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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/tumultdiesOObrow 
 
THE TUMULT DIES 
 
 BY 
 
 Phyllis Wyatt Brown 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 
 19 3 4 
 
/ 
 

 /This story was written by my wife 
 for a magazine of general circulation, 
 shortly after the bank run of June, 1932. 
 In my judgment, the time was not 
 opportune for its publication and it was 
 withheld. Some officers, who read the 
 manuscript, believed it would interest 
 men who went through the run, and 
 suggested it be printed for distribution in 
 the bank. To you, as o?ie of us who did 
 his part in those exciting days, I take 
 pleasure in presenting a copy. j 
 
 to 
 
 fiyv £<j 
 
 i 
 
THE TUMULT DIES 
 
 THE First National Bank of Chicago opened 
 its doors to the public the day the battle of 
 Gettysburg began in 1863. 
 
 The significant or dramatic events in the life 
 of the institution during those seventy years are 
 told and told again, among the members of the 
 organization, with the same zest with which men 
 once related the Sagas. Occasionally, at a dinner 
 party, the wife of some one of the First National 
 officers may overhear her husband in the midst 
 of a monologue, "It was the summer of 1868 
 
 Lyman J. Gage had just come to us as 
 
 cashier from The Merchants Loan and Trust 
 
 we decided/' and she catches on the face 
 
 of some listening stranger, who does not under- 
 stand the solidarity of that "we," a look of 
 surprise that the narrator is so amazingly well- 
 preserved a man. 
 
 It is part of the Saga, that when the little, 
 Florentine building of the First National Bank 
 at the southwest corner of State and Washington 
 Streets, which was thought so knowing, so 
 sophisticated, with its "balustraded portico in 
 cut-off and pediment from the cornice,' ' was 
 swept by the Chicago Fire in 1871, and part of 
 
 [7] 
 
the walls fell in, and the fanciful iron-work was 
 twisted and melted ; the safes and vaults withstood 
 the heat of the flames, and not a security, or note, 
 or valuable paper, or any of the bank's books 
 was destroyed. 
 
 The variety of the First National's customers 
 is part of the Saga, different races and creeds and 
 colors, many men of many minds, to whom their 
 savings and investments represent, not the filthy 
 lucre, in which the cold-blooded banker, of 
 public portraiture, is supposed to deal, but a 
 medium of exchange which stands for some of 
 
 life's most vital necessities the education of 
 
 children, the succour of the sick, the care of old 
 age, the ability to travel, to seek beauty, to live 
 happily, to die decently. Bread? Yes. Bread 
 and Roses, too. 
 
 The gypsies, whose trade the First National 
 Bank has had for more than fifty years, are part 
 of the Saga, splashing the white walls of the 
 lobby with a fresco of rainbow color, as they 
 come in throngs to deposit the gold from their 
 money-belts, and sit casually on the marble 
 floors, discussing their affairs. So are the Chinese 
 part of the Saga, with their abacuses under their 
 arms. As a rule, their word is as good as their 
 
 [8] 
 
bond. That may be due to inherent honour, 
 or, as a high member of a tong, who undertook 
 for a compatriot the immediate payment of a 
 debt, once disclosed to one of the First National 
 men, it may be due to fear of the Hatchet Man. 
 
 The Saga is exciting, as any epic of a long- 
 established business concern is exciting. It un- 
 rolls like a panorama, good times and bad times, 
 the flush years, when money was plenty, when 
 the Stock Exchange was soaring, when people 
 were "sitting on top of the world," when the 
 First National was generally considered too 
 conservative, too cautious, when the president 
 used to walk about the institution, and say 
 over, and over, and over again, "Remember, 
 
 boys, what goes up has got to come down I " 
 
 and the panic years, 1893 and 1907 and 1921, 
 which come into retrospective conversations of a 
 financial nature, as critical illnesses are mentioned 
 with lowered voice, in a family chronicle. 
 
 There is the old tale of the man who appeared 
 at a grille in the Foreign Exchange Department, 
 leveled a revolver, and said quietly, "Jesus Christ 
 has ordered me to draw out fifty thousand 
 dollars/' To which the teller replied as quietly, 
 while he pressed the police buzzer, "We do not 
 
 [9] 
 
attend to His business in this department. If you 
 will go to Window X., they will take care of 
 you." And they did take care of him, poor 
 fellow, in a lunatic asylum! 
 
 Nor is anyone in the organization likely to 
 forget the story of S., one of the vice-presidents. 
 He was at his desk, with his brother-officers at 
 work around him, one morning, not long ago, 
 when he noticed a man standing nearby, who 
 seemed rather at a loss. S. went up to him at 
 once. 
 
 "Are you looking for some one? Can I do 
 anything for you?" he asked. 
 
 "I have some business to talk over," the 
 stranger answered. 
 
 They sat down together. The customer pulled 
 his chair close, and drew out a long envelope of 
 papers. When S. leaned forward to take them, 
 he saw that in the midst of the papers, was a 
 revolver, and that his visitor's hand was on the 
 trigger. 
 
 "Keep your hands on your knees," was the 
 hold-up man's order. "Don't touch the police 
 buzzer. Go with me pronto to a teller's cage, 
 and guarantee this check for three thousand 
 dollars, or I'll shoot." 
 
 [10] 
 
S's knees were shaky. But he sparred for 
 time. "The check is forged/ ' he complained. 
 "You can't cash it." 
 
 "Oh yes I can, if you say it's all right. And 
 if you don't say it's all right, you're a dead man," 
 was the rejoinder. 
 
 S. continued his objections. They talked and 
 talked and talked, while the palms on the ledge 
 outside the window stirred gently in the breeze, 
 and the machine of S's stenographer clicked 
 reassuringly, not ten feet away; while the light 
 streamed under the high arches of the familiar 
 lobby, and the men from the next desks came 
 and went, conscious only that S. was deep in 
 conversation with a customer. If only one of 
 them would pass near enough to catch a 
 whispered word! More than one of them, as 
 it proved later, had started toward S., during 
 his conference, and seeing him occupied, had 
 politely withdrawn! After a tortured fifteen 
 minutes, a bank messenger left some mail on S's 
 desk. "Get help!" the victim said, very low, 
 to the boy. 
 
 "You spoke to him," the visitor accused S. 
 "Only about the mail," S. replied. "I didn't 
 dare say anything else." 
 
 [11] 
 
But the man's suspicions were roused. "This 
 won't do," he snarled. "We've been too long 
 about this job already. Come on." 
 
 They started across the floor of the bank, 
 toward the tellers' cages. The innocent-looking 
 bundle of papers still pressed S's side. How 
 he longed for the help he thought the messenger 
 must surely have summoned by now ! The astute 
 boy, fearing that the intruder would shoot if he 
 saw a uniformed policeman approaching, had 
 delayed to get one of the plain-clothes men, who 
 now came up from behind. S. dodged back of 
 a pillar. The intruder ran. The plain clothes 
 man ran after, firing low, mindful of innocent 
 bystanders; and in an alley, outside the building, 
 he caught his man. As for S., he says he has 
 sworn off going to moving pictures. He says 
 they are not as exciting as his own life! 
 
 In June 1932, a chapter foreseen as a possibility 
 for more than a year, and most carefully prepared 
 for during all that time, but still entirely new in 
 the annals of the institution, was added to the 
 Saga. We had a run on the Savings department 
 of the bank. 
 
 How much it was caused by the failure of some 
 of the outlying banks, and the reception by the 
 
 [12] 
 
First National of many of the * 'scared' ' funds 
 from those closed institutions; how much it was 
 inspired or augmented by Communist activities; 
 how much its sources lay in the ignorance that 
 can hardly be expected, after the late, tragic days 
 in the profession of finance, to distinguish be- 
 tween a soap bubble and the Rock of Gibraltar; 
 how much it had its being in sheer, piteous, 
 poignant panic, fed and nourished on the wildest 
 rumours and reports; no one will ever know. 
 Nor did any one at the First National greatly care. 
 The First National was not concerning itself 
 with suppositions. The first harried, hurried, 
 anxious vanguard of savings depositors arrived 
 to make withdrawals as soon as the doors opened 
 on Thursday morning. From that time on, all 
 through the increasing hysteria and panic in the 
 growing crowds on Friday and Saturday, the 
 First National was putting its back into comfort- 
 ing and upholding those who wanted to leave 
 their funds, if they could only be convinced that 
 their deposits were safe, and into paying those 
 who wanted their money, just as fast as human 
 hands could pay it. 
 
 The work done by the First National 
 organization during the run, both in the speed 
 
 [13] 
 
with which payments were made, and in the 
 sympathy and conviction with which reassurance 
 was given, remains a miracle. 
 
 That Thursday morning, the First National 
 Bank had on hand, the greatest volume of cash 
 in the seventy years of its history. It had huge 
 volumes of United States Government bonds, 
 that could be converted into cash at a moment's 
 notice, and it had many, many more millions of 
 dollars of paper that was eligible for re-discount 
 at the Federal Reserve Bank, though the First 
 National did not borrow a penny from the 
 Federal Reserve. 
 
 In addition, as soon as the knowledge of the 
 run spread over the country, offers of large loans 
 and deposits from every part of the United States, 
 from banks, companies and from individuals, 
 began to pour in. These offers of financial help 
 which was not needed, were gratefully refused, 
 but the spiritual support supplied by those who 
 so quickly rallied to the First National in a time 
 of stress will never be forgotten. 
 
 Given this financial strength, there yet 
 remained the problem of getting the actual cash 
 into the hands of owners, who were constantly 
 defeating their own ends. On that first morn- 
 
 [14] 
 
ing, the teller at one window could not pay for 
 twenty minutes because each customer who 
 reached the grille, after a tortuous progress in 
 agony of spirit along the line, was snatched back 
 by the mob into the milling whirlpool before 
 the brief business necessary to withdrawal could 
 be transacted. Nor could those who had finally 
 received their money, get out of the jam. 
 
 A woman, who drew a hundred and fifty 
 dollars, slipped it into the cover of her bank book 
 and lost it in the crowd. Another, who took out 
 eight thousand, discovered when she reached 
 home that her pocket had been picked of every 
 penny of it! The only instance in which any- 
 body profited by the density of the horde, was 
 that of a customer who withdrew five hundred 
 dollars, dropped it on the floor in front of a cage, 
 missed it three hours later, returned to look for 
 it, and because the throng was so thick that 
 nobody had been able to see the floor in those 
 three hours, found the money exactly where it 
 had been lost! 
 
 That was in the beginning. Immediately the 
 affair began to be systematized. Signs were 
 placed, asking customers to leave the bank as 
 soon as they had transacted their business. The 
 
 [15] 
 
First National police force was joined by many 
 city officers. Everybody went to work to bring 
 order out of the chaos of white-faced, struggling 
 human beings, who filled completely the two 
 hundred and sixteen feet by forty feet of floor 
 space of each lobby. 
 
 An enormous man was observed leaning 
 heavily against one of the temporary cages, upon 
 which three lines of desperate people were con- 
 verging. The cage swayed. If it had gone 
 down, all of the money in it, some millions at 
 that time, would have been within reach of the 
 multitude. Asked to get into line, the big man 
 angrily refused, whereupon three policemen 
 formed a flying wedge and shunted him to the 
 end of the queue. 
 
 The same sergeant who told this tale heard a 
 woman in the very center of the horde scream- 
 ing, ' 'Officer, officer, I'm dying !" She looked 
 to him suspiciously healthy. "Many," he com- 
 mented, "were playing those pranks to get up 
 in front and get their cash before the other fel- 
 low. So I just said to her, Til get you out of 
 the crush, all right. But you'd better go home, 
 madam. If you're dying, you won't need any 
 
 money!' " 
 
 [16] 
 
A great door had been cut by night many 
 months earlier, for use in just such an emer- 
 gency. It had been so cleverly concealed by 
 marble slabs that its existence was known to only 
 a dozen people. This was thrown open to 
 provide a quick exit. Ropes were stretched in 
 the lower lobbies. One of the vice-presidents, 
 who had had experience in handling crowds at 
 golf tournaments, advised that one rope would 
 be dangerous, as the horde was apt to press 
 against it with such force that those in front 
 might be seriously cut. Accordingly a three- 
 rope system was put into operation, with the 
 urgent throng nearest the street held behind one 
 barrier, and an empty space maintained be- 
 tween them, and the ' 'bull-pens.' ' These were 
 roped areas into which customers were admitted 
 in groups, instructed as to which paying tellers' 
 cages to go to, and released, at intervals, to join 
 the now orderly lines on the floor of the bank. 
 This method did away automatically with idle 
 spectators who had been circulating through the 
 Savings department and whose curiosity was not 
 sufficient to keep them herded into one inclosure. 
 Into the groups in the "bull-pens," old people 
 and women who had brought little children with 
 
 [17] 
 
them, were taken first. The ropes (life-lines 
 in the eyes of many of the poor, frightened 
 people behind them) were manned by police- 
 men and sometimes by the high officers of the 
 organization. 
 
 Some of the policemen kept up a constant 
 campaign of mingled orders and reassurance. 
 "Now this is just a game," announced one of 
 them, a big Scotchman. "The fairer you play it, 
 the sooner you'll get in and get your money. 
 The first man that tries to dodge under this rope, 
 before we lift it and order him through, gets 
 thrown back into that first division and has to 
 start all over again. Will that tall, good-looking 
 lady in the white hat, just hold this end of the 
 
 rope for me? That's it. Sure you wouldn't 
 
 push a woman, would you? Now remember, 
 it's a game. But there's one difference between 
 this and all other games. We know who is going 
 
 to win. The bank!" A mocking voice 
 
 called, "Aw, listen to the Scotchman!" 
 
 Quick as a flash, the policeman shouted back, 
 "Yes, I am a Scotchman, and you'll not see any 
 other in this crowd. We're too canny! We 
 know our money is safe here, and we're not 
 going to draw it out and lose our July first 
 interest!" 
 
 [18] 
 
The campaign to convince and comfort 
 anxious customers was going on all over the 
 bank. Up on the eighth floor, the chief operator 
 of the telephone switchboard addressed her girls. 
 "We must work faster," she told them, "than 
 we have ever worked before. If there is delay, 
 anyone calling may believe the rumours, and 
 think the bank is closed. Then too, your voices 
 are the first contact that the person at the other 
 end of the wire has with the First National. 
 You must speak more quietly, more consider- 
 ately, than is usually necessary. Let everybody 
 know from your tone, the moment they hear 
 you, that business is going on just as it always 
 does." 
 
 On Thursday, the switchboard operators turned 
 every inquiry over to the officers of the institution. 
 But on Friday, knowing how busy the officers 
 were, the telephone girls began to reassure people 
 themselves and then to ask if those who called 
 wished to be connected with an officer as well. 
 More often than not, the person who had 
 requested to know if the bank was closed, said 
 immediately after the girl had stated the facts, 
 "I knew there was nothing in the report," and 
 hung up the receiver. 
 
 [19] 
 
A teamster told the operator who answered 
 him that he had been driving through the Loop 
 with two loads for the city, when an acquaint- 
 ance, John Johnson, called to him from the 
 pavement, 44 Did you know the First National is 
 
 closed V "Hell, no!" the teamster replied, 
 
 and ran, with his heart in his mouth, to a 
 telephone. "I had to call you up and see. I've 
 got a wife and four kids, and everything I have 
 in the world is in your bank." The girl 
 explained the situation to him, to his great relief. 
 But after she had assured him of the safety of his 
 savings, he had apparently formed so good an 
 opinion of her judgment that he put to her 
 another question. "Say," he went on, "when 
 I meet that Johnson, what will I say to him?" 
 
 "Don't say anything," advised the oracle. 
 "Just punch him in the nose!" 
 
 "That," replied the teamster, comfort sound- 
 ing in his tone, "is just what I'll do; and thank 
 you like hell, lady!" 
 
 A woman who asked if the bank was out of 
 business and received the usual reply, remarked, 
 "I thought when I heard the rumour, it was 
 just the working classes, trying to stir up 
 trouble!" "I didn't remind her," com- 
 
 [20] 
 
merited the telephone operator, "that we girls 
 belong to the working classes!" And she 
 laughed gaily, without the least resentment, 
 either of the woman's disparagement, or of the 
 fact that the operators had answered between 
 fifteen and twenty thousand calls a day during 
 the run, as against five or six thousand normally. 
 
 Downstairs, telegrams poured in. They were 
 all the same. Four words. "Is my money safe?" 
 Every one of those telegrams was answered 
 within five minutes of its reception, "The First 
 National absolutely sound and doing business as 
 usual. Your money safe." 
 
 On the first day of the run, all the employees 
 worked without any break for lunch. After 
 that, a noonday meal was served to them at 
 their posts. 
 
 Paying tellers in the Savings department who 
 were so weary with the terrific strain they were 
 undergoing, that they were ordered out of the 
 cages, to lie down and rest, struggled up before 
 the time allotted them was over, crazy to be back 
 on the job. And when the chief cashier directed 
 the general tellers and bookkeepers who were 
 making up their figures, to stop work at eleven 
 at night, the order was flatly disobeyed and all 
 
 [21] 
 
worked on. For all of these, rooms were taken 
 at a nearby hotel, and they were urged to go to 
 them for the next night; but most of them, 
 especially the clearing tellers, boys in many cases 
 in their early twenties, worked from eight 
 o'clock Friday morning until midnight Saturday 
 with but a few hours' rest. 
 
 The officers of the Savings department were 
 doing yeoman service on many fronts. Kipling's 
 specification for attaining the earth : 
 
 "If you can keep your head when all about you 
 Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, 
 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
 But make allowance for their doubting too " 
 
 might have been written expressly in description 
 of those officers and their employees. 
 
 A customer, who had been out of work for a 
 year and a half, and who had seven hundred 
 dollars on deposit with winch to feed his wife, 
 his four children, and himself, until he might 
 get a job again, came to one of the officers for 
 advice. "If I lose that money, "he said piteously, 
 "they will all starve.' ' But after the talk was 
 over, he left his deposit. 
 
 A little old woman, who had a savings account 
 of three hundred dollars, just enough to carry 
 
 [22] 
 
her until she could enter a home for the aged, 
 came seven times to one of the vice-presidents; 
 and seven times he did his best to assuage her 
 fears. She kept her money in the bank, and on 
 Monday morning, after the tumult and the 
 shouting had died, the vice-president saw her 
 pathetic figure wending its way to him, once 
 more. * 'I came back to thank you/ ' she told him , 
 "only I can't thank you enough, so I'll just say 
 I'm sorry I bothered you so much! ,, 
 
 "Some of them took our efforts to help them 
 in a different way," this vice-president said later. 
 "One man, who decided to leave his deposit, 
 after I had discussed the matter with him, called 
 to me as he went out, 'If this bank closes, I'll 
 come back and shoot you!' " Not all of the 
 customers could be convinced, for, as Thoreau 
 says, "It takes two to tell truth, one to speak and 
 one to hear," but it is estimated that of those 
 alarmed depositors who talked to officers of the 
 institution, ninety per cent went away reassured. 
 Obviously, the officers could not talk to all of 
 the thousands who composed the horde. But 
 the bank personnel had unexpected help from 
 many quarters. 
 
 [23] 
 
One man went among the crowd, with an 
 open bank book in his hand. "Look here," he 
 kept calling. "Look at this! I've got sixteen 
 hundred dollars on deposit in this bank, and I 
 wouldn't draw a penny of it!" 
 
 A customer waiting his turn to make a with- 
 drawal, near a teller's grille, overheard a bank 
 employee asking the teller how much currency 
 he wished brought to the cage. The teller 
 stipulated seven million. "Is that all?" inquired 
 the messenger. "I can just as well bring ten." 
 At which the listening customer, dropped out of 
 his place in the queue, and went home. Still 
 another depositor, waved his arms in the air and 
 shouted. "I don't want my money. I didn't 
 come here to get my money. I came to put 
 more in!" And in another part of the bank, a 
 well-known business man was gathering groups 
 of fifteen or twenty people about him and mak- 
 ing speeches to them on the subject of the 
 reliability and integrity of the First. 
 
 The president of the bank, walking through 
 the institution on one of the busiest days, heard 
 a small voice behind him, "Will you please 
 tell me where I can make a deposit?" He 
 turned to face a young couple. "My name is 
 
 [24] 
 
Traylor," he told them. "It takes a good deal of 
 courage to make a deposit, in the midst of a 
 raging mob such as this one. We have perfect 
 confidence in our institution, but that you should 
 have the same confidence is very gratifying/ ' 
 The boy laughed. "Why, Mr. Traylor," he said, 
 as if he, in his turn, were doing the reassuring, 
 "We're not afraid !" 
 
 Many people who had come to the bank 
 without any knowledge of the run, to make 
 their ordinary withdrawals, or to cash checks, or 
 do other business, stayed to make deposits. 
 Many asked to be allowed to remain to address 
 the crowd or to mingle in it and give such 
 comfort as they could. Many helped the police 
 and employees to take care of women who 
 fainted. One of these loyal friends made his 
 way to a vice-president, through one of the 
 worst jams. "There's someone lying over there 
 by the stairs," he informed him, "who I think is 
 dead." When they hurried to the spot, they 
 found an apparently lifeless man stretched full- 
 length on the marble floor. After one of the 
 First National nurses, the officer and the Good 
 Samaritan had worked over the patient, whose 
 trouble seems to have been, pure, unadulterated 
 fright, he was revived, given his money and sent 
 home. 
 
 [25] 
 
A family, who bought up the few shares of 
 First National stock available, took pains to send 
 to the teller who attended to the account, a 
 notice of the purpose for which the money was 
 to be used, in order that their intention might 
 not be misunderstood. A distracted husband, 
 bursting with apologies, arrived at a grille to 
 put back the currency which his wife had drawn 
 from their joint account without his know- 
 ledge the day before. 
 
 They tell the tale of a woman who, finding her- 
 self the possessor of a very large sum of currency, 
 which she had so little expected to be able to 
 collect that she made no provision for carrying 
 it, slipped off her bloomers while she stood in 
 the main lobby of the bank; wrapped her money 
 in them ; and took her departure. 
 
 Then there was the man who had withdrawn 
 many thousands, who brought them back the 
 day after the run, and demanded in no uncertain 
 terms, his interest. Politely informed that he 
 could not be paid six-months' interest on a sum 
 which had been withdrawn within the six- 
 months period, he continued his demands. 
 When he became abusive and insolent, he was 
 told that his account was not desired, whereupon 
 
 [26] 
 
he immediately reopened it, muttering that any 
 bank that didn't want money must be in an 
 awfully sound position. 
 
 But there is another story of quite a different 
 character about the six months' interest. A 
 customer who had intended to withdraw two 
 thousand dollars, all she had in her account, 
 found, when she reached home, that she had 
 three one-thousand dollar bills, two of which 
 had stuck together, unnoticed in the confusion, 
 by the teller. After the run was over, the 
 woman brought back her two thousand for 
 re-deposit. The one thousand, she returned 
 to the bank. She was the only person among 
 the throngs who made withdrawals before July 
 first who received interest on her money for the 
 six months previous. 
 
 On Saturday, one of the vice-presidents, who 
 was working at the ropes, felt someone trying 
 to dodge under. He stooped to make a grab 
 for the intruder, and found himself looking 
 into the laughing face of S., one of the vice- 
 presidents of another Loop bank, which had 
 been going through the same mill as the First 
 National. These two officers of different financial 
 institutions allude to themselves sometimes, as 
 
 [27] 
 
"The Siamese Twins." They stood together, 
 swept by the sympathy and affection of a devoted 
 business friendship, born of the years in which 
 those two banks have met many a struggle 
 shoulder to shoulder; and S. said, "Well, our 
 run is about over. I came to see how yours is 
 getting on, and I see the crowd is thinning 
 rapidly." 
 
 About twelve o'clock of that day, the president 
 of the First National made an impromptu 
 talk to the jam of people outside the Savings 
 Department. 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen,' ' he said, "my name 
 is Traylor, the chief executive of this bank at 
 this time. Naturally, I am delighted to see so 
 many of our customers here, but I am really 
 sorry that they are afraid of me. I don't blame 
 you. So much has been happening in the 
 banking business in Cook County, within the 
 last two or three years, that I suspect if I were 
 not really familiar with the situation, I would be 
 frightened, too. But may I say this to you? 
 We have been in business almost seventy years. 
 We have been criticized many times, but this is 
 a place where you all have kept your money, a 
 place to which you have looked for accommo- 
 dations. 
 
 [28] 
 
"We have been conservative, and for that 
 reason, we are in a position to pay our depositors 
 their money. We are going to open at nine 
 o'clock on Monday morning, and we are going 
 to do that right straight along. Let me tell you 
 what has been going on. I have been getting 
 letters, telling me of the organization of runs 
 that were going to be made on the Loop banks 
 in Chicago, and particularly on this bank. 
 I don't blame people for being worried, but if 
 you will talk to the Federal Reserve Bank, and 
 if you will talk to the Governor of the Federal 
 Reserve Board at Washington, and if you will 
 talk to people who know what our condition is, 
 they will tell you we are sound ! 
 
 "I want to ask your co-operation to the end 
 that we may work as easily as possible. We 
 want you to have your money, and then you can 
 feel that we are a good, safe bank; and you can 
 bring it back again, and we will keep it for you 
 until you want it again." 
 
 There the speech ended and the crowd 
 cheered. Many of them turned as soon as the 
 words died away and went out into the June 
 sunshine of the Loop with their belief regained, 
 that there are still sound institutions left to cling 
 to in a troubled and suffering world. 
 
 [29] 
 
Long before closing time on that day, the 
 
 bank littered with papers and refuse, dirty, 
 
 disheveled, manned by employees white-faced 
 
 with physical weariness, but happy was 
 
 absolutely quiet. The First National's job of 
 reassurance was done. 
 
 That was on Saturday. On Monday morning, 
 one of the gypsy bands arrived. They had heard 
 in New York state, the report that the First 
 National Bank of Chicago was going to close, 
 and they had driven in their strange, old, clank- 
 ing cars, by day and by night, without stop, 
 without food, without sleep, to get their money. 
 
 They looked like the company that troops 
 down the mountain-side into the Pass, in the 
 
 Third Act of "Carmen' ' skirts fluted like 
 
 inverted morning glories, and more variously 
 colored, ear-rings clinking, hair flying, eyes 
 flashing. The men, some of them in knee- 
 breeches, with bright scarfs thrown over the 
 shoulder, and great slouch hats, gathered in knots 
 to discuss the order of the leader that the tribal 
 money be withdrawn. Black John was there, 
 and Rose Vostock and Washo Bill. They took 
 their money. But they had taken it also, in 
 
 [30] 
 
1907 and in 1914 at the outbreak of the World 
 War and on their next migration, in the Spring, 
 they had re-deposited it. 
 
 As they streamed out, under the high marble 
 arch of the main lobby, like a flock of brilliant 
 birds, one of them ran back. "I didn't want to 
 take out my money/ ' he confided to the chief 
 cashier. "We have to obey our leader. But 
 don't worry. We'll bring it back!" 
 
 The stress is over, now. Confidence is restored. 
 People are returning with the money they were 
 worried about. For days after the run, the bank 
 was filled with congratulatory friends. 
 
 Yes, those June days are past history, like the 
 Chicago Fire, and the panics of 1893 and 1907 
 and 1921, and like Black Tuesday of 1929. 
 
 But the First National men will be telling 
 stories of those June days for years to come. 
 "That," they will say, "happened when we had 
 the run on the bank in 1932." 
 
 It has become part a proud part of 
 
 the Saga. 
 
 [31 J 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 050743449