Melvin Alvah Traylor was born on October 19, 1878 in Breeding, Ky. He was the son of James Milton and Kitty Frances (Hervey) Traylor. His grandparents, Methodists and Jeffersonian Democrats, had moved to Kentucky from Virginia. The family was poor and Melvin, the eldest of seven children, began ploughing and harvesting corn and tobacco at the age of eight.
He attended the country schools until he was fifteen, receiving the equivalent of a sixth-grade education. At sixteen he entered the high school at Columbia, Adair County, where he stayed four months, and then taught school at Leatherwood Creek for two years.
In 1896 he campaigned for Bryan. Two years later he went to Hillsboro, Tex. , fifty-five miles from Fort Worth, where he studied law, passing the bar examination in 1901.
Illinois College awarded him an honorary M. A. degree in 1922.
For the next four years he practised law and was also city clerk (1901) and assistant county attorney (1904 - 05) of Hill County.
He started his banking career by acting as cashier of a bank at Malone, Tex. , from 1905 to 1907. He then became cashier and later vice-president of the Citizens' National Bank in Ballinger, Tex. , and when this was consolidated with the First National Bank he was elected president of the new institution. Most of the depositors were farmers and cattlemen and Traylor mastered the farm and cattle-loan business.
In 1911 the Stock Yards National Bank of East St. Louis, Ill. , made him vice-president and three years later he was given a similar appointment at the Live Stock Exchange National Bank at the Chicago Stock Yards. He was soon made president of the bank and also of the Chicago Cattle Loan Company (1914 - 19).
During the World War he organized the local campaign for the Treasury certificate of indebtedness, and by that time was recognized as one of the outstanding bankers of Chicago. Traylor was made president of the First Trust and Savings Bank in 1919 and at the same time vice-president and director of the First National Bank. Six years later he was president of the latter institution. These two banks and the Union Trust Company were consolidated in 1928 under the name of the First-Union Trust and Savings Bank, Traylor continuing as president of the combined institution. In 1931 the Foreman-State National Bank (itself a consolidation) with its affiliated group was absorbed, and the First National became the largest bank in Chicago.
He was greatly interested in higher education. He was director in various important corporations. In 1929 Traylor represented the United States, together with Jackson Reynolds, in organizing the Bank for International Settlements at Basel.
At the time of his death in Chicago, on February 14, 1934, he was chairman of the committee on drought relief for Illinois and of the national committee to plan aid for the drought-ridden farms in the whole country.
He was mentioned as a Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States in 1932.
He was considered a possible Democratic candidate for president in 1932 but he did not pursue this candidacy, though he received approximately 40 votes on each of the first three ballots at the convention.
His point of view as a financier appears most clearly, perhaps, in a speech which he delivered before the International Chamber of Commerce in Washington, on May 5, 1931, and from which he gained great publicity ("The Human Element in Crises, " Pamphlets on the Economic Crisis of 1929, vol. IV, 1931, no. 15). He said that financial leaders must take large responsibility for the crash, and proposed as remedies the abolition of the daily settlement and the daily call-money rate, the abolition of floor trading, and the limitation of trading to cash when the amount involved was less than $10, 000. "This country, " he said, "cannot afford again the wreck and ruin of people of small means which followed the last crash. "
He was the president of the United States Golf Association, 1928.
He was president of the Illinois Bankers Association (1923 - 24), vice-president (1924 - 26) and president (1926 - 27) of the American Bankers' Association, president of the Shedd Aquarium Society, and trustee of Northwestern University, of Berea College, and of the Newberry Library.
He married Dorthy Arnold Yerby 8 June 1906 and they were parents of Melvin Alvah Traylor, Jr. and Nancy Frances Traylor.
(1844–1909)
(1883–1975)
(1915–2008)
(1914–1943)
(1880–1960)
(1883–1950)
(1888–1972)
(1894–1970)
(1885–1924)
(1857–1929)
