Background
Walter Joseph Cummings was born on June 24, 1879 in Springfield, Illinois, United States. He was the son of Walter Joseph Cummings and Mary Doyle.
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Walter Joseph Cummings
Edit ProfileEducation
He attended elementary school in Springfield and high school in Chicago after the family moved to that city. Cummings briefly attended, in succession, Northwestern, Loyola, and De Paul universities but received no degree.
Career
His first job was as a teller for Illinois Merchants Bank (later Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company), which was headed by his parents' friend John J. Mitchell. He left this position seeking higher wages in order to better support a family.
During World War I, Cummings bought the McGuire Streetcar and Bus Manufacturing Company in Paris, Illinois, and changed the name to McGuire, Cummings Company (later Cummings Car and Coach Company). Initially the company manufactured streetcars and buses but by the 1920's was also successfully manufacturing trackless trolleys and trucks.
In the 1920's Cummings was active in transit-related businesses. He purchased the Des Moines Railway Company and the Des Moines and Iowa Central Railroad Company, a short-line railway. He also formed the Chicago and West Towns Railway Company, which served Chicago's western suburbs with buses and streetcars. He purchased the Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago Railway, a traction company that served northern Indiana towns, and invested in the Terre Haute, Indiana, traction system.
With the onset of the Great Depression, Cummings was appointed bankruptcy trustee of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad and the Chicago Railways Company, the streetcar and bus company that served Chicago residents. He also began investing in Chicago real estate, which he continued to do most of his life.
In the early 1930's, Cummings acquired several Chicago-area transit companies. In August 1931, he bought the Calumet Railways Company, South Shore Line Motor Coach Company, and Midwest Coach Company from Midland United Company. In June 1932, he acquired Gary Railways Company. On March 4, 1933, Cummings was elected president of Electric Railway Equipment Securities Corporation and was made a director and member of the executive committee of American Car and Foundry Motors Company.
On April 8, 1933, Cummings entered government service at the behest of William H. Woodin, a former chairman of American Car and Foundry who had been appointed secretary of the Treasury by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
By early 1934 he was able to report to the president that 95 percent of the unrestricted banks had begun deposit insurance. On January 30, 1934, Cummings left the FDIC, and on March 14, 1934, he was appointed treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. During his tenure in that position, a long-standing party deficit was eliminated and the party's treasury was placed on a sound footing. In February 1936, a Senate subcommittee investigated Cummings' income from positions with concerns in which the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) had an interest, but it found no evidence of wrongdoing.
On November 18, 1936, Cummings was elected a class-A director of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. (He was reelected to a second term in 1939. ) Later in 1936, at the suggestion of the RFC, Cummings returned to Chicago as chairman of the Continental Illinois Bank. In 1939 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suggested to the New York Stock Exchange that brokerage banks be established. The SEC opposed the practice of brokers accepting customers' cash and securities for deposit, since, in effect, the brokers were engaged in banking but were not subject to banking regulations. On July 13, 1939, the president of the New York Stock Exchange selected Cummings to serve on an examining board that made a detailed study of the effectiveness of brokerage banks in their relation to protection of brokers' customers. In June 1946, President Harry Truman appointed Cummings to a commission charged with surveying and making recommendations to the president regarding reconstruction finance and world trade in the postwar period. In 1959 Cummings retired as chairman of the Continental Illinois Bank.
He died in Chicago.
Achievements
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After the president had declared a "bank holiday" on March 6, 1933, closing all the nation's banks, Woodin asked Cummings to serve as his executive assistant to supervise a staff of 1, 500 examiners who would screen the banks to determine which were sufficiently sound to be quickly reopened. Within one week 12, 000 banks were reopened. Later 3, 000 weak banks were liquidated, and 2, 000 others were merged with solvent institutions. These actions helped restore faith in the nation's banking system. Cummings was selected as the first chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Connections
On November 27, 1915, he married Lillian Garvy; they had three children.
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Born
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Died
August 20, 1967 (aged 88) -
Nationality
American