Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-07-10
BANKING AND BUSINESS
Head of New Jersey Institution Gives His View Of Statement
by Bank Supervisor That All Bank Officers Should Not Be
Allowed to Engage in Outside Busness-Hits Idea

! do good to limit them to one form Of
activity.
What right has free government
to curtai1 the activities of an indi-
vidual or confine them to one arena?
The theory of our democratic govern
ment is that every man has right
to do as he pleases so long as he
pleases to do right.
Ours is not despotic form of gov
eminent where mems activities are
held in leash.
Our Idea New.
What would you do in a small
town where bank presidents serve for
nothing or for a nominal salary of
four or five hundred dollars year
If you prohibited the best business
brains of the community from being
at the head of little $4,000 bank,
and guiding it helpfully and properly
along? In the city in which the
writer lives there is hardly a bank
officer who doesn't have an interest
i'm outside business and it is q good
thing for the community that they do.
deplore the day when banking off,
Gals shall be made by law one idea
men. If anybody needs to be broad
and have a broad horizon it is bank
official. He wants to be big enough
to sympathize with the needs and
ambitions of others, and he never. can
be unless you let him have the ex-
perience that comes from broad con-
tact with other enterprises
"A man who doesn't know some
thing about law, something about
business, something about the public
life Of his community isn't fit to be.a
bank officer. He isn't big enough
man to recognize the fact that he is
his brothers. keeper, and he can't
have the education which I suggestis
necessary unless he is continuously
a living part of these outside con-
Germs. :.
mo man can know thing unless
he lives it. A banker to help the bust
ness community must know its needs
and give it the proper advice, and to
do this must have experience in Il
himself. The greatest benefit bank
err renders to a community is to adj
wise his patrons in his business en-
terprises. Every banking institution
has saved many men from failure and
bankruptcy by help and advice That
advice bank officials cannot give un-
less they have had experience them
selves.
81 am president of a bank. I spend
large part of my time in politics,
church work, civic work; do a lot OF
speaking, have interests in other bust
ness enterprises with which I am
more or less associated, and our bank
is prospecting and helping the COM
munity, and so long as I live I am
going to be engaged in as many ac-
tivities as my strength and mental
capacity warrant, and when my gov
eminent steps in and says that the
brain power and physical energy
which God has given me shall be
limited in its efforts, it will be time
for another Declaration of Independ-
ence.
1.-THE philosophy of all of this mod
ern legislation to limit mems connec-
tons with professions and business
enterprises is based upon the utter
~ false assumption that the ma
jority of men are dishonest and
have to be watched. An honest man
can do half a dozen things with
safety to all. Ninety-eight per cent.
of the people of this country are hon
est, just as honest as are public, Of
ficials. I have been engaged in pub
lie and in business life, and I have
vet to find many dishonest men,.
have found honesty everywhere. in
the world; at large and in official life,
in one as much and no more than in
another. Let us have fewer laws and
trust to the honesty of the American
citizens" .s ..s. &