George McClelland Reynolds

Background

George Mcclelland Reynolds was born on January 15, 1865 in Panora, Iowa, the second of three sons and fourth of five children of Elijah Jackson and Eliza (Anderson) Reynolds. His father was of English descent, his mother of Scottish; they had been pioneer settlers in Iowa in the 1850's. The elder Reynolds was a farmer who subsequently became a grain and lumber merchant and a banker, and both Reynolds and his younger brother, Arthur, became prominent in banking.

Education

He graduated from the Guthrie County High School in Panora in 1879.

Career

George Reynolds went to work in the local Guthrie County National Bank, in which his father was a stockholder. In 1886 he left to enter the farm-loan business in Hastings, Nebraska, but when his father bought the Guthrie bank two years later, he returned to Panora to manage it.

Thereafter he rose rapidly, serving as cashier, then president, of the Des Moines (Iowa) National Bank, 1893-97. His work during those difficult years apparently caught the eye of J. Ogden Armour, then the largest owner of bank stock in Chicago, who brought Reynolds to the Continental National Bank of Chicago.

There he served as cashier (until 1902) and as vice-president, becoming president in 1906. When the Continental absorbed the Commercial National Bank of Chicago in 1910, Reynolds headed the new consolidation, which soon became one of the largest banks in America outside New York City. He also held the leading executive positions in subsequent consolidations in 1927, 1929, and 1932 which culminated in the formation of the Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Company.

He retired from banking at the beginning of 1933. At the time of the panic of 1907 Reynolds was a member of the Chicago Clearing House Committee, which was forced to issue clearing-house loan certificates to alleviate the tight money conditions. The panic solidified sentiment throughout the country for fundamental revision of the financial system. In 1908 Congress passed the Aldrich-Vreeland Act providing for a National Monetary Commission to investigate European banking systems.

As president of the American Bankers Association in that year, as well as because of his general prominence in American finance, Reynolds was asked by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, the predominant figure on the Commission, to join him abroad in the investigation, out of which grew the celebrated "Aldrich Plan" for a national reserve association. Aldrich, however, was regarded as a "Wall Street Senator" and was widely mistrusted in the West. To help popularize the Plan in that area, he picked Reynolds and James B. Forgan of the First National Bank of Chicago to accompany him on a speaking tour, which did much to win over western bankers.

The Democratic sweep in the elections of 1912 intervened, however, and the Aldrich Plan gave way to the Federal Reserve Bill as the program of banking reform. During the debate on the bill, Reynolds and the American Bankers Association worked to preserve the degree of banker control provided for in the Aldrich Plan, though they salvaged only such concessions as the provision that at least two members of the Federal Reserve Board should be men of experience in banking and finance and that there should be a Federal Advisory Board composed of bankers.

Reynolds himself subsequently served as a director of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, 1914-33. Banking was Reynolds's major interest, from which even President Taft's invitation to become Secretary of the Treasury in 1909 did not divert him. During the administrations of Harding and Coolidge he was again widely mentioned for the Treasury post.

In October 1931 he accepted the chairmanship of the National Credit Corporation, which organized local loan associations in forty-one states to aid distressed banks, and in 1932 he headed the Chicago agency of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

Reynolds died in Pasadena, California, at the age of seventy-five after a long illness.

Achievements

• Reynolds was a prominent banker who headed the new consolidation, which was one of the largest banks in America outside New York City.

Works

More photos

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  • The Administration Currency Bill (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Administration Currency Bill Recognizin...)

  • The Administration Currency Bill: Address

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

Personality

A fast and hard worker, Reynolds had a prodigious memory for both facts and faces. Believing that nothing worthwhile could be gained without diligent application, he rarely allowed himself to mix business with recreation, and he is said to have remarked that social pleasures had lost their interest for him. Nevertheless he had many friends.

Connections

In October 1884 he had married Elizabeth Hay in Panora. They had one son, Earle Hay, who followed his father in a banking career.

Father:

Elijah Jackson Reynolds

Mother:

Eliza (Anderson) Reynolds

Spouse:

Elizabeth Hay

sibling:

Arthur

Son:

Earle Hay