Background
James H. Eckels was born on November 22, 1858, in Princeton, Illinois, of Scotch-Irish parentage. Eckels was the son of James S. and Margaret D. Eckels.
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James H. Eckels was born on November 22, 1858, in Princeton, Illinois, of Scotch-Irish parentage. Eckels was the son of James S. and Margaret D. Eckels.
Eckels was educated in the common schools and high school of Princeton, graduating from the latter in 1876. Then he attended the Albany Law School, from which he graduated in 1883. While at Albany he made the acquaintance of Gov. Grover Cleveland, a momentous event in young Eckels’s career.
Establishing himself at Ottawa, Illinois, Eckels gained ground rapidly both as a lawyer and as a Democratic politician. He campaigned for his friend Cleveland in 1884 and was consulted in regard to the distribution of patronage in his congressional district.
In the campaign of 1892 he made speeches against the tariff and for Cleveland. He rejoiced in the Democratic victory and had hopes of receiving the appointment as United States attorney for Illinois. The country was surprised, as was Eckels, when Cleveland proposed that the thirty-five-year-old attorney should become comptroller of the currency. He took over the duties of that office on April 26, 1893.
Within a month after Eckels entered upon his new work the panic of 1893 broke. Bankers who had had misgivings at his appointment now prophesied disaster. That Eckels stood the test of this crisis and came to have the respect of the financiers is the best evidence of his ability. His most important work in this period was the handling of the tangled affairs of national banks which were forced to suspend payment.
During the period from 1865 to 1898, 369 national banks were forced into receiverships. Of this number, 181 met disaster in the four years and eight months during which Eckels was comptroller. The energy and efficiency which he demonstrated in meeting the problems of his office showed that Cleveland’s confidence in him had not been misplaced. His annual reports contained a number of constructive suggestions for the improvement of the national currency system. He advised, in order to give the currency greater elasticity, that an asset security be devised to take the place of bonds as the basis of the issue of national banknotes. He made a suggestion, later adopted, that a non-partisan commission be appointed to study exhaustively the needs of the nation’s monetary system. In 1896 he was a leader among the Gold Democrats.
Eckels was continued in his office by McKinley, but he resigned it on December 31, 1897, to become president of the Commercial National Bank of Chicago. He was one of the leading financiers of that city when heart trouble caused his sudden death on April 14, 1907.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
(The financial power of the new West.)
James H. Eckels belonged to the Democratic Party. In 1892 he was one of the delegates of the Eleventh Congressional District in the National Democratic Convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland at Chicago. He also represented the same district in the Gold Democratic Convention held at Indianapolis in 1896 in oppositionto W. J. Bryan.
James H. Eckels was small in stature.
On December 15, 1887, James H. Eckels married Fannie Lisette Reed of Ottawa, Illinois. They had a daughter.