850 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS many believe, to protect the weaker banks from dissolution, although this has been done, but through operation of the causes that bring about consolidations in industry. First, members of the Clearing House Association, through their friendly intercourse and exchange of ideas and experience, became more liberal in policies and adopted more progressive measures. They were the first to take off their high hats, and their coats, too. They went out and hustled for business. With exceptions so few as to be negligible, banks have been taken over here because they were "good buys" but could not continue to compete with the enlarged facilities of the big fel-lows. The little fellows faced a decreasing margin of earnings. The second cause of consolidation was the mounting cost of executive brains adequate to handle this business that was getting so big, and complicated. Banking is properly called a profession, but is not included in college curricula, so good bankers have to be developed from the ranks. Opportunities to develop the required breadth of vision and experience come in the larger operations, and the neighborhood banker found himself handicapped. It was not so hard for the little fellow when every banker kept his hat on; but when the biggest ones started to advertise and ring door bells and form associations and hold conventions, they grew so fast in wisdom and resourcefulness that the small banker could not keep up. How could he compete with a bank that could afford to employ a $100,000-a-year executive? It is a long, long way back to 1852 when the Society for Savings hired a treasurer for $130 a year. What does this trend to consolidation mean? Events of history say it means better management and greater strength. Cleveland's experience in the recent depression shows this. There were but two closings and neither was catastrophic. Neither bank was a member of the Clearing House Association. Does it bode good or ill? In so far as we confine ourselves to the chronicling of past performances, the above paragraph will do for answer. This is not written as prophecy ; yet it THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 851 seems fitting to quote one of the best informed Cleveland bankers to the effect that Federal legislation, already in process of formation, will insure the benevolence of mergers of capital. The influence of the Federal Reserve Bank upon Cleveland banking evolution must not be overlooked, but it was not nearly so strong as the other influences referred to. When Cleveland was chosen, in 1914, as the headquarters for the Fourth Federal Reserve District, the city was the fourth financial center of the United States and its banking course had been definitely set. The Federal Reserve Bank functions in all of Ohio, eastern Kentucky, western Pennsylvania and six counties of West Virginia, with more than 700 national banks in its membership. Its province is to concentrate financial reserves, furnish an elastic currency through Federal notes, rediscount commercial paper and hold su-pervision over member banks. The Cleveland Trust Com-pany was the first, of other than national banks, to join the Federal Reserve in Cleveland. Now there are two national and ten state and trust banks in the city. This is a convenient place to list the names of the banks now operating in Cleveland. They are The American Sav-ings Bank Company, the Bank of Cleveland, Capital Bank, Central United, Cleveland Trust, Lorain Street Savings and Trust, North American Trust, Union Trust, Guardian Trust, Morris Plan, National City and Society for Savings. It is difficult to discuss the banking business without ram-bling all over the field of industry, education and even philan-thropy, because the ramifications are so many that they reach into all lines of activity. Automobile finance companies have grown to immense size and have assumed a responsibility that formerly belonged to the banks. There are more than seventy building loan associations, real estate mortgage com-panies, chattel mortgage companies, salary loan companies and various others. The line must be drawn somewhere. But it surely must not exclude the Cleveland Foundation, another purely local concept which has been adopted in other communities. 852 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Frederick H. Goff, then president of the Cleveland Trust Company, established the Cleveland Foundation in 1914. He had noted the difficulties so often met by trustees in attempting to carry out bequests made under conditions far different from those which followed in later years. Newton D. Baker calls it a plan "to substitute contemporary wisdom for fore-sight." It aims to circumvent the control of the "dead hand." Specific bequests are inflexible, courts have held, and there is little latitude for trustees to temper the provisions of the instrument to meet altered conditions. Some years ago in Portland, Maine, a trust fund of $100,000 was created to aid geniuses by the name of Miller, Rackleff or Nelson. Trustees were empowered to pay the tuition of students having such names, selected upon recommendation of a teacher or distinguished attorney. If no geniuses of those names ap-pear, this fund cannot be used. In another case Charles Ellis died in Philadelphia leaving some millions of dollars to found a college for the housing of white, fatherless girls within a designated area and within designated age limits. Seven years later the Orphans' Court of Philadelphia discovered that the fund amounted to more than $4,000,000 in principal and that accumulated income of $2,000,000 was on hand. It also found that the total number of children benefiting from this huge sum was only sixty, and the total number graduated from the institution was only twenty-three. Pennsylvania had two hundred institutions caring for fatherless girls, and over one-third of these were in and about Philadelphia. In these there were thousands of vacancies. The problem was litigated four times, but the courts held that not a dollar of the fund could be used except to carry out the literal provisions of the will, and so ordered that over $1,000,000 of the accumulated income should be used in the construction of additional buildings. Under the Cleveland Foundation plan, wealth may be dedicated to "such public charitable or educational uses as will, in the absolute and uncontrolled discretion of the Committee, most effectively assist and promote the well-being of the inhabitants of the community comprising the City of THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 853 Cleveland and its vicinity, or such other community of the State of Ohio as may by the terms of any such gift, devise or bequest have been designated as the particular locality to be benefited, regardless of race, color or creed." Until 1931 the Foundation was administered by the Cleveland Trust Company, but the duty then devolved upon a multiple trusteeship, consisting of the Central United National Bank, Cleveland Trust, Guardian Trust, Midland Bank and Union Trust Company. The trustees have title and control, for investment purposes, of all principal funds dedicated to the Foundation. Distribution is made by a committee of five citizens who serve without compensation. Three of these are chosen, one each, by the United States District Judge, the Probate Judge and Executive head of the City, and two are chosen by the trustee banks. Present members of the committee are Malcolm L. McBride, chairman, Colonel Leonard P. Ayers, C. W. Brand, Mrs. F. H. Goff and H. G. Dalton. The yearly available income is nearly $150,000. Now that the causes of bank mergers have been noted, as well as the periods of maximum development along this trend, it is interesting to trace the courses of the larger ones and watch especially the acceleration toward union that marks the last fifteen or sixteen years. In number of branches the Cleveland Trust Company leads, although it was not organized until 1895. Three men formed the new institution : Harry A. Garfield, now president of Williams College ; Charles L. Pack, now president of the American Tree Association, and Amos B. McNairy, manufacturer, now retired. These three had been interested in the construction of the Garfield Building, at Euclid Avenue and East Sixth Street, and had rented the basement to the New England Safe Deposit Company of Boston. After the vault had been constructed the Boston company decided not to establish a Cleveland office and the three determined they would meet the difficulty by organizing a bank of their own, the State Legislature having just enacted a law permitting safe deposit companies to engage in trust business. 854 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS At the first meeting there were present H. Clark Ford, Henry A. Sherwin, J. D. Cox, R. A. Harman, J. G. W. Cowles, Benjamin Rose, Judge Samuel E. Williamson, F. L. Alcott, W. F. Carr, J. M. Henderson and C. S. Bissell, besides the three mentioned. A list of 125 stockholders was completed within a year, no one holding more than 150 shares. Among them was John D. Rockefeller. The doors were opened in September of 1895 with Cowles as president, Sherwin, Garfield and McNairy vice presidents, Pack chairman of the executive committee, and E. G. Tillotson, who had been a junior officer of the Euclid Avenue Na-tional Bank, secretary and treasurer. The first statement, issued in 1896, showed resources of $1,191,000, including deposits of $565,000. The latest statement shows assets of $283,918,000, with $244,964,000 of deposits. A recent survey showed that the Cleveland Trust ranked sixth in the country as to savings deposits and nineteenth in total deposits, while no other banking institution in America whose branch offices are confined to a single local region had as many depositors. The first merger was in January, 1903, when the Western Reserve Trust Company was absorbed, followed in the same year by the Windermere Savings and Banking Company and East End Savings and Banking Company. In 1904 were added the Perry Savings Bank of Perry, Ohio, the Produce Exchange Bank of Bedford, Ohio, and the Wade Park Banking Company, with three branches. Two more joined in 1905, the Lorain Savings and Trust Company of Lorain, Ohio, and the Lakewood Savings and Banking Company. There was but one addition in 1906, the Dollar Savings Bank of Painesville, Ohio, and no more until 1919. More than twice as many banks were absorbed in the next decade as had been acquired in the first twenty-four years of the bank's existence. The People's Savings Bank Company added three branches in 1919, and in 1920 came the Hough Avenue Savings, West Park Savings and Banking and Forest City Savings and Trust. Two years later the Lake Shore Banking THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 855 and Trust added eight branches, and later in the same year the Garfield Savings Bank came in with seven more. In 1929 the Pearl Street Savings and Trust Company joined with its four places of business, and in 1932 the business of the Midland Bank was added to the enormous volume, as was also that of the People's Savings Bank of Lorain, Ohio. With the branches which the Cleveland Trust had itself established, there are now 58 separate buildings where its affairs are conducted. The Cleveland Trust pioneered in organizing the first women's department, in 1903; also in advertising, and again when it located its headquarters at Euclid and East Ninth, the present site. In 1908, when the new building was erected, this spot was considered too far east for a bank, and there was much trepidation over the price of the land. To-day's valuation is conservatively ten times the price paid. Calvary Morris had succeeded J. G. W. Cowles as presi-dent at the time of the consolidation with the Western Reserve Trust Company. When the former wished to retire, the bank induced Frederick H. Goff to take the chair. Goff had been a corporation lawyer, widely known for his services in connection with the settlement of the street railway war through the Tayler grant. He took the presidency for one year, but continued in office until his death in 1923. His per-formances as a banker and as a philanthropist entitle him to the very foremost rank. He was succeeded by Harris W. Creech. There are three great banking consolidations in Cleveland, the Cleveland Trust, Union Trust and Central United National. Listing the names of banks which have gone into these three mergers comes close to making a census of all the banks which were in existence here at the start of the twentieth century. The Union Trust Company has found a simple method of tracing its progress by a "family tree" exactly like a genealogical chart. The only trouble with that system is that some of the offspring are older than their parents. It is better to think of the big, present organization as a stream, into which have flowed other streams of 856 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS various lengths, some of them much longer than the main stem, some trickling, some pouring, but all augmenting the flood and causing it to sweep ever more powerfully in its course. More often than not, the tributary creeks and rivers have tributaries of their own, farther up toward the source, and are respectable in size themselves when they empty into the principal channel. This was the case with the Central United. It was the union of the Central National and the United Banking and Trust. The first began business in 1890, the second four years earlier. The Central National opened in the old Perry Payne Building with a capital of $800,000 and with George H. Ely as president and Colonel J. J. Sullivan as cashier and managing director. It grew until deposits were over $4,500,000 in 1900 when Colonel Sullivan was made presi-dent. Five years later the Rockefeller Building was com-pleted and the bank moved into ground floor quarters at the corner of West Sixth Street. In the west side of the ground floor appeared the Superior Savings and Trust Company, another of Colonel Sullivan's creations. It was inevitable that these two should merge, and they did, January 1, 1921, under the name of the Central National Bank Savings and Trust Company, with Colonel Sullivan as chairman of the board and C. E. Sullivan, his son and former president of the Superior Savings and Trust, as president. Colonel Sullivan, it should be noted, had been chairman of the board of the Superior. He died February 2, 1922, after seeing his two banks grow to $43,325,475. In May, 1926, headquarters were moved to the building at 308 Euclid Avenue, the Rockefeller Building quarters being continued as a branch. The consolidation with the United Bank making' the Central United came November 18, 1929. The combined total deposits of both banks were $81,000,000. The United Banking and Trust Company had been in-corporated in 1886 as the West Side Banking Company and began business on the northeast corner of Pearl Street and Lorain Avenue. The first president was Lee McBride, suc- THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 857 ceeded four years later by H. Tiedman. Capital was $100,000, half paid in. The name was changed to United Savings and Banking Company in May of 1896. The capital was changed to half a million in 1902. Arthur H. Seibig became president in 1919, holding the same position under the consolidation with the Central. In 1924 the name was changed to United Banking and Trust Company and the bank moved to a new building at West Twenty-fifth Street and Lorain Avenue. In 1928 the assets of the Lake Erie Trust Company were purchased, and in 1929 those of the Farmers Bank. After the consolidation with the Central, the Oul Savings and Loan Cornpany was absorbed. Total assets noi,v are $85,198,000. C. E. Sullivan is chairman of the board. The Union Trust Company, using the metaphor of the rivers, is the confluence of three great systems and two large streams which had no tributaries. It is convenient to trace these three systems one by one, from their sources away back in the foothills of the Civil war period to their union in 1921. And because John Sherwin was the motivating spirit in the eventual merger of some thirty banks into this great one, we may well start with the chain in which he was first active. The First National has been mentioned as the first to organize, in 1863, under the National Banking Act. Its capital was increased in 1903 to enable it to acquire the assets of the Coal and Iron National Bank. But another system had been forming, before this first merger, under Sherwin's direction, and it was a very considerable amalgamation of itself when it flowed into the First National channels. The Park National was started in 1895, with Sherwin as cashier. About five years later the Park absorbed the American Exchange National, financing the transaction by an increase of $250,000 in capital. Next was added the Euclid Avenue National, which had been organized in 1886 and later merged with the Park Na-tional, the resulting combination being called the Euclid-Park National. Within a few months the State National went into voluntary liquidation and the Euclid-Park took 858 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS over its business. In like manner the assets of the Bankers' National were acquired in 1904, so that by this time the Euclid-Park had become the largest national bank in Cleveland. On May 1, 1905, the Euclid-Park and the First National joined their interests under the latter's name and with Sherwin as president. Total deposits following the consolidation were $21,000,000, of which two-thirds were contributed by the First National. Headquarters were on the north side of Euclid Avenue, near the Square. They were first occupied in 1908. Five years later the First Trust and Savings Company was organized as an affiliated institution, but maintained its identity until the big final merger of 1921. That disposes of the first river system. The second had its origin in the Citizens Savings and Loan Association referred to previously as started in 1868. Its first office was in the Atwater Building, whence it moved to the Franklin Building, then to the Wade Building, and in 1894 to the site now occupied by the Federal Building. The Citizens Building at East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue, erected in 1900, was its last home. J. H. Wade, the first president, died in 1890 and was succeeded by H. B. Payne, who resigned the following year. William S. Jones then served until his death in 1893, followed by Frederick W. Pelton, who died in 1902, and D. Z. Norton, who served until February 3, 1903, when the Citizens merged with the Savings and Trust Company. Harmon R. Newcomb acted as official head of the bank for a short time, then Norton again, and finally J. R. Nutt. In 1904 the Citizens purchased the assets of the Prudential Trust Company, paying for them in stock. Prior to that, the Prudential had bought the assets of the Caxton Savings and Banking Company. Four years later the Citizens acquired the assets of the Commercial Savings and Banking Company, formerly the Dime Savings and Banking Company, and in 1918 affiliated with the Union Commerce National to form the largest banking unit in Ohio. The third system traces its source back to 1853, when the THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 859 Bank of Commerce opened its doors with $100,000 capital, to surrender its charter to the State eleven years later and become the Second National. Upon the expiration of its charter in 1884, the Second National became the National Bank of Commerce. In 1899 it was rechristened the Bank of Commerce, N. A., when it consolidated with the Western Reserve National Bank, which had been organized in 1892 with Colonel James Pickands as president and George S. Russell as cashier. At the time of this merger General Garretson was president of the Bank of Commerce, but he was succeeded at the time of his death by Russell. Now we have the three systems, the Union Commerce, Citizens and First National, with their tributaries, also the First Trust. Two other banks went into the Union Trust Company, the Broadway Savings and Trust Company and the Woodland Avenue Savings and Trust Company. The first is unique in its history as the first neighborhood bank to be established in any large city. This was in the spring of 1884. The Woodland Avenue bank was started three years later. Both were organized by Caesar A. Grasselli, head of the Grasselli Chemical Company, and Oliver M. Stafford, president of the Cleveland Worsted Mills Company. The Union Commerce brought $86,600,000 into the Union Trust Company, the Citizens, $77,500,000; First National, $97,500,000 ; First Trust, $29,200,000; Broadway, $15,300,000; and Woodland, $16,400,000, a total of $322,500,000 of resources, more than forty per cent of the assets of both national and state banks of Cleveland at the time. Sherwin was made chairman of the board and Nutt president, and headquarters were moved in 1924 to the gigantic building at East Ninth and Euclid, which contained the larg-est banking lobby in the world. One more bank, the State Banking and Trust, was added in 1926, to form the structure of today. Sherwin resigned in January of 1929 and Nutt acted both as chairman and president until the following year, when Wilbur M. Baldwin was elected president. Nutt resigned in 1932 and was succeeded by J. R. Kraus, who had been vice-chairman of the board. George A. Coulton is now 860 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS vice-chairman and Allard Smith, senior executive vice president. The Union Trust has twenty-two offices in Greater Cleveland. There have been other great names, of course, in Cleveland's banking history, and there are many active today, too many and too well known to demand inclusion here. At the top of such a roster should stand the name of Alfred Kelley, first president of Cleveland's first bank, the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie. And there was Leonard Case, the first cashier. Senator Mark Hanna was founder and president of the Union National, a fact which may have become obscured by the fame of his political operations. Tom L. Johnson is another of the politically famous who headed a bank here, the Depositors' Savings and Trust, although his bank had but a brief life. If these elders could return and see the results of the evolution of the years, they would be astounded, naturally, but not so much by the size of the banks as by the diversification of their functions. They would see "bank department stores" occupying four and five stories of great buildings, not only doing commercial savings and trust businesses, but selling cold storage for furs and storage for silverware, selling tickets to Beluchistan with valuable advice as to whether or not that would be a desirable journey. The modern Cleveland bank will act as guardian for your children, invest your life insurance, collect rents and manage buildings. You can rent a house or apartment or office at the bank, buy bonds and stocks, and have the bank serve as transfer agent and registrar of stock. You can buy travellers' checks and letters of credit, get the bank to serve as assignee or receiver of your business, delegate it to trustee your bond issues, to act as agent in paying bonds, coupons, interest and dividends, or to serve as escrow agent. Perhaps, though, the elders would be most surprised to find the bankers with their hats off.--W. C. M. CHAPTER VIII THE TERMINAL The story to be told here is one of those improbable tales that could not be told without overwhelming weight of evidence in support of its truth. The evidence in this case consists of six huge buildings on the Public Square (the Terminal group), a rapid transit system, a real estate development that comprises a complete community, with its own government, and a railroad system that extends across the continent and is worth two billion dollars. Almost the whole job was accomplished in fourteen years by two brothers who started without capital and without business experience. The story can be told in figures, in terms of millions of tons of steel and concrete and billions of dollars, though the figures are so huge that they are incomprehensible. But it cannot be told without including the story of the Van Sweringen brothers themselves, because the story of the Terminal development is the story of these two men. Any competent financier could have proved, a decade and a half ago, that the Van Sweringen project was impossible. And as a matter of fact, all of them did, just as they could prove today that such an accomplishment would not be capable of repetition unless it were so outrageously favored by Fortune that it would confound all the laws of economics and of probability. It is quite evident that the brothers themselves would have agreed, in 1916, that no considered program could have been so well ordered as to result in the achievements shown in 1932, and it is equally evident that they had no such program in mind. They were too intelligent to project a plan of such complexity into a future so invisible. - 861 - 862 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Events rather indicate that two young. men of character and ambition started out to sell all the building lots they could sell. They saw possibilities in the circumstances which developed that other men could not see, and they had a bold confidence to tackle and overcome opportunities that frightened others away. There are laws in finance and business that approach the sanctity of principles through long observance, and no adventurer may expect help from bankers or others when he indicates a tendency to go contrary to them. Such a law is well recognized by real estate men, who have observed that cities develop along definite and well established lines. Starting at the railroad or water front, whichever may serve as the gateway, the residences of the citizens begin a stately march toward the best residential section—the heights, if there are heights. The march is slowed or speeded by the town's growth and the houses are limited by transportation facilities from getting too far away from the center. After the homes, and reaching out toward them as far as they may, come the stores. After the stores come the banks, and after the banks come the wholesalers with their warehouses. The latter can never get far away from the gateway, where the trains or ships unload. Cleveland followed the conventional course precisely, with a line of march out Euclid, the vanguard in the Heights, the tail-end just west of the Square and encroaching on it. The Van Sweringens have been forced by their operations to attempt to dam this current and make it flow back to its source. At this time (1932) it cannot be said how far they will succeed. The answer has been delayed by the abnormal business situation. At any rate it is unlikely that two business men of the Van Sweringen calibre deliberately chose to get themselves into a fight of this sort against economic laws; they were rather forced into it by their other operations. Orris P. Van Sweringen and his brother, Mantis J., were born on a farm in the hills of Wayne County, Ohio, near Wooster, the former on April 24, 1879, and the latter on July 8, 1881. There is an older brother, Herbert C., and two THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 863 sisters, Edith and Carrie. Only Herbert is married. Their father, James T. Van Sweringen, was an engineer in the oil fields and a Civil war veteran who had been wounded at Gettysburg. The mother died when the two boys in whom we are interested were aged four and six, and the family moved to Geneva, Ohio. Two years later they came to Cleveland. They attended Bolton and Fairmount schools and were proficient in mathematics, but not otherwise notable. They aided in the support of the family by delivering newspapers, some of them to modern residents of the old Shaker region on the Heights. Their first regular jobs were with the Bradley Chemical Company, located in the Society for Savings Building, where they served well and attained promotion. They left this work when O. P. was twenty-one and M. J. nineteen. With their slender savings they bought an option on a small tract of land in the Shaker section from a Buffalo syndicate. They sold their first lot in 1901, obtained some capital and bought more land. In 1900 the value of Shaker Heights realty was $240,000. In 1929 it was $95,000,000. Credit must be given to the Van Sweringens for much of this appreciation of land values, for they had shown such skill and judgment in laying out their development that it was studied and copied by developers from other cities. They were looking into a far distant future in those days of 1900, for there was no rail transportation to their development and the automobile was a toy for the rich. As late as 1919 the population of Shaker Heights was only 1,900, but it increased tenfold in the next decade. The transportation problem was solved in 1910. The solution was too simple and too obvious to attract the attention of experienced street railway men like John Stanley, president of the Cleveland Railway Company, who said that he "had been in the business all his life, but it remained for two greenhorns to show him a new trick." The "trick" was Kingsbury Run, which ran from the Heights to the Cuyahoga through a deep and wide but unused valley and furnished a direct, cheap route, without grade crossings, made to order for rapid transit purposes. The natural terminal for such a system was the terri-             I 864 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS tory south of the Public Square and as near to it as possible. With such a terminal, the business man or shopper could board a car at the Heights and be down town just fourteen minutes later, about the time needed to go from the Square to East Fifty-fifth Street by surface car. The announcement of this transit system gave impetus to land sales in Shaker Heights, and completion of the system helped still more, so that sales in the period from 1919 to 1929 were over $30,000,000. But the Van Sweringens ran into an unlooked for obstacle in their transportation scheme —an obstacle which shunted them into the wider field of national railroading and brought fame and riches. The Nickel Plate Railroad, controlled by the New York Central, had a right of way in Kingsbury Run valley which threatened interference with the Van Sweringen road. Negotiations through Nickel Plate officials yielded nothing but discouragement and things looked dark for the whole Shaker Heights plan. Then, in 1916, the Interstate Commerce Commission invoked a Federal statute against competing and paralleling lines being operated under one control, and ordered the New York Central to sell the Nickel Plate. There was no crowding of buyers. The Nickel Plate was chiefly a freight road, and as one railroad man expressed it, "in the New York Central's rubbish heap." The Van Sweringens bought it for $8,500,000, paying $2,000,000 in cash and the balance in ten notes of $650,000 each. The "wise" snickered, and it appeared that the two real estate boys had been forced to take over a losing railroad venture in order to protect their land development. It was a certainty that the land company couldn't carry a great but losing railroad system on its financial back, and there seemed but one way out—to make the railroad pay its own way—a task that had been too much for the best and most experienced railroad men in the nation. So far the Vans had been jockeyed into their position. From then on they proceeded to make their own position. The first move was to get John J. Bernet, vice president of the New York Central, to run the Nickel Plate. It took salesmanship to do that, and President Smith of the New York THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 865 Central laughed at Bernet for considering the job. But Bernet was "sold" on the Vans as was John Pierpont Morgan, Senior, who financed them when others wouldn't. There is a story told about the Vans and Morgan which may or may not be true, but which has its value in illustrat-ing. the confidence which these brothers were able to inspire through sheer force of character. The story relates that when the Vans first asked Morgan to assist them, Morgan made his own terms, whereupon the youngmen refused and left his office. They had gone to their hotel and were preparing. to return to Cleveland when Morgan called them back, impressed by their courage in refusing his offer of help when no other way out seemed possible. It was this same brand of salesmanship that inspired Bernet to join them. And Bernet proceeded to build up the Nickel Plate. To do this it was necessary to acquire Atlantic coast connections and other extensions. With Morgan's help the Clover Leaf was acquired from the receivers, then the Hocking, Erie and Pere Marquette, nearly 9,000 miles of railroad covering the Middle West. Later the Missouri Pacific was bought for $100,000,000, and other roads, in turn, which together have developed into a two billion dollar giant stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Van Sweringens are best known, locally and nationally, as railroad magnates, and the story of their undertakings in this field requires more space for its telling than the present chapter affords. It is chiefly pertinent here to point out the truth that the two brothers were led to become the greatest railroad operators of their day through the need of selling residence lots in Shaker Heights Village. And it was all done in fourteen years. The Terminal project now took on much wider dimensions than those of a mere downtown station for the accommodation of Shaker Heights residents using the rapid transit. It made imperative a solution for Cleveland's Union Station problem. The old station, built in Civil war days on the lake front, was a stock jest for travelling men and a reproach to a beautiful and progressive first-rank city. William G. McAdoo, secretary of the Treasury and Railroad Ad- 866 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS ministrator under President Wilson, may have made the first suggestion for putting the station on the Square, but it was in the thoughts of the Vans as early as 1918, for O. P. ap-peared then before the city council and caused the plan to be submitted to a referendum of the people in the winter of 1919. There was much opposition, led mainly by Peter Witt. He had become a traction expert since the day when he conducted Tom L. Johnson's Henry George "tax school," and eventually he became traction adviser to the Van Sweringens. The Penn-sylvania Railroad also opposed the "Station on the Square" project, and consistently refused to come in. As far as such dates may be determined, the Vans appeared to the nation as mergers of railroads in 1921, or three years after they had first broached their Terminal project. As soon as the voters approved the referendum, H. D. Jouett, builder of the Grand Central Station in New York City, was brought to Cleveland to head the staff of engineers who were to do the Terminal job. The nucleus was, of course, the union station for the railroads, with its trackage and approaches, concourse, restaurants and shops, street and auto-mobile entrances. Above this was the Terminal Tower, an office building rising- 708 feet above the street level. Adjacent to the north stood Hotel Cleveland, already completed. Next neighbor to the Terminal on the east, facing the southwest corner of the Square, extending south to Prospect with a frontage of Ontario between the Square and Prospect, now stands the building occupied by The Higbee Company's department store. The Medical Arts, Builders Exchange, Midland Bank and Terminal Garage Buildings complete the Terminal group as it now stands. An interesting trend in modern architecture is indicated by the fact that although to the outward eye the four buildings just named present the appearance of one building, they are on the inside four distinct and separate buildings. The Terminal Garage houses 2,000 cars, and controls, in addition, an outdoor parking lot opposite The Higbee Company on Prospect Avenue. Another hotel and a new post office, for which the government has appropriated $5,700,000, will be added. THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 869 Jouett was one officer among many captains, colonels and generals assembled from the whole country, commanders of finance, engineering, construction, diplomacy and operation. The battle of finance had to be waged first, and here the House of Morgan ruled. Six railroads agreed to run their lines into the station, the New York Central, Big Four, Nickel Plate, Erie, Baltimore and Ohio, and the Wheeling. and Lake Erie. Of these the first three undertook the burden of finance. The Cleveland Union Terminals Company was organized with a capital of $10,000. The New York Central took 71 per cent of this stock, the Big Four 22 and the Nickel Plate 7 per cent. Requirements of capital for the station were $88,500,000, of which $60,000,000 was raised by bond issue, some detail of which should be included here : $12,000,000 first mortgage, 5 1/2 per cent sinking fund gold bonds, series "A," dated April 1, 1922, due April 1, 1872. $15,000,000 first mortgage 5 per cent bonds, series "B," dated April 1, 1923, due April 1, 1973. $5,000,000 4 1/2 per cent bonds, series "C," dated October 1, 1927, due October 1, 1977. $18,000,000 additional to series "C," and dated March 25, 1930. $10,000,000 additional to series "A" and "B." These bonds were guaranteed by the three railroads in proportion to their holdings in the Cleveland Union Terminals Company. The bonds were sold by the Morgan Company. A local regiment had to be recruited to assist in the financing battle, not the least of whose functions was to buy the land needed and pay for the buildings that had to be torn down. Thirty-five acres of land were required and hundreds of buildings were razed. Thousands of owners had to be dealt with, each owner armed with full knowledge of what was going forward and how badly his holdings were needed. Here the diplomatic corps was required. Charles L. Bradley, who had headed the building com- 870 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS mittee of the Union Trust Company, was called in to lead the construction forces. The operation commanders are too numerous to mention, for they handle buildings, railroads, street railways, land companies and dozens more of activities. Yet there is not a department of the completed undertaking in which the guiding hand of the Van Sweringens is not seen, nor was it absent in any of the formative actions. One of their most interesting battles was against another pair of brothers, Frank and C. F. Taplin, who were large stockholders in the Wheeling and Lake Erie. The Wheeling station was below Ontario Street near Huron Road, a ramshackle building of little value. But it was right in the line of approach for the railroads which wished to come into the new Terminal, and something had to be done about it. The Taplins refused to come in with the others and they refused to give up the station. The Vans bought a majority of the Wheeling stock, but that did not end the struggle, for the Taplins carried their minority rights to the courts and to the Interstate Commerce Commission before they conceded defeat. It is quite impossible to describe an achievement like the Terminal by the use of statistics. The figures are so large that they are meaningless to the average person. One can comprehend a building of four stories 65 feet by 90, costing $30,000; but what can be understood through statistics, of a construction involving the excavating of four million cubic yards of earth, the closing of a dozen streets and the building of two entirely new ones, a job covering 35 acres and including one 52-story building and seven others hardly smaller? The story of the Terminal development involves the sum of two hundred million dollars and includes, in addition to the group of buildings on the Square a transcontinental railway system, a community of 20,000 residents, a rapid transit system, a street railway system (for the Vans have bought the Cleveland Railway Company) , a freight terminal and a four-track area reaching from Collinwood to Linndale for commuter service in future. A man can take a rapid transit car at Shaker Heights THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 871 and get out at the Terminal station less than a quarter of an hour later. He can breakfast at any one of several Harvey restaurants in the station or at Hotel Cleveland. If, at his office in the Tower, he gets a telegram calling him to Los Angeles, he can cash a check, buy clothes, shoes, travelling bag and anything else he may need, take a train to Los Angeles, thence to New York and back again to Cleveland and Shaker Heights, without once getting out into the rain and without ever leaving the influence of the Van Sweringen brothers. His wife can drive her car to the rapid transit station in the Heights, park it there, go to the Terminal, have her teeth filled or an appendix removed, buy a house and lot and all furnishings, without stepping out from under the Van Sweringen roof. Shaker Heights residents need never buy hats, for utility's sake, although the Vans have provided fa-cilities for those who wish headgear. Rapid transit to adjacent towns, east and west, will bring tens of thousands of commuters to the Square every day, and the Van Sweringens and their associates will see to it that those commuters need not go any farther than the Square to find their every requirement. This is literally "turning a city upside down" and causing it much bewilderment. Cleveland, on the map, looks like half a wheel, its hub at the square and its spokes, or streets, radiating to the east, south and west. The half-wheel is bisected by the Cuyahoga which flows through near the square. Traffic heretofore has flowed into the hub, that from the west coming in over the High Level bridge. This situation will not be materially changed by the Lorain-Central bridge, which has its eastern terminus within the Terminal area. For years business has been edging away from the hub, to get away from the crowding and follow the course of homes. Now the residents have found that the Van Sweringen plans bring the Square shopping district within easier reach than those nearer to them in mileage. The normal decentralization process has been converted into an abnormal recentralization. Business observers look for a further emphasis on Public Square development as new buildings are added by 872 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS investors outside of the Van Sweringen group. The judgment of the Van Sweringens, up to the time when the buildings of the Terminal group were completed, cannot be assailed. They have been consistently right. But final proof has been postponed by the business disturbance following 1929. Merchants along Euclid Avenue, between Ninth and Twenty-Second streets, are not in agreement with the Terminal developers as to the segregation of retail merchandising in the Square area. They point out that the bulk of the shoppers live in sections inaccessible to the line of transportation leading into the Terminal station, and that these will find it more convenient to follow the natural trend of store development, which is out Euclid. The problem of parking is a factor of first importance here. The Cleveland Railway Company, controlled by the Vans, has led in the movement to ban automobile parking in the downtown shopping district, contending that parking slows up street railway schedules, adds to costs of operation and results in the city giving parking. privileges free on ground whose rental value mounts into millions of dollars. So far the Euclid Avenue merchants have successfully resisted, in the city council, any efforts to bar parking. The effect of the Terminal construction has been felt chiefly in the abandonment of the former Higbee headquarters at Thirteenth Street and Euclid Avenue, producing a blank spot in shopping traffic. Business conditions at the close of 1932 prevented a conclusion as to how far the Ter-minal had altered the flow of the shopping current. It would be interesting to have the opinion of Mr. Phinney Mowrey upon this subject. Mr. Mowrey would, if he could be interviewed, represent the highest authority on Public Square realty values and trends that could be consulted, since his views would be based upon an experience of no less than one hundred and seventeen years. Unfortunately, Mr. Mowrey has been dead for nearly a century. Up to a certain point he saw eye to eye with the Van Sweringens, for he it was who selected the southwest corner of the Square as the ideal hotel site, upon which stands the present Hotel Cleve- THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 873 land. Mr. Mowrey paid $100 for the lot in 1815 and built Mowrey's Tavern thereon, only to sell it in 1820 for $4,500, after which the place was called the Cleveland Hotel. There has been a hotel there, with brief intermissions, ever since. Comparison of today's values with those of 1820 might indicate that Mr. Mowrey was somewhat hasty in letting go ; but on the other hand, it could be argued that he iook his profit when the profit was there to take. Yet further exploration into the records of this transaction discloses that the name of Mr. Mowrey's purchaser was Donald McIntosh, a name which should indicate that Mr. Mowrey did not sell out at the top figure to any wild-eyed speculator or one who did not give the transaction a due and careful consideration. Since the Terminal development represents a renaissance of the Public Square, and because the Square's future is still a subject for speculation, it may be well to consider its past history briefly, at the risk of a little repetition, for its historical interest and also for its confirmation of the theory relating to trends in city development. It was laid out by Moses Cleaveland and his surveyors as a central park of ten acres in 1796, following the characteristics of old New England towns, which all have their "cross-roads" around which the churches, bank, town hall and school are centered. The first log cabins were under the hill, near the mouth of the Cuyahoga, the gateway. The first building on the Square was a combination jail and courthouse, built in 1812-13 and used until 1830. It was on the northwest corner, about where the Tom L. Johnson statue now stands. This building and its successor, the second courthouse, which occupied the southwest corner and was built in 1828, were the only buildings erected in the Square itself, aside from a few temporary structures put up for exhibition purposes. The residences began to move away from the river and toward the Heights. Among those who built homes on the Square were Leonard Case, William Lemon, C. M. Giddings, Elijah Bingham, John W. Allen, Samuel Williamson, N. E. Crittenden, Edmund Clarke, Dr. Erasmus Cushing and Richard Winslow. The Clarke, Cushing and Winslow houses 874 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS faced the Square and Euclid Avenue where the May Company now stands. West, on the present Park Building site, was the Nathan Perry house, which had several later owners. The Case home stood where the Federal Building is now, the Lemon home on the site of the Cuyahoga Building, the Williamson home where the Williamson Building now stands, the Crittenden house on the Society for Savings location and the Allen home on the northeast corner. The Old Stone Church came to the Square in 1832; the Hoffman block, predecessor of the Cuyahoga Building, in 1851, and the Federal Building in 1856. The City Hall was in rented quarters on the southwest corner from 1855 to 1875. But by 1867 most of the old homes were gone, driven farther east by the encroachments of business. The oldest building now standing on the Square is the Old Stone Church. The first Old Stone was replaced by the second in 1855. The second was burned in 1857 and replaced by the third, or present building, which was dedicated in 1858. The storms of controversy have ever hovered over the Square. From 1857 to 1867 it was fenced in as an ornamental park, and all traffic was diverted around its borders, until the courts ordered Ontario and Superior to be cut through. The voters wrangled over the location of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument until the Supreme Court of the state had to take a hand and settle upon the present location, the southeast section. At various times there have been attempts to locate the City Hall on the Square. Even poor old Commodore Perry was the victim of one of these fights. His statue was first erected in 1860, at the intersection of Superior and Ontario, before these streets were opened up. Then it was moved to the southeast quarter, but hustled out of there in 1894 to make room for the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. It was taken to Wade Park and later moved again to Gordon Park. But Moses Cleaveland has held his ground on the southwest section since 1888, and still holds it, now in front of the main Terminal entrance. The residences moved out Euclid Avenue and the fashionable stores followed them. After the stores, the banks. The