The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-04-12
BANKERS SHOWN ID HAVE REFUSED PAY FOR RECENT HELP Returns Checks for Loan Commission to Boston
 and Maine Railroad SHOW PATRIOTISM
 AT PROPER TIME In Times Past However Bankers Have Always Received Certain Com
 pensation for Coming to
 Rescue in Trouble
By HOLLAND

New York, April 11.-(Special. .)-Some- time in the winter the managers of the Boston and Maine Railroad company found it expedient even imperative. that nearly s30Oooooo of notes which were to become due in March be renewed. The question was whether those who held these notes would consent to renew them If they did not, an emergency, possibly a serious embarrassment for this great railroad corporation which is now strug- gling to extricate itself from difficulties, would have to be faced.
 What was proposed in the winter was accomplished. Almost every one of the holders of these notes consented to re- new them. This was accomplished through the cooperation of private bankers, some of whom. at least, were some years ago associated in the popular mind with the so-called money trust a trust which had been discovered within the past two years to have been largely mythical
 Among these bankers was J. P. Morgan of New York and Henry L. Higginson of Boston and those who are successors in the management of the great private banking house of Kidder Peabody & Co of Boston, with which at one time the grandfather of the present J. P. Nor gan was associated and also in the early days of his banking career J. P. Morgan, the younger, himself For achieving the renewal of this great volume of notes the bankers were entitled to a commits sion of half of per cent. Having earned that commission, President Hustis of the Boston and Maine drew checks in payment of it. There followed an incident which strildngly illustrates the modern spirit which has been so characteristic of the great bankers of the United States since the European war began. These checks were returned to the Boston and Maine company with the intimation that the bankers were glad to have been able through cooperation to aid this company in regaining normal strength. The services of the bankers must have entailed some cost to themselves. but they were willing to pocket that loss and even to give up sthe relatively triflins commission to which they were entitled. Not through these bankers. but indirectly and recently, has this incident been made known to the public,
 The Spirit of Cooperation
 Recently Henry L. Higginson spoke for publication of the necessity at this time, and in the future as well, of cooperation, as distinguished from brutal competition, in all departments of American activity. MT. Higgnson spoke a public citizen and based his philosophy upon a business and banking experience which covers many years. No man is more familiar with the financial life of the United States since the civil war and with many feat alres of our industrial and commercial life than is MT. Higginson. Now at a time of life when men who have greatly succeed ed can look back over many years of toll, he is able to speak authoritatively to the American people in advocacy of co-opera- ton and also to speak in terms which are more emphatic than words for through cooperation in which he shared this great