Charter Men

In the name of the governors of Europe's great central banks of issue, invitations were despatched last week to certain "persons versed in banking and the issuance of bonds."

The "persons" will represent the U. S., Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Japan. They expect to meet within a fortnight to grapple with the job of drafting a charter for Europe's new International Bank of (reparations) Settlements. Though not the largest bank in the world, the I. B. S. will have the world's broadest scope. It is the cornerstone of the Young Plan, which has now superseded the Dawes Plan. It will act as the clearing house through which Germany will pay reparations for 57 years on the instalment plan. It will progressively capitalize future payments in advance by selling reparations bonds secured on Germany's promise to pay the full allotted number of her instalments. Experts estimate that reparations bond sales to investors in every country on the globe will exceed $1,500,000,000-- biggest issue since the War.

The "persons" invited last week to help draft the bank charter received cable-grams from Governor Emile Moreau of the Bank of France. In the case of the Allied Powers, M. Moreau was told whom to invite by the governors of the respective banks of issue who all chose financiers from within their own organizations. Thus keen, patrician Montagu Collet Nor:nan, Governor of the Bank of England, chose a famed member of its board, Sir Charles Stewart Addis, sire of six sons, seven daughters. A leading director, of the great Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., Sir Charles has interests throughout ; Asia, is chairman of :the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank of London. He succeeded the late Baron Revelstoke as junior British representative of the Young Plan Committee (TIME, April 29).

Grumpy Dr. Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank refused to tell M. Moreau what Germans to invite, put him in a quandary. Dr. Schacht was wroth at the known intention of the Allies to convene the bank charter committee in Brussels-- hotbed of hostility to the Reich. Presently correspondents learned at the Bank of France that the committee would probably meet in some other city, and it was believed that Dr. Schacht would cooperate on that basis.

John Pierpont Morgan, who was in Scotland last week, and Owen D. Young, who was in Canada, advised M. Moreau by cable whom to invite from the U. S. Europe today knows better than to expect the President of the U. S. or Federal Reserve Bank Governor Roy Archibald Young to take such responsibility. Messrs. Morgan and Young went to the original Young Plan Conference (and dominated it) backed only by their enormous prestige.

Similarly the two U. S. citizens who last week accepted invitations to sit on the bank charter committee pack their own potency. They must have plenty. They are Jackson Eli Reynolds, president of First National Bank of New York, and Melvin Alvah Traylor, president of First National Bank of Chicago.

Bankers Reynolds and Traylor were both farmer lads, both rose through law to banking, both were personal proteges of elder bankers, both are Democrats.

Born in Woodstock, Ill., stocky, dynamic Farmer Boy Reynolds worked his way west, was known as a mighty Leland Stanford footballer to undergraduate Herbert Hoover. Striking out for the East he took his law degree at Columbia, taught in the Columbia Law School from 1903-06 and 1913-17, and on the side did such brilliant legal work for the Central Railroad Co. of New Jersey that he was snapped up by George F. Baker, then director of First National Bank of New York. After nine years (in 1922) Mr. Reynolds was made president.

Born of mountaineer stock at Breeding, Ky., lanky, humorous "Mel" Traylor also went west, to a two-fisted section of Texas, where he clerked by day, studied law at night and in 1909 became president of the First National Bank of Ballinger.

A bank vice-presidency in East St. Louis, Ill., was his stepping-stone to Chicago. There banker James B. Forgan took him into his First Trust & Savings Bank and with that potent backing and his own brilliant acumen he rose like a rocket to the presidency of the First National Bank of Chicago which he holds today.