“As the ‘messenger’ of the bank, I was sent around town with notices of
notes which had fallen due, and with drafts which had been sent to the
bank for collection from other cities. All these duties kept me fairly
busy, but I still had time to learn something of banking as a business,
and of the transactions which took place behind the counters. As the
business of the bank increased, the teller and the bookkeeper welcomed
my assistance in their departments; and, when summer came, and there
were no fires to make and no snow to shovel, I had opportunity to learn
most of the details of the business. After a while I was intrusted
with the work of the teller or of the bookkeeper when either was kept
at home by illness, and at the end of my first year I felt that I was
indeed ‘cut out for a banker.’
“I had so good an opinion of my accomplishments that I demanded of my
employers an increase of salary for my second year. They replied that I
was receiving all they could afford to pay, and I immediately resigned.
At this time, nearly every boy in Central New York had the ‘Western
Fever,’ and, after I left the bank, I developed a very bad case. I
determined to start for Chicago to make my fortune, and arrived there
one day in 1855, with few dollars and no friends. I had my mind made up
to be a banker, and supposed that it would be easier to find an opening
in the western city than it had been in my native village. But when I
made the rounds, I found that no embryo banker was needed. I could not
afford to be idle, so I determined to accept the first position which
should offer, whether or not it was to my liking. It does not pay for a
young man starting in life in a strange city to be too particular about
what he does for a living. I soon found a place as bookkeeper for a
lumber company. The panic of 1857 effected even bookkeepers, however;
and, when the firm found it necessary to reduce expenses, I gladly
accepted appointment as night watchman.
“I had been in Chicago three years before good fortune seemed to come
my way. I had visited every banking house several times in search of a
position, for I was convinced that banking ought to be my career, and I
was a familiar applicant to all the officials. On the third of August,
1858, a date I shall always remember, I was summoned to the office of
the Merchants’ Loan and Trust Company, where my name was on file as
a candidate for any position, however humble. ‘Can you keep a set of
books?’ asked Mr. Holt, the cashier. ‘I can try,’ was my answer. ‘That
isn’t what we want,’ said Mr. Holt; ‘can you do it?’ ‘I can, if it can
be done in twenty-three hours out of twenty-four,’ I replied, and I was
thereupon engaged at an annual salary of five hundred dollars. After
working for so long at uncongenial employment with low wages, this
opening made me very happy. I felt that my future was assured, for I
had obtained, at length, the long-desired standing-room in a Chicago
bank.