DOYEN OF AMERICAN BANKERS

Shannon News, 21 April 1925, Page 4

DOYEN OF AMERICAN BANKERS

Five hundred members of the New York State Banking Association, including many of America’s most eminent finariciers, attended a dinner in New York recently, given in honour of Mr. George F. Baker, doyen of the bankers, chairman of the First National Bank of New York, and the “silent man of Wall Street,” who, m the course of his eighty-four years, has accumulated a fortune estimated at £100,000,000. In paying tribute to Mr. Baker (says the London. “Daily Telegraph”), Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan made one of his rare public addresses, and Mr. Baker, responding, . made the second public speech in his career during which he has been for more than half a century a towering figure in the financial history of the United Std<t6Si Mr." Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the United States Treasury, known as the “Sphinx of Washington,” also broke his rule to refrain from public speaking, and referred to Mr. Baker as a “builder,” and to his spirit as “part of the foundation of America.” “Mr. Baker’s bank,” he said, “had since 1907 lent the Government the enormous sum of £700,00,000.” Mr. Morgan said he spoke for two generations of admiring and affectionate friends of Mr. Baker, and the thought that he represented his father gave him courage. Mr. Morgan related how the late Mr. J. P. Morgan, summing up the trying days of the panic of 1907, declared that the remedies of the bankers could never have been applied without the aid of Mr. Baker, who was always ready to do his part and more. When, after his father’s death and just before the war, heavy r esponsibilities were thrown upon him, Mr. Morgan said his father himself could not have been kinder and more considerately helpful than Mr. Baker. In dwelling upon his father’s friendship for Mr. Baker, Mr. Morgan outlined a code of ethics for bankers which Mr. Baker, he said, had always followed: “There are no safe short cuts in piloting a business or a ship,” Mr. Morgan declared, “and the first rule of a banker should be never to do something you don’t approve of in order more quickly to accomplish something you do approve of.” At the close of the evening Mr. Baker rose, and in a, voice scarcely heard for emotion, said: “I have had a long service and crossed the summit of life’s hill. I am wandering down : the downward slope. I never shall forget I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart, a’nd say, ‘God bless you.’ ”