together to produce.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 A Dependable Credit Service 
 
 WHEN that first little Industrial Bank was 
 opened in Birmingham in 1914 under its 
 potent slogan, "Loans to the Man who 
 Works," perhaps the most serious problem it 
 immediately encountered was the question of 
 Credits. 
 
 Although its founders had every faith in the 
 honesty of average men and women, and every 
 confidence that the business they were establish- 
 ing would come to successful fruition, no glamour 
 of idealism was allowed to cloud for a moment 
 the stem, practical necessity that the invested 
 savings of the Trustees System stockholders must 
 be protected in every possible way from loss. 
 
 The commodity dealt in by this Industrial 
 Bank was the most important in a business sense 
 that any organization could handle. It was 
 money, the medium of all trade, and no profits 
 could be entered or considered until the loan 
 should be entirely repaid. 
 
 The problem of Credit was the very heart of 
 the whole future of the business. Some sure and 
 smoothly functioning way must be found by which 
 to determine accurately and justly, and with a 
 rapidity considerate of the borrower's needs, 
 
 82
 
 A DEPENDABLE CREDIT SERVICE 83 
 
 whether or not he was to be allowed the loan for 
 which he had made application. 
 
 It was quickly discovered that the usual Credit 
 Reports to be purchased in the open market were 
 of little value in a banking or loans business. 
 They were deficient from the fundamental fact 
 that they were incomplete. The kind of hasty 
 credit report furnished by the average mercantile 
 reporting agency might do in the temporary 
 emergency of the little shopkeeper, with only a 
 few dollars at stake, but for the important matter 
 of a loan, they lacked such vital information and 
 were so full of holes for misunderstanding that 
 the Industrial Bank could not consider them at all. 
 
 In the national, or commercial, bank this prob- 
 lem is simply and easily handled. The borrower 
 is immediately recognized as a well known in- 
 dividual in the community. He has a sworn state- 
 ment of a going business, whose importance is 
 common knowledge to the bank and all citizens. 
 Or he has mortgageable property, the title to 
 which may be investigated in records of unques- 
 tioned value. If neither basis of credit is avail- 
 able, he will then put up sound collateral of such 
 character as the bank may demand. 
 
 But the whole scheme of service and the very 
 efficacy of that service in reaching and helping 
 average men and women depended in the Trustees 
 System Industrial Bank upon the successful 
 ability of this bank to make sound loans without
 
 84 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 asking the worker for any of these commonly 
 demanded credits. 
 
 The two credits to be supplied by the worker 
 were proof of the integrity of his Character and 
 a reasonable record of steady earning capacity. 
 
 But the fact of his honesty and the record of 
 his emplojTnent and earnings must, of course, be 
 determined beyond the possibility of a doubt. If 
 it could not be shown that the individual was 
 worthy and that he was capable of keeping his 
 contract to repay, no loan could be made. To 
 do this both to the satisfaction of the Trustees 
 System management and of the worker himself, 
 it developed that there was but one course to 
 pursue. 
 
 The Trustees System Service organization, 
 therefore, established its own credit investigating 
 department. 
 
 There is today probably no more thoroughly 
 organized and efficient Department of Credits in 
 any large business in the country than that of 
 the Trustees System chain of Industrial Banks. 
 While the credit division in each Trustees Sys- 
 tem city is a separate entity, they are joined in a 
 perfectly co-ordinating organization that reaches 
 throughout the extent of the Trustees System 
 business structure, and enjoys the benefit of the 
 best talent and experience of all the Service per- 
 sonnel. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that a prin-
 
 A DEPENDABLE CREDIT SERVICE 85 
 
 cipal reason for inability to use with confidence 
 the usual commercial credit report was its hasty 
 inaccuracy and incompleteness. The credit report 
 upon which entire dependence may be placed does 
 not fall short of as complete a record of the in- 
 dividual and his environment as may be obtained. 
 It should be a positive record, in which no fact 
 is overlooked and no conclusion left to inference 
 or guesswork. 
 
 But it should also be a just record. The honest 
 man has nothing to conceal. He is always ready 
 to assist the credit man in gaining that complete 
 picture of his character and abilities which will 
 enable an unbiased opinion to be formed. Facts 
 hidden or distorted, and information carelessly 
 passed by or only partially obtained, only tend 
 to confuse the real truth in making up the reliable 
 credit report. 
 
 Moreover, rapidity is a most essential con- 
 sideration in the securing of credit information. 
 This is always true, but it is particularly so in 
 the service of the Industrial Bank. Many of the 
 loans applied for there are requested only after 
 the borrower has been driven to the verge of 
 desperation and his need is vital, indeed. In spite 
 of many years of effort to educate the worker to 
 understand the large ease and opportunity of 
 liberal money service, he still shrinks from ask- 
 ing loans. In the hour of need, therefore, in his 
 desperate hurry to find almost any way out of
 
 86 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 his difficulties, it is small wonder that he falls 
 so often into the clutches of the loan shark. 
 
 But promptness in the handling of every ap- 
 plication for loans service through the Trustees 
 System Industrial Bank is made possible by the 
 thorough organization of the Credit Department. 
 Many of these applications have been handled in 
 a single day. While this, of course, is not the 
 custom, and the usual facts required in so impor- 
 tant a matter as a loan will frequently take several 
 days to acquire, still, in emergency, the borrower 
 finds a friendly consideration here as well as in 
 all other departments of the Trustees System 
 Service. 
 ^^ This consideration of the individual who may 
 be the subject of credit investigation extends 
 throughout the search for information about him. 
 Just as the interview with the loan manager in the 
 Trustees System Industrial Bank is an intimate 
 and confidential conference between friends, where 
 the object in view is unselfish and permanently 
 helpful service, so in the pursuit of credit in- 
 formation on which this loan is to be granted 
 every effort is made to continue the friendly spirit 
 of service. 
 
 The efficiency, therefore, of this Credit Depart- 
 ment might be considered remarkable even by the 
 great wholesale houses and department stores 
 upon whose general credit plan the Trustees Sys- 
 tem credit organization has been laid out. Effi-
 
 A DEPENDABLE CREDIT SERVICE 87 
 
 ciency can be measured only by results. The facts 
 are that the percentage of loss sustained by the 
 Trustees System of Industrial Banks through its 
 loans service is so small as to be almost nothing 
 at all ; and very seldom, indeed, in its history has 
 it ever been necessary to ask a co-maker to pay 
 the note of the man for whom he signed as a 
 friend. 
 
 Some idea of the volume of the credit reports 
 accumulated by this Credit Department may be 
 had from a knowledge that 6,652 loans were 
 granted by the Trustees System Industrial Banks 
 during the year 1920, and that the total loans 
 granted during a little more than five years were 
 16,316. Each of these average loans called for 
 the investigation of not less than four individuals, 
 for each of whom a complete credit report was 
 compiled. 
 
 This also does not take into consideration num- 
 berless rejected applications for the loans service, 
 taken in each Trustees System office, on each of 
 which the same thorough investigations were 
 made. 
 
 In addition, the Credit Department of the 
 Birmingham office issues the Red Book, which 
 contains a most interesting fund of Credit In- 
 formation covering the Birmingham credit dis- 
 trict. This Red Book comprises the names of 
 thousands of credit seekers, with their credit and 
 pay ratings; a complete list of county taxpayers;
 
 88 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 a bankruptcy list brought down to date; and a 
 complete list of owners of automobiles, in addi- 
 tion to other features. 
 
 It will readily be understood, therefore, that 
 the Credit Service of the Trustees System Indus- 
 trial Banks, in each of its established districts, is 
 popular with many business and professional men 
 who have taken advantage of the opportunity to 
 use it. The service is particularly valuable to 
 these men, because of the fact that the Credit 
 Reports in the Trustees System files are in- 
 variably upon workers, average men and women, 
 small business and professional men, among whom 
 the merchant and professional man find the mul- 
 titude of their own clients. 
 
 A Credit Service planned as the basis of a 
 great loans business, seeking to retain as a friend 
 everyone with whom it comes in contact, and so 
 thoroughly organized and far reaching that it 
 gathers the minutest details upon the characters 
 and abilities of many thousands of the buying 
 public, cannot fail to offer large opportunity to 
 anyone desiring to use a really efficient and de- 
 pendable Credit Service.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Weiting Insurance That Insures 
 
 SERVICE — the kind of service that saves a 
 client actual money, in addition to time, 
 worry, inconvenience and heartache — can be 
 exemplified in no better way than in the writing 
 of insurance. 
 
 The writing of insurance has become one of 
 the great businesses of the world. It is no longer 
 a commodity that the average man takes or leaves 
 alone as the whim or opportunity may come to 
 him. It is a thing that all men and most women 
 feel is an essential to the complete furnishing of 
 their lives. 
 
 The volume of insurance written, therefore, in 
 a single year is a stupendous sum. It is greater 
 in America than in any other country, partly be- 
 cause of better education which reveals to men 
 and women the sound basic reasons for its use, 
 partly because Americans are eminently better 
 fitted by economic conditions to avail themselves 
 of all its advantages. 
 
 But this very fact that insurance is in such 
 great demand and is written in such extraordi- 
 nary volume makes for a certain looseness and 
 inefficiency in the business that sometimes works 
 harm and even disaster to the unsuspecting and 
 trustful purchaser. 
 
 89
 
 90 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 As ill the case of every worth-while thing in 
 life, Knowledge is the fundamental requisite in the 
 writing and the purchase of insurance. If the 
 agent does not know the exact conditions under 
 which the policy of insurance is to be held, he 
 cannot accurately cover the thing to be insured. 
 If, on the other hand, the purchaser is ignorant 
 of the conditions printed in the policy which deter- 
 mine the rules upon which damages for loss will 
 be paid, he cannot comply with them for the pro- 
 tection of his property. 
 
 To the average mind it might seem that these 
 are simple matters to be met and readily over- 
 come. But the agent, in his haste, sometimes in 
 his criminal carelessness, is too often anxious to 
 write the new business without taking the neces- 
 sary time to find out all he should know about it. 
 And the printed conditions contained in the 
 policies of most companies are couched in such 
 legal and technical phrases that few can know 
 just what they mean without a careful study and 
 expert explanation. 
 
 When, therefore, the Insurance Department of 
 the Trustees System Service organization was first 
 opened, in the early part of 1919, and the policy 
 of the agency was being determined, it was typical 
 of the Trustees System management that this 
 policy should be planned as ''Purchasers of In- 
 surance. ' ' 
 
 Practically all standard insurance rates are
 
 WRITING INSURANCE THAT INSURES 91 
 
 the same. That is, the insurance companies whose 
 purchasable protection for life or property is un- 
 questionably first grade, and therefore ''stand- 
 ard," charge one scale of prices for this protec- 
 tion. 
 
 Insurance competition, therefore, resolves it- 
 self down to a race for volume of business, the 
 finding of new customers ; and men in the placing 
 of their policies are largely influenced to secure 
 the services of friends, acquaintances or business 
 organizations in which they are financially in- 
 terested. 
 
 In resolving to become "Purchasers of In- 
 surance" the Trustees System Service organiza- 
 tion saw a wonderful opportunity to render 
 valuable service to its shareholders and friends, 
 and at the same time build up a large and profit- 
 able business among the many thousands of peo- 
 ple who would realize that their financial interests 
 were being served as well as their better welfare 
 considered by this agency. 
 
 No agent can faithfully serve two masters. As 
 ''Purchasers of Insurance" the Trustees System 
 Insurance Agency aligned itself permanently as 
 the agent of the average man. It offered to go 
 into the insurance market for him, advise him 
 confidentially upon the kind of insurance and 
 company which should meet his requirements to 
 best advantage, scrutinize the terms and condi- 
 tions entered in the policy which should determine
 
 92 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 the payment of losses, and thoroughly explain in 
 clear and practical ways these often obscure and 
 technical clauses. Moreover, it would be just as 
 interested in seeing all losses promptly paid as 
 in writing the original policy. 
 
 There are three absolute essentials in the pur- 
 chase of any insurance. 
 
 First. A policy exactly suited to the buyer's 
 needs. 
 
 Second. A full and clear understanding of 
 its terms. 
 
 Third. Prompt settlement of all claims of loss. 
 
 Too often the first of these essentials is con- 
 fused in the agent's mind with either the amount 
 of his commission or the ease with which a make- 
 shift policy may be secured. Particularly is this 
 true in the writing of life insurance; but it also 
 applies to fire and other insurance. Rates charged 
 for the various classes of insurance are frequently 
 misapplied, and the purchaser charged an exces- 
 sive rate because the agent misunderstood condi- 
 tions. 
 
 A case of this kind was found when the Trus- 
 tees System organization purchased the building 
 in Chicago occupied by its Englewood Neighbor- 
 hood Office, at 818 W. 63d Street. Fire insurance 
 carried on this building, it was found, had been 
 written at $1.90, when the rate should have been 
 only $0.85 per hundred. Whether the value of 
 the policy runs to $25,000, $50,000, or only, per-
 
 WRITING INSURANCE THAT INSURES 93 
 
 haps, $5,000, the money loss may be considerable. 
 
 Only one method in the writing of insurance 
 will protect the purchaser against such errors. It 
 is the method conscientiously followed by the 
 Trustees System Insurance Agency, to treat each 
 risk as a separate and distinct proposition, to be 
 carefully studied and thoroughly understood be- 
 fore any attempt is made to write the insurance. 
 
 When the purchaser of insurance through this 
 agency receives his policy, he knows that he has 
 secured insurance of standard character, so writ- 
 ten that it meets the particular details of the 
 property and conditions he desires to have thor- 
 oughly covered. Service of this kind is of the 
 utmost value to anyone buying insurance of any 
 kind. 
 
 Moreover, the importance to the purchaser of 
 knowing the exact conditions upon which he has 
 accepted insurance can scarcely be overstated. 
 Many a man, having bought perfectly good in- 
 surance, accurately written, has invalidated his 
 policies repeatedly through ignorance of their 
 terms. Insurance does not always and every- 
 where insure. 
 
 For instance, a young man had his household 
 goods insured in St. Joe, Michigan. Securing em- 
 ployment in Chicago, he moved there some months 
 later, first taking the precaution to have the local 
 agent who sold him his insurance "transfer" the 
 policy to the new location. But the agent had no
 
 94 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 authority to make any such ''transfer" from one 
 state to another; and only by consulting the in- 
 formation bureau in the Trustees System office 
 was the error discovered. 
 
 This Information Bureau, provided for free 
 service to all who may bring in their policies, is 
 a feature of each insurance department in a 
 Trustees System office. It has performed an in- 
 calculable good to many thousands of people. 
 Numberless policies are brought into each of these 
 bureaus every week, most of which fortunately are 
 found to be carefully and properly written; but 
 now and then one is discovered which, in the case 
 of damages having been sustained, would have 
 left the policy holder no possible chance to re- 
 cover his loss. 
 
 Losses, when sustained, are usually paid with 
 reasonable despatch by any reputable insurance 
 company. But the insurance companies rated as 
 ''Standard" have a worthy pride and efficiency in 
 the prompt meeting of losses that is a pleasure 
 both to the insured and the agency selling the 
 insurance. Surely the question of the reliability 
 of the company should never have to enter into 
 the purchase of any insurance. The man buying 
 INSURANCE should not care to carry at his own 
 risJc the possibility that a single dollar of his 
 policy might never be paid. 
 
 The Trustees System Insurance Agency 
 policies are supplied only in Standard companies.
 
 WRITING INSURANCE THAT INSURES 95 
 
 These policies are written for every possible 
 kind of property and to meet every kind of cover- 
 age. The better known kinds of insurance, of 
 course, are Life, Fire, Automobile, Accident and 
 Health, Burglary, Theft, Tornado, Plate Glass, 
 Compensation, etc., but there are numberless 
 divisions and variations in practically everyone 
 of these general classes. They are all included 
 in the daily business of this agency. 
 
 The executives who handle this important 
 branch of the Trustees System Service are in- 
 surance experts. Each of them has had a long 
 experience in the general insurance field and is 
 abundantly qualified by this experience and by 
 his appreciation and enthusiasm for the high 
 ideals of the Trustees System organization to give 
 to his clients the very best service at his com- 
 mand. 
 
 Throughout the entire organization there are, 
 therefore, many satisfied policy holders, accumu- 
 lated through several years of tried service, whose 
 business has been carefully handled by these ex- 
 pert service men ; and they have built up a worthy 
 spirit of emulation among themselves, whose ideal 
 is crystallized in their department slogan, ** In- 
 surance that Insures!"
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Service in Home Buying 
 
 r[E organization of a Real Estate Depart- 
 ment as a subsidiary business of Trustees 
 System was a logical outgrowth of the great 
 Plan of Service. It was essential that this service, 
 the fourth in the list covering the Average Man's 
 important personal business needs, should be 
 available with the three others, including loans, 
 insurance and investments, in order to give to 
 him that complete Industrial Banking Service 
 which might fit his business life. 
 
 The home is the unit of all stable things. All 
 life — social, industrial, business and national — re- 
 volves about it. Progress waits upon its confident 
 establishment, and where the majority of the peo- 
 ple are not home dwellers, there inevitably lurk 
 envy, discord and drifting human vice. 
 
 The first men assumed civilization when they 
 made permanent homes for their wives and chil- 
 dren. Men today carry the world forward to the 
 steady sound of hammers nailing the last shingles 
 upon finished modem rooftrees. The possession 
 of a home is the sure sign of ability and success, 
 the visible reward of industry, thrift and good 
 citizenship. 
 
 Every man worthy the name, therefore, ar- 
 
 96
 
 SERVICE IN HOME BUYING 97 
 
 dently desires a home of his own. The greatest 
 handicap of our modern life is doubtless the fact 
 that increasing costs of all building materials 
 have made it so difficult for this worthy dream 
 to be realized. For the Average Man, in spite of 
 the fact that his dream is only of a modest cot- 
 tage, has no great quantity either of money or of 
 goods, and must plan, wait and save frequently 
 through a long period of years before his slowly 
 accumulating wealth will allow him to assume in 
 the open market the unfamiliar importance of a 
 home buyer. 
 
 Perhaps no more important and confidential 
 relationship exists in business life today than that 
 between the dealer in realty values and the man 
 who desires to invest his hard won savings in a 
 home. 
 
 The time, fortunately, has gone by when any- 
 one, as the saying was, ''could hang out his 
 shingle" and become an established real estate 
 agent over night. These are days of larger values, 
 better living and nicer discrimination in the choice 
 of business agents. Men must honestly win the 
 confidence of others before a worthy trust is 
 placed in them. 
 
 Tlie dealer in realty values wins this confidence 
 through an apprenticeship in no wise less exact- 
 ing than that demanded in any other business 
 of investment character. He should spend a good 
 many years in the scientific study of his profes-
 
 98 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 sioii, and must know in thorough fashion not only 
 the prevailing prices of his own community and 
 time, but also the basic values of other years and 
 many other communities. 
 
 He will also be an expert in the interpretation 
 of legal documents, an advisor in real estate law, 
 a student of taxes and economics and public wel- 
 fare, and an ardent advocate of good government 
 and every forward pushing idea of his day. 
 
 Only by the mastering of these wide and liberal 
 subjects will he be thoroughly fitted for that in- 
 timate relationship essential in the wise interpre- 
 tation of the needs of the home buyer. In short, 
 he must qualify to be in the highest degree the 
 servant of his client. 
 
 It will readily be understood, therefore, that 
 the Trustees System organization, in enlarging 
 its scope to include a real estate service, merely 
 completed the circle which embraced its eifective- 
 ness as the servant of Average men and women. 
 
 In establishing the Realty Service Departments 
 in its Industrial Banks, it first reached out to se- 
 cure the services of men whose personal and 
 business qualities might undoubtedly fit the exact- 
 ing requirements of its service ideals. With these 
 men once secured, the rapid upbuilding and suc- 
 cess of the departments was a foregone conclusion. 
 
 For success depended upon two wide sources of 
 business, in each of which the organization was 
 particularly fitted to give unusual service.
 
 SERVICE IN HOME BUYING 99 
 
 The first of these is the ever growing army of 
 its own shareholders; and the second, that still 
 more rapidly increasing army of workers, whose 
 aspirations reach out for homes and greater op- 
 portunity, and whose acquaintance and friendship 
 the Industrial Bank is making every day through 
 its wonderful loans service. 
 
 This loans service offers the ambitious man 
 possibly the greatest opportunity available to him 
 in the purchase of a home. It has been pointed 
 out that the usual cash payment demanded by the 
 home builder is so large that it is extremely diffi- 
 cult for the average person to meet. It is made 
 high for two reasons, because the seller desires 
 a sufficiently large sum to render him, as he con- 
 siders, ''safe," and because the constantly in- 
 creasing demand for houses makes a sale a very 
 easy thing to accomplish. 
 
 Thus the worker, with only his weekly or 
 monthly wage to depend on, must institute a long 
 course of thrifty saving and self-denial before 
 he can approach the goal of his ambition. 
 
 Trustees System Service, however, has effec- 
 tively brought this goal much nearer to him 
 through its liberal loans plan. It cannot contract 
 to supply all of the initial payment demanded in 
 the purchase of a home. That would neither be 
 wise nor sound business. The worker must show 
 his capacity to carry through his plan of home 
 buying by starting a saving campaign and ac-
 
 100 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 cumulating a reasonable sum. But when this is 
 done, by going to the Industrial Bank and laying 
 his plans before it, a friendly hand will be ex- 
 tended to him and substantial assistance rendered 
 in meeting the initial cash payment which may be 
 necessary. 
 
 This kind of constructive service has already 
 been the source of great benefit to large numbers 
 of men and women who otherw^ise might never 
 have acquired a home of their own. It is a service 
 also available to the shareholder, of course, just 
 as every part of the diversified Industrial Bank- 
 ing Service is available for the use of any man 
 or woman w^ho works. 
 
 Moreover, the realty buyer finds in the office 
 of the Industrial Bank that other service most 
 essential for his protection — namely, insurance. 
 The co-operation between these two departments 
 in the effective service of men and women is very 
 large indeed. And a similar co-operation is found 
 in the Credit Department when it is sometimes 
 necessary to learn important facts about the in- 
 dividual owning or about to purchase property. 
 
 These Eealty Service Departments do a gen- 
 eral real estate business in each community where 
 they have been established. They are by no means 
 restricted to the handling of property belonging 
 to shareholders, or to the sale of homes to workers. 
 But each department is efficiently supplied with 
 the most advantageous listings of properties
 
 SERVICE IN HOME BUYING 101 
 
 which may be at all available to the market, and 
 they endeavor successfully to serve with the same 
 high enthusiasm any who come to the Industrial 
 Bank. 
 
 The broad scope of their service will be under- 
 stood from the fact that they offer the best types 
 of realty investments, with valuable counsel along 
 these lines. 
 
 In no other department of the Trustees Sys- 
 tem Service is a more important bureau of in- 
 formation and counsel available than that fur- 
 nished by this Department of Home Buying. 
 Many a man, about to invest or sign a realty con- 
 tract, finds it wise to consult the Industrial Bank; 
 and general appraisals of values are often sought 
 by those who want to be confident they have chosen 
 the proper course.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Trustees System Personnel 
 
 ANY discussion of the personnel of a business 
 organization will immediately bring before 
 ""the mind of the reader a more or less non- 
 descript picture of a group of employes. While 
 this is true also of the Trustees System organiza- 
 tion, a description of its personnel will be found 
 unique, in that the extent and vital effectiveness 
 of this personnel is not limited to the immediate 
 co-workers, but reaches out to the personality of 
 everyone who has become a partner in the great 
 business of service. 
 
 It is proper to speak first, however, of the em- 
 ployes who are in active conduct of the various 
 Industrial Banking branches. 
 
 These are a company of men and women 
 chosen for some unusual qualities. Perhaps there 
 is no business in America which places a higher 
 value upon individuality. Individuality is the 
 natural expression of intelligence and industry, 
 and the Trustees System Industrial Banking 
 Service today is eminently the result of the per- 
 sonal efforts of many men and women genuinely 
 inspired with the vision of its unselfish service. 
 
 Many of these employes, some who have gro^vn 
 to places of leadership and supreme management, 
 
 102
 
 THE TRUSTEES SYSTEM PERSONNEL 103 
 
 were attracted to the organization in the early, 
 difficult days when it was still an unproved ex- 
 periment. Their loyalty is matched only by that 
 of many others who joined its ranks during the 
 following developing years, and who have helped 
 greatly in building the substantial framework of 
 its modern business structure. 
 
 In seeking service they have invariably found 
 extraordinary opportunity. Few business organi- 
 zations of any kind have grown with greater 
 rapidity and success than Trustees System 
 Service. As new branches were opened, new ter- 
 ritories developed, it became imperative that 
 capable men be found to manage and serve them. 
 These men, wherever possible, have been taken 
 from offices of the Service already established, and 
 when sent into new fields the very great per- 
 centage of them have made good. 
 
 Not only has this been true in the past; but 
 opportunity waits just as emphatically upon the 
 ambitious worker in the ranks of the Trustees 
 System organization today. The growth of this 
 wonderful service never hesitates or stops. New 
 branches are continually being planned. The 
 future holds no more golden promise for the 
 Trustees System of Industrial Banking than it 
 does for the man or woman in its employ who 
 is daily developing his opportunities. 
 
 These men have made good in the past, and 
 many others will make good in the future, largely.
 
 104 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 of course, because of the earnest cultivation of 
 their native abilities, but fundamentally because 
 of their belief in and devotion to the Trustees 
 System ideals of service. 
 
 The picture, therefore, which should lie before 
 the mind of the reader is surely that of an at- 
 tractive and worthy company. They are a body 
 of men and women thoroughly imbued w^ith the 
 spirit of enthusiasm to serve. They live and talk 
 the business of Industrial Banking. Its high pur- 
 poses fit the broad honesty of their own hearts, 
 and the question of wage or salary is secondary 
 with them to the fine satisfaction they have in 
 furthering the interests of this great service busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Yet this picture, after all, is one of only a 
 comparatively few people. It must be extended 
 and enlarged to encompass the personalities of 
 many thousands. In no other w^ay is it possible 
 to gain an adequate idea of that much larger com- 
 pany of earnest and devoted people who go to 
 make up the true personnel of Trustees System. 
 
 The real underlying reason why Trustees Sys- 
 tem Service has won the universal support of men 
 and women is that men love their fellows. Dis- 
 like, envy, malice are qualities foreign to the hu- 
 man heart. Kindliness is the rule; and when op- 
 portunity is given to do a fellow man a service, 
 the great mass of men and women hurry to offer 
 him both sympathy and friendship.
 
 THE TRUSTEES SYSTEM PERSONNEL 105 
 
 Therein is the fundamental fact which accounts 
 for the extraordinary success and growth of this 
 system of Industrial Banking. For Trustees Sys- 
 tem Service is built out of Friendship. Everj'- 
 shareholder in its ranks is enlisted principally be- 
 cause he is heartily in accord with its single desire 
 to render service to mankind. They hold a just 
 pride in being identified with an organization 
 whose impelling motive is to do a constructive, 
 permanent good to others. 
 
 Each of them has seen the Vision of this 
 service, felt the compelling urge that he himself 
 must have a personal part in making its effective- 
 ness more complete and far reaching, and has 
 joined himself willingly with a host of others to 
 bring its purposes about. 
 
 They are a great company of idealists, but they 
 are not engaged in a philanthropy. They are 
 united in a soundly organized and practical busi- 
 ness, because they recognize that no large or per- 
 manent good can come out of efforts that are not 
 based upon the firm foundation of common sense. 
 Industrial Banking is their stable and legitimate 
 business, out of which each one of them takes a 
 just and reasonable profit; but their paramount 
 incentive is that of unselfish service, and the ques- 
 tion of money profit is always a secondary con- 
 sideration. 
 
 They are bound together through a common 
 interest that is bigger than money. Workers
 
 106 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 themselves, members of that great class of Aver- 
 age men and women who are the backbone of our 
 nation, producers of the wealth, makers of law- 
 givers and courts and presidents, yet people of 
 moderate means and eager for every chance at 
 greater opportunity, they appreciate to the full 
 the value of friendly ser\dce, and they have a per- 
 sonal knowledge of the importance of Industrial 
 Banking Service in the life of every "Man who 
 Works." 
 
 They have no bigger ambition than to bring 
 about that day when workers throughout all of 
 this broad land shall know and enjoy the oppor- 
 tunities of Industrial Banking. They are enlisted 
 in a Great Cause, and are pledged, one to another, 
 to do all within their power to gain its tremendous 
 goal. 
 
 This pledge of co-operation is one of the most 
 important steps in the enrollment of any worker 
 in the ranks of the Service. He is not asked pri- 
 marily to invest his savings, nor encouraged to 
 undertake any thrift plan for the single better- 
 ment of himself. The one essential thing any man 
 or woman is requested to do in order to secure 
 membership in the Trustees System organization 
 is to place his belief in its lofty ideals and express 
 a voluntary desire to help other men and women 
 like himself attain them. 
 
 This is the heart of the power of Trustees Sys- 
 tem Service. This is why this young service or-
 
 THE TRUSTEES SYSTEM PERSONNEL 107 
 
 ganization has grown with such rapidity and why 
 it has been able within a comparatively few years 
 to reach and serve so many men and women who 
 need it. No business which is just a money mak- 
 ing business could spread as it has spread. It has 
 leaped to a national importance and scope because 
 it holds in its keeping the warm hearts and sym- 
 pathies of men. 
 
 There can be no narrowness in the membership 
 of such an organization. Money or property or 
 position in life cuts no figure of value. Men, the 
 human sympathies of many men and women, are 
 the only things that count. 
 
 Just as in the ability to secure and use the 
 liberal loans service, personal integrity is the prin- 
 cipal requirement, so in acquiring membership, 
 Character is the one great thing desired. The 
 army of men and women workers back of the 
 Trustees System Service organization are staunch 
 and true soldiers, enlisted in a personal service 
 that they love to carry on. 
 
 They are already established in little scattered 
 groups and in many centralized communities 
 through the length and breadth of our country. 
 Almost every state in all the forty-eight has scores 
 of representatives, and some of them have not 
 only hundreds but many thousands. Each one of 
 them is a dynamic and enthusiastic proponent of 
 the great Service and all that Industrial Banking 
 can mean for workers. One and all, they look back
 
 108 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 witli wistful eyes to the cities wliere branches of 
 the Service are already in active operation, and 
 eagerly anticipate the day when spreading power 
 and influence will make it possible for a Trustees 
 System Industrial Bank to be organized in their 
 own close neighborhood. 
 
 But not alone in our own country are these 
 scattered groups of loyal members to be found. 
 Europe, itself the original home of co-operative 
 Industrial Banking, has many men and women 
 who are partners in this far-reaching Trustees 
 System Service. They are in England, Ireland 
 and Belgium, Germany and France and Italy, 
 Switzerland, Eoumania and Greece. Still other 
 members are scattered through the states of South 
 America and a few even in far Asia. 
 
 So it may truthfully be said that almost the 
 world over the Trustees System of Industrial 
 Banking is already favorably known and appre- 
 ciated for what it is doing for men and women 
 who work. The far flung network of its members 
 is like a great golden w^eb of friendship, binding 
 workers everywhere into closer intimacy and 
 service, and spreading the story of co-operative 
 Industrial Banking broadcast over the land.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Telling Men the Story 
 
 IF the picture presented in the last chapter of 
 this record has carried any effective message, 
 
 it is that of a vast company of earnest and 
 virile men and women, inspired with a lofty and 
 unselfish ideal of service, and working like some 
 great instrument towards a definite goal well 
 within their view. 
 
 It is a splendid fact that many of the most 
 effective movements in this world, those whose re- 
 sults have been felt over centuries and remained 
 permanent, were the organized efforts of men and 
 women bound together through co-operation for 
 unselfish ends. 
 
 Witness the Crusades; and witness all reli- 
 gions. Witness, also, in our own day the spread- 
 ing association of the Red Cross. 
 
 Whether the motive is an abstract moral ideal, 
 or a practical daily effort to render aid to those 
 in need, unselfish Service is the greatest thing in 
 the world. Men enlisted in service to others can- 
 not be defeated, find no limit to the scope and 
 splendor of the work which they can do. 
 
 The Trustees System Service organization is 
 one of the most purely co-operative mutual asso- 
 ciations in existence. No Industrial Banking or- 
 
 109
 
 110 THE GOAL OP THE BUILDERS 
 
 ganization any^vliere in the world matches it in 
 the broad liberality of its service or in the effect- 
 tive thoroughness of its partnership. Its plan is 
 distinctly American. It deserves to be, and one 
 day undoubtedly it will be, known throughout our 
 own country as a truly national institution with a 
 hundred prosperous branches where today it has 
 but one. 
 
 The worthy instrument which will succeed in 
 spreading this great organization is the member- 
 ship — the shareholding partners — in its ranks. It 
 is so that all other mutual associations have 
 been spread to best advantage. Each has grown 
 swiftly, gained effective power and influence, just 
 as the men and women who were its members have 
 become inspired with the urge of its high service 
 and have carried the message to others by word 
 of mouth. 
 
 No voice has a force or persuasive effective- 
 ness like that of a friend. It is to friends and 
 acquaintances, men and women in their own neigh- 
 borhoods, workers in the same communities, that 
 Trustees System members carry the story of this 
 service. They have a wonderful story to tell, a 
 story that reaches into the personal experience 
 and ambitions of every "Man who Works"; and 
 they find in every listener a ready and an appre- 
 ciative ear. 
 
 For the more effective spreading of this story 
 they are organized into a great Association of
 
 TELLING MEN THE STORY 111 
 
 friendly propagandists. It is called the Trustees 
 System National Association. This Association 
 was brought into being during the summer of 
 1920, but it already numbers among its members 
 the great bulk of the Trustees System sharehold- 
 ing partners, and in addition many others who 
 have joined its body as Associate Members, 
 through a high and loyal interest in the better 
 advancement of Industrial Banking ideals. 
 
 The central aim and object of the Trustees 
 System National Association is just to spread the 
 influence and power of Industrial Banking Service 
 by telling men the absorbing story. Its members 
 are bound together to further the interests of this 
 Service in every way they can. They are filled 
 with an enthusiasm that is rapidly Avinning a big 
 and lasting success. 
 
 There is strength in numbers. There is also 
 a fine consciousness of that strength. The union 
 of many minds thinking upon one idea, interested 
 in a common goal, is an irresistible force, worthy 
 of any purpose. The body of men and women 
 who make up the Trustees System National Asso- 
 ciation is already a vital force reaching through 
 hundreds of communities and effectively influenc- 
 ing men to bigger and better things. They will 
 continue to grow in numbers and strength until 
 their influence will eventually be felt across the 
 whole of our nation. 
 
 Their interests will be national interests. For
 
 112 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 this great Association is for fundamentally con- 
 structive ends, and whatever is good in govern- 
 ment or social or business life will meet with their 
 hearty support. Our nation is governed by and for 
 the people, and its laws are framed with no other 
 end in view than the fuller happiness and pros- 
 perity of all of these people. It will, therefore, be 
 a part of the business of the Trustees System 
 National Association to see to it that just laws are 
 made for the good of Industrial Banking Service. 
 
 Laws are now" needed to harmonize over the 
 many states the conflicting acts of legislatures 
 controlling the loaning of money at equitable 
 rates. Other laws are needed legalizing and en- 
 couraging the many plans of sound Industrial 
 Banking Service. Real Blue Sky laws, national 
 in scope, must be framed and passed which will 
 protect the small investor and at the same time 
 give to him the fullest opportunity to gain the 
 whole earning poAver of the dollar he invests in 
 business enterprise. 
 
 The National Association will also seek to pro- 
 tect Industrial Banking Service from the attacks 
 of selfish people who would destroy it. For it is 
 a woeful fact that no great movement undertaken 
 for the welfare of workers, or for any other great 
 class of mankind, has ever been attempted but it 
 has met with the opposition and bitter enmity of 
 some other class of individuals. 
 
 These enemies are invariably people whose per-
 
 TELLING MEN THE STORY 113 
 
 sonal interests are interfered with and their un- 
 just profits cut otf by the new movement. Thus 
 every liberal advance in the world has been fought 
 bitterly by some one or more of these rival forces 
 whose vested interests were at stake. 
 
 In the case of Industrial Banking Service, 
 these classes and interests are embodied in the 
 multitude of loan sharks and other usurers whose 
 greedy talons are fastened deeply in the com- 
 munity of every body of workers. It is only a 
 matter of time until the young but rapidly grow- 
 ing power of Trustees System Service will be 
 arrayed in desperate battle against these foes. 
 
 There is, however, one force that can be 
 brought to bear against any attack upon Indus- 
 trial Banking Service that is bound to win in the 
 end. This splendid force is the single power of 
 Knowledge. 
 
 Knowledge, full understanding of Truth, is 
 what molds the opinions of men, what makes the 
 laws, what determines the decisions of courts. 
 When men and women come to understand thor- 
 oughly what the Trustees System of Industrial 
 Banking IS and DOES, no opposition and no at- 
 tack, however furious, can stand before it. 
 
 For everyone who knows about Trustees Sys- 
 tem Service is its friend. These friends are 
 already legion, and through the influence of the 
 National Association they are increasing rapidly 
 in number every day. Moreover, a powerful in-
 
 114 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 structive journal is published by the National 
 Association, called the Industrial Banker, whose 
 single object is to carry the wonderful message 
 of this great Service into the home of every "Man 
 who Works ' ' that it can reach. 
 
 The Banker is the only journal or magazine 
 wholly devoted to Industrial Banking and the 
 thrift interests of average men and women in 
 America. Banks, all financial houses and prac- 
 tically every other big business interest have their 
 ■own class journals by the hundred. Each of them 
 is filled with articles and infonnation of particular 
 interest and value to the members of the class it 
 serves; but none of these magazines or journals 
 goes to the trouble to devote much of its space 
 to an honest and liberal discussion of Industrial 
 Banking Service. 
 
 The Banker, on the contrary, has no other mis- 
 sion than to make plain to workers how best to 
 take advantage of money service made available 
 to them through the liberal Industrial Bank. Its 
 mission is educational. Its attractive pages are 
 filled with suggestions and information of per- 
 sonal importance to every "Man who Works." 
 The Banker is one of the greatest agencies for the 
 defeat of ignorance and the destruction of the 
 worker's chains there is in America today. 
 
 This valuable journal goes to the home of 
 €very member of the Trustees System National 
 Association, helping him as a wise counselor and
 
 TELLING MEN THE STORY 
 
 115 
 
 ™= INDUSTRIAL R 
 
 WHAT KATIONAL BANKS HAVE DONE TOR BIG BUSINESS 
 TRUSTEES SYSTEM 18 SOINO FOR THE- 'MAN WHO WORKS' 
 
 W 
 
 Another Splendid Banker 
 
 32 Big Pa£e«, Fillo] from Cover to Cover Tvitli tte Kmil of 
 
 Intererting Articles, Pictures anJ Information Tnat 
 
 Average Men and ^Vomen Can Use in 
 
 Tbeir Personal Lives. 
 
 Read All Atout 
 
 TLe Advance of Trustees System Service Into Eastern States. 
 TKe Story of One Little Industrial Dank s Gro-wtK in Canada. 
 A^Hiy It Is tliat Trustees System Is on tne Crest of Success? 
 Does Your Money Loaf on tte Jot or Does It Work for You? 
 ^^tat a Louisville PKysician ^V^tes of Trustees System. 
 Special Prize Offer Made for National Association Members. 
 President Corcoran s Virile Editorial on "Looking Forward. 
 
 NEXT MONTH! READ IN ANOTHER BIG 
 
 BANKER ALL ABOUT 
 
 ■THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS' 
 
 'm 
 
 j=s: 
 
 MAY, 1921 
 
 COVER PAGE OF THE INDUSTRIAL BANKER 
 
 The only journal devoted to Industrial Banking Service in America.
 
 116 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 friend in spreading the story of what Industrial 
 Banking Service can do, both for him and for his 
 friends. Through the personal efforts of these 
 Association members it is also reaching the homes 
 of new thousands of readers every year. It is 
 making friends wherever it is received, and few 
 there are who come to know about the National 
 Association through its columns who do not hasten 
 to enroll themselves as members and active par- 
 tisans of Industrial Banking Service. 
 
 It should be understood that the Trustees Sys- 
 tem National Association is purely a non-profit 
 seeking organization. It has no interest other 
 than the furthering of knowledge in every possible 
 way about Industrial Banking Service. Its oflScers 
 serve without compensation of any kind, save the 
 fine satisfaction they feel over the growth of the 
 organization and the rapid advance being made 
 by these great and vital ideals. 
 
 The small annual Membership Fee of the Asso- 
 ciation is used in distributing the various printed 
 matter and thrift helps that go out to each mem- 
 ber. These include the Certificate of Membership, 
 the Membership Card and the annual volume of 
 Thrift Budgets, in addition to the monthly copy 
 of the Industrial Banker. 
 
 The Trustees System National Association is 
 one of the finest ''Booster" clubs in the world. 
 It has abundantly justified its organization. Its 
 thousands of members have not one only, but
 
 TELLING MEN THE STORY 117 
 
 scores and even hundreds of interests in common, 
 and many of these are the fundamental ones of 
 better personal living, larger happiness, and the 
 confident growth of that security which arises 
 from increasing financial independence. 
 
 One and all, they are deeply and enthusias- 
 tically interested in the welfare of their great As- 
 sociation and of the Service it represents. They 
 are Friends of all the workers of the world; and 
 they have no greater ambition than to carry the 
 story of Industrial Banking Service to all who 
 need and should use it every day.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 The Goal of the Builders 
 
 SOMETIMES we meet with a certain type of 
 man who likes to sneer at enthusiasm. He 
 would have us believe that things which are 
 done under the spur of enthusiasm cannot be as 
 good as those which, he terms, are done under cold 
 and deliberate action. 
 
 Possibly the world may be able to use such a 
 man for a good purpose, but the fact is that little 
 has been accomplished without this divine spur he 
 scorns. The best things, all the really worth-while 
 things of life, are done with enthusiasm. Sin- 
 cerity of purpose, conviction of judgment, must 
 have the steam power of enthusiasm behind them 
 before ever they can accomplish any large or per- 
 manent measure of success. 
 
 The chapters of this book, it is freely con- 
 fessed, have been written with enthusiasm. In no 
 other way would it be possible for one who knows 
 all about Trustees System Service to write. No 
 true picture could be given, either of its ideals, 
 its service or its personnel, which did not seek 
 adequately to portray the fine and lofty spirit 
 which animates every integral part of the organi- 
 zation. 
 
 The structure of Trustees System Service is 
 
 118
 
 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 119 
 
 built out of enthusiasm. This book will have ac- 
 complished its triumphant mission only when it is 
 shown conclusively that the ideals and purposes 
 of this Service are among the very highest know^n 
 in any co-operative or business organization ; and 
 that from the inception of the idea upon which it 
 was founded its chief aim has always been a sin- 
 cere and unselfish helpfulness to mankind. 
 
 But Trustees System Service is not the only 
 type of Industrial Banking in existence ; nor is it 
 a new or even a partly new idea. Industrial 
 Banks, People 's Banks, Credit Unions, or by what- 
 ever other name they may be called, have existed 
 for years in many of the countries of the world; 
 and each has wrought its tremendous good to 
 workers and others who have always lacked finan- 
 cial aid in the day of their need or opportunity. 
 
 The sober fact is, and surely this is worthy of 
 the thoughtful attention of any reader, that In- 
 dustrial Banking has for more than half a cen- 
 tury been recognized by government in half the 
 countries of Europe as a worthy, stable and in- 
 dispensable institution, without which the basic 
 prosperity of France, Italy, Germany, Russia, 
 Switzerland and many other countries would fall 
 far short indeed. 
 
 Only in our own country have we lagged and 
 largely missed the opportunity to make this great 
 service a fundamental blessing to all men and 
 women. America has no friendly law fostering
 
 120 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 and encouraging Industrial Banking across the 
 whole of our land. Some half-hearted laws have 
 been passed in one or two of the states legalizing 
 a feeble type of Credit Union, but no real effort 
 on a large scale has been made by those in author- 
 ity to meet the vast need for a more liberal and 
 just small loans service. 
 
 Nevertheless, private enterprise has accom- 
 plished on a moderate scale what government has 
 failed to do. In spite of the handicap of narrow 
 and antiquated laws, which singularly seem some- 
 times to favor the loan shark and usurer, several 
 worthy types of Industrial Banking have been es- 
 tablished in the United States, all of which have 
 been successful ; and none has been more broadly 
 liberal in the effective encouragement it extended 
 to workers than Trustees System Service. 
 
 The statement has been made that this Service 
 is not a new idea, but this is not strictly and 
 unqualifiedly true. Although every idea con- 
 tained both in its scheme of Service and of 
 business organization had been known and used 
 before, the particular combination of the whole of 
 them in a plan of Industrial Banking never had 
 been tried. 
 
 The originality of an idea lies surely in the 
 value and use to which it may be put. When 
 the founders of Trustees System Service took the 
 scattered ideas of others and re-grouped them in 
 a practical working plan which might be carried
 
 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 121 
 
 to completion as a successful business enterprise, 
 that plan had all the right and value of a wholly 
 new idea. 
 
 These scattered ideas were gathered from 
 every available source. The founders of Trustees 
 System Service had in mind an ideal which no 
 existing plan of Industrial Banking might fit. Out 
 of the multitude of good ideas which had proved 
 beneficial and successful in all the co-operative 
 People's Banks of the world, in their w^isdom they 
 selected the best, and molded these into that Plan 
 of Service which should be particularly adapted to 
 the needs and abilities of American men and 
 women. 
 
 The co-workers and members of the personnel 
 of Trustees System have a right, therefore, to be 
 enthusiastic over the record made by this great 
 Plan. It is an inspiring record, a story of absorb- 
 ing interest, which no "Man who Works" may 
 read without feeling that here is a thing, a big, 
 constructive, working enterprise, which has a 
 direct bearing upon his life and better fortunes 
 and in which he must have a personal and a vital 
 part. 
 
 The Trustees System Plan of Service is not 
 just a clever and beautiful scheme for the relief 
 of men bowed down with debt. However worthy 
 it may be to furnish liberal funds at low interest 
 rates and thus defeat the devilish machinations of 
 those who fatten upon the broken lives of the un-
 
 122 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 fortunate and the oppressed, the Trustees System 
 plan of Industrial Banking goes much further 
 than that. 
 
 It has a double fundamental purpose. It en- 
 deavors successfully to accomplish everything 
 that the sometimes mistaken generosity of the 
 philanthropist might do, but its second and greater 
 aim is to assist in building anew these sorely tried 
 and broken lives. 
 
 Since time began men have struggled for equal 
 treatment and equal opportunity with their fel- 
 lows. Two thousand years ago the Great Teacher 
 came to show by example and by precept how un- 
 selfish service might be made to rule the lives 
 of nations and of men. We have come a long way, 
 indeed, from that day when workers were actual 
 slaves, held bodily in thrall by the masters of the 
 world ; yet many a chain binds them just as effec- 
 tually today and keeps them from opportunity 
 just as surely as it ever did in the darker ages 
 long gone by. 
 
 Some of the heaviest of these chains are the 
 reasons for the inability of the average man to 
 gain financial independence except through some 
 enonnous accident. More than nine-tenths of the 
 capital of the world is held and controlled by less 
 than one-tenth of the people, and naturally enough 
 this wealth is exploited for the sole benefit of its 
 owners. Their principal interest in workers is to 
 have the savings of all classes deposited with the
 
 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 123 
 
 great class banks on the plea of ' ^ safety, ' ' so that 
 these savings may be loaned out to those familiar 
 with the exploitation of capital in order to make 
 for them more capital. 
 
 Workers have been told that saving is the sure 
 road to financial independence. AVhile this is true, 
 no man ever has won financial independence 
 through mere saving alone. The road is far too 
 long and difficult to follow, too fraught with the 
 hazards of daily needs and the discouragements 
 of other men's successes. For everyone who has 
 accumulated, penny by penny and dollar by dol- 
 lar, a generous hoard in old age, a thousand, nay, 
 a hundred thousand have cast aside the saving 
 habit somewhere along the easy grades of life. 
 
 Men are limited in their good intentions by 
 the fact that they are human. They desire suc- 
 cess, but they wish it quickly. They always will 
 be easy prey for the get-rich-quick schemer and 
 the fake, but limber-tongued promoter. They lack 
 both a knowledge of the pitfalls of finance and 
 a decent understanding of the simplest rules of 
 business. Until they learn the secret of how to 
 organize and develop their capital resources so 
 that they can produce the most out of them, even 
 as the capital of big business is organized and 
 developed, they never will get far above the place 
 they now are. 
 
 Plain ignorance, ignorance of the uses of 
 money, ignorance of the true earning power of
 
 124 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 money, ignorance of sound investment oppor- 
 tunity, ignorance of genuine thrift — tliese are 
 some of the heaviest of the old chains that still 
 hold men down, body and soul, today in every 
 community in America. 
 
 The worker must burst these chains asunder. 
 He must overcome this terrible thrall of ignorance 
 with the supremely powerful levers of KNOWL- 
 EDGE and CONFIDENCE. 
 
 But he cannot accomplish wonders by himself. 
 Strength is needed, both the strength of numbers 
 and the infinitely greater strength of puissant 
 working capital. Money is power, but it is power 
 for the worker, if he will only realize it, just as 
 largely and as effectively as it ever has been for 
 big or little business. It becomes effective just 
 as men join their lives and resources in the pur- 
 suit of common aims. The big things of the world 
 are accomplished because men with common in- 
 terests believe and trust and work together. 
 
 Thus co-operation is sometimes called the big- 
 gest thing in life. Certainly co-operation for un- 
 selfish ends can have no worthy rival. It is not 
 only the basic ideal of Trustees System Service, 
 but it is the very body and soul of this great or- 
 ganization. The Trustees System partners have 
 no greater desire than to teach men and women 
 how best to take advantage of their opportunities. 
 
 To this end they have established an Industrial 
 Banking Service which is offered to every honest
 
 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 125 
 
 man and woman, and which, if thriftily followed, 
 cannot fail to build their lives to that financial 
 independence which is the desire of every heart. 
 
 To this end, also, they have brought into being 
 a powerful business structure, in which any 
 worker can purchase an investment interest on 
 easy and advantageous terms, which will give to 
 him not only a reasonable rental return on his 
 money, but also a full participating partnership 
 in all the profits earned. 
 
 The wide success of this double service has 
 been earned because it offers men, to an eminent 
 degree, a thing which has been planned to give aid 
 and comfort and pleasure to all the people. It 
 has honestly won the confidence of workers, and 
 through a period of growth, matched only by other 
 Industrial Banking systems of the world, has ably 
 demonstrated both its worth and practicability. 
 It is a truly great institution, already national in 
 influence, and with a goal of effective service that 
 shall one day be really national in scope. 
 
 For Industrial Banking in America is only in 
 its infancy. The vast and really fertile field of 
 our country lies almost untouched. Where France, 
 Italy, Germany, even Japan and far India, have 
 their powerful co-operative systems, embracing 
 thousands of thrifty banking units, which reach 
 practically into every town and village and touch 
 every community life with their helpful and edu- 
 cating influence, the broad stretches of our o^^^l
 
 126 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 
 
 country, although possessed of immeasurably 
 greater resources, show only a single thriving 
 oasis here and there. 
 
 Japan in ten years has established eight thou- 
 sand Industrial Banks. Italy has two vast national 
 systems. In India, whore in 1905, there were 
 only 283 co-operative societies, in 1918 these had 
 grown to 28,000. Russia reports more Industrial 
 Banks than any other nation, not excepting Ger- 
 many, with her 29,000. There are 9 million mem- 
 bers in the great People's Credit Unions of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Nearer home, in the province of Quebec, in 
 Canada (which many years ago learned the profit- 
 able lesson of Industrial Banking Service), there 
 is a little town of 8,000 people, called Levis, in 
 which there is a single People's Bank. It was es- 
 tablished by the famous M. Desjardins, in 1900, 
 with only a few dollars' capital, but in 1920 it 
 did a small loans business of more than $613,000. 
 
 The story will ever be the same the world over, 
 AVherever the workers gather together, and 
 wherever they pool a part of their savings to es- 
 tablish an institution of their own for co-operative 
 Industrial Banking Service, they will be astonished 
 at the power and vast resources they will develop. 
 
 There is an abundance of capital in every com- 
 munity in America for a strong Industrial Bank- 
 ing house of, by and for the workers of that com- 
 munity. All that is needed is suflficient energy,
 
 THE GOAL OF THE BUILDERS 127 
 
 knowledge and confidence on the part of the 
 armies of workers themselves to inspire them with 
 the will to bring it about. The new Vision of 
 Service of the Trustees System organization em- 
 braces nothing less than the ambition to bring to 
 the home of every worker this fine inspiration, 
 and to make an accomplished fact in every com- 
 munity of the nation its great modern slogan, 
 ' ' Universal Service in America. ' '
 
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