by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The history of American banking is riddled with seemingly endless mergers and such is the case with the featured object from the Homestead’s holdings for this post, the January 1928 newsletter for stockholders, officers, executives and board members of Los Angeles-First National Trust and Savings Bank, a major institution in the burgeoning metropolis’ financial sphere.
A prior post here featured the July 1927 issue of the publication from the its predecessor, titled The “Pacific-Southwest” which was then owned by The First National Bank of Los Angeles, Pacific-Southwest Trust and Savings Bank and First Securities Company, the latter a stock and bond house owned by the shareholders of the other two entities—the trio having merged five years before in a huge transaction with the two banks remaining separate.
At the start of September, however, this changed. A consolidation was effected so that they became officially known as “Los Angeles—First National Trust and Savings Bank,” with renowned financier Henry M. Robinson, who had a national and international profile for his acuity in economics, as president, and John M. Elliott, dubbed “Dean of bankers in the West,” as chair of the board of directors. Robinson also retained his leadership of First Securities.
It was reported in the institution’s issue of that month that the plan was initially to call the new conglomeration the “First National—Consolidated Bank and Trust Company,” but there was push back from the First National branches in protest and legal action, for reasons not made particularly clear in the publication with mention of confusion as well as rights and interests of those involved, but this was said to have been amicably settled by the adoption of the second name.
With the first edition of the publication for 1928, its eight pages have plenty of material, though we’ll focus on a few that seem to be of most direct interest for greater Los Angeles. One of the front-page pieces was the election of Ralph B. Hardacre as executive vice-president of the institution. A native of suburban Chicago, he began his banking career in the Windy City and its First National Bank before migrating to Los Angeles and, in 1908, joining Security Trust and Savings Bank as assistant cashier and rising to be its vice-president. Hardacre was currently the president of the state banking association and toured institutions throughout the country on a recent tour and “was impressed with the optimism” he saw regarding the nation’s economic situation.
Another item on the first page concerned the annual stockholders meeting slated for the 18th to elect directors and officers, with an important agenda item being the proposal to increase the issue of stock by $250,000 shares of $25 each to enlarge total capital to $12.5 million. Not unexpectedly at all, Robinson was again confirmed as president, Elliott returned yet again as chair, while Hardacre, not three weeks into his new position, was officially voted to that role. The share increase also was approved and a separate item in the publication was that a dividend for the final three months of 1927 was approved at $1.12—it was added that this was two cents more than previously because of a recent 5-1 stock split.
The last front-page item of note dealt with a meeting of officers, department managers and branch managers held just before Christmas at the Spring and Sixth streets location, with dinner in the office cafeteria and a gathering in the assembly room and it was reported that “the holiday spirit of good fellowship prevailed.” After the meal, Robinson formally introduced Hardacre and Vice-President James R. Page as newly elected to their roles and, after they made brief remarks, the group moved to the meeting portion and heard addresses on “New Business;” “Community Development;” and “The Development of Industrial and Manufacturing Business” among other topics.
Lest it be thought that only dry business matters filled the pages of the publication, there were plenty of articles on the vacation of a bank official; showing of travelogue films; jokes culled a First Security official’s daily letters to salespersons; and more. But, there were such clinical material as a lengthy discussion of legislation regarding foreign trade, First Securities’ handling of bond issues, the matter of “stop payment” processing and how to organize correspondence files. Combing for items of more interest, though, we turn to page three for one by H.V. Adams of the Glendale Branch titled “Nothing In Common.”
Adams rhetorically asked “Who said that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common?” and rejoined that anyone who thought so must think that the head and the body had no connection. He insisted that those naysayers must believe “that the employing class does not work” and that “agitators assume that only men who labor with their muscles are workers.” It should be noted that the term “agitators” was readily applied to pro-union forces and, during a conservative period that comprised the Roaring Twenties, and in a city where the so-called “open shop,” or non-union environment, ruled the roost, it is hardly a surprise that banker would use that term.
Moreover, the author ventured that “Henry Ford has shown himself to be friendly to his employees” and, while the legendary automaker instituted a 40-hour work week and higher wages than competitors, these were for sound business reasons, including reducing turnover and training costs. He also had a program of employee benefits that was unusual, but it came at the cost of Ford’s “sociologists” visiting workers’ houses, inspecting bank records and noting divorce filings.
Still, Adams admired Ford’s contention that “thinking is the hardest work anyone can do,” though he might have considered the back-breaking and/or dangerous labor of, say, farm work, mining, or many other grueling jobs. Naturally, this is not to diminish the importance of the set of skills required to build and grow a business, including those of great complexity and size, and the work of corporate leaders who do this successfully is, of course, vital to productive capitalism.
The writer, however, verged too far towards simplicity is stating that the employer thinks and plans and the employees carrying those out, though it is true, vague as it is, that “only as we work together—employers and employees—can we achieve the best results.” The harmony Adams wished to impute to this relation was expressed another way: “we work together, one man using his brain and another his brawn,” as if muscles were, in fact, not connected to the brain! The broad brush conclusion was:
The one man’s profit is the wage of his brain, the other man’s wage is the profit of his muscles.
These types of internal publications, not seen by the general public, whether they be from banks or oil companies or virtually any other business that had them, relied heavily on these common exhortations of common cause, working together and the like (those that were involved with manual labor, like the petroleum firms, generally pushed safety very hard for obvious reasons of productivity and labor cost, as well as worker welfare).
So, another article headed “Pulling Together” by W.M. Pettus, a branch inspector, began with a quote, “A man told me the other day that self-interest and cut-throat competition were indispensable to modern business” and Pettus demurred, insisting “you must have team-work or the whole fabric or structure of our twentieth century industrial organization collapses.” Lacking this, he went on, nothing could be effected in what he termed “the physical, social, moral or financial world” as “team-work is a law of life.”
Pettus acknowledged that some in business did not have this cooperative spirit, which had to be achieved with “years of discipline and endeavor to practice the give and take attitude.” He offered that statistics demonstrated that most executives had the teamwork attitude and stated that for First-National it was key that there was successful supervision and a common goal and purpose. Otherwise dissension, jealousy, and dominance of some over others would inhibit any chance of success.
He was, of course, correct in commenting that “team-work is closely tied up with morale” and that these involved “incentive, fair play and confidence” so that “all are doing their best” and “have an equal chance to accomplish.” Employees should be able to bring criticisms and suggestions forwarded and have them looked at quickly, pondered with due consideration “and impartially rewarded.” Those who had an “isolated mentality” could not succeed in any “large public or quasi-public enterprise” and Pettus ended with the advice that “a man to be effective must have power over the human situation,” though what this meant was left for reader to decipher.
The fifth page provided photographs of a pair of new company office and bank buildings under construction in Glendale and Hollywood, with the latter being unusual in that it has a six-story core with a graduated corner tower above it. Both structures are still with us, the Glendale edifice at the northeast corner of Brand Boulevard and Broadway and the Tinseltown building at the southeast corner of Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. An accompanying article by W.B. Stringfellow, manager of the institution’s real estate subsidiary, Pacific Southwest Realty Company, adding that the several firms were “all of one great family,” mentioned available office spaces for rent in these and existing structures, as well as a new one in Pasadena, the handsome Oak Knoll Bank Building, razed in 2010 for something slightly less appealing architecturally.
One of the outlying area reports concerned Huntington Park, southeast of Los Angeles, and where branch manager J.N. Robinson wrote there was plenty of industrial activity in his area, including a steel plant and the Central Manufacturing District Terminal completed the prior month, while Firestone Tire and Rubber broke ground at the same time for a massive $7 million plant. The new bank branch, meanwhile, had some delays in marble installation, but it was expected that a February date would soon be confirmed for move-in at its location—though it appears to have been razed.
Lastly, there is reference to a terrible tragedy involving a company employee and which became a fixture of local and national news. We’ll cover this in a future post because the Museum’s collection has a group of artifacts related to it, but, as the publication put it:
The official family of the Los Angeles—First Trust & Savings Bank, and probably a large part of the civilized world, was shocked at the tragedy that overtook Perry M. Parker, Assistant Cashier and Staff Manager, Head Office, and his family when, on December 15, his 12-year-old daughter, Marion, was kidnaped from school, murdered by a fiend or fiends, and her horribly mutilated body returned to the father two days later.
The death of Marion Parker became, a popular culture phenomenon (including songs recorded and released to the public—the Museum has a pair of such examples), and this intensified when a suspect was identified and apprehended. An internal memo by Arch W. Anderson, a cashier and vice-president, stated that the wanted man was said to be “American,” presumably meaning white, in his late twenties, “speaks very good English,” and other details.
Moreover, because Perry Parker agreed to meet the kidnapper on the 17th with a ransom of $1,500, but the money was handed over and then the ghastly spectacle of the “return” involved the kidnapper taking what appeared to be Marion sitting upright in the passenger seat with her eyes open, but what was instead her corpse, and pushing it out of the vehicle as he sped off. Her limbs had been removed and the body disemboweled, while her eyes were held open with piano wire.
Thousands of police officers and volunteers scoured the region and a reward of $100,000 was offered, while evidence led to the identification of the suspect. As stated by the publication,
Fingerprints developed that the person wanted was William Edward Hickman, 19 years old, once employed by the First National as messenger, discharged when he admitted forging checks. He was paroled. The capture was made at Pendleton, Oregon, on Dec 22. He was immediately indicted for murder and kidnapping and was returned to Los Angeles Dec. 27. Enroute he made full confession of the kidnapping and atrocious murder and mutilation, confirming police theories that he alone committed the crime.
It had, in fact, been Perry Parker who’d filed the criminal complaint. Again, we’ll return to this horrific event in a later post, but it is certainly striking to have an element of it in this internally distributed company newsletter, otherwise so relatively mundane, as would be expected.
Meanwhile, this issue is part of a bound volume for fiscal year 1927-1928 (meaning July to June,) so we’ll undoubtedly return on several occasions to share other editions of the publication and its insights into the bank, its subsidiaries and late 1920s greater Los Angeles.