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"Just fancy yourself as a banker - and discovering outside your plate glass facade an ever-lengthening column of men and women, all having bankbooks and checks clutched in their hands. Fancy those who would be best known to you, the ones with the biggest balances, pushing to the head of the line - there to bargain excitedly with the depositors holding the places nearest the wickets of the paying tellers. Even that won't give you a hint of what a banker's dread is like unless you heighten the effect with a swarm of hoarse-throated newsboys, each with his cry pitched to a hysterical scream; and then give the hideous concert an over-tone of sound from the scuffling feet of a mob."
- Frank A. Vanderlip
Frank A. Vanderlip is describing the Bank Crisis of 1907, but with adjustments for modern technology, he could be describing a modern banker's worst nightmare. Vanderlip was, at the time, vice president of National City Bank of New York, the largest in the country, now known as Citibank. For over a month, he worked day and night with financial kingpin J.P. Morgan and other bankers to stave off what could have been the collapse of the entire financial system. The incident left an enduring impression on his philosophy.
Unlike most of his associates, Vanderlip did not come from a family of privilege. He was raised on an Illinois farm, and at the age of 16 he stood on the front lawn watching his family's land and possessions auctioned off after the death of his father. He never forgot his roots, or how quickly one's fortunes could be reversed.
Both incidents were on his mind on the night of November 22, 1910, as he approached a private railroad car in New Jersey. Now the president of his bank, Vanderlip felt as secretive as a conspirator, in his custom-tailored British overcoat and fedora hat. Although the other men on board were known to Vanderlip and to each other, he said "we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names. We addressed each other as 'Ben,' 'Paul,' 'Nelson,' 'Abe.' Davison and I adopted even deeper disguises, abandoning our own first names. On the theory that we were...