Englewood Exhibitionist

"He is dynamic, he is magnetic; he is earnest. He believes in Himself, his Country and his God. He must fight on, not only for the love of his Land and the great City he lives in, but because, too, of a deep and profound concern for his neighbors in Sixty Third Street."

That is one way of rating John Milton ("100%") Nichols, president of Chicago's First National Bank of Englewood, and that was the way of one Lilian Cousins in a gushing article last year in the Carpentersville (Ill.) Fox Valley Mirror.* Another way appeared a few years ago in a banker- written letter to the American Banker: "Mr. Nichols isn't a banker and what he has in Englewood is not a bank. It is a cash register." Whatever John Milton Nichols may be, he has set something of a record for financial exhibitionism in the past three years. He got his headline tag of "100%" by liquidating loans as fast as he could early in Depression, having more than enough cash and Government bonds to cover all his deposits when the banking storm hit. Later the Nichols index of liquidity climbed to 102% which also got his name in the papers. But Banker Nichols did not really begin to show his stuff until the advent of the New Deal.

Since then he has stopped making loans altogether, presumably will not make one so long as Franklin D. Roosevelt is in the White House. He refused to take any new checking accounts, offered a good pencil to any depositor with an account of $100 or less who would close it out. He wrote down $24,000 worth of Federal Reserve stock to the insulting figure of 10-c-. When the temporary Federal Deposit Insurance plan went into effect he became the only Federal Reserve member to hold out.

To threats of court action to force him in, John Milton Nichols declaimed: "I will be in the banking business long after you fellows have gone home, and you will go with the recollection that there was one banker that did not have a yellow streak all the way from his heels to the top of his head." For not putting FDIC signs on his tellers' windows the Government threatened to fine Banker Nichols $100 per day per window. Promptly, Banker Nichols threatened to close all but one window. In an expansive mood, he once began a letter to Comptroller of the Currency James Francis Thaddeus O'Connor: "Top o' the Mornin' to Ye, Mr. O'Connor! And 'twas with much interest that I be a readin' yours of the 22nd."

Year ago when the permanent plan went into effect, Banker Nichols grudgingly put the "Member Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation" legend on his bank statements as required by law. Under the legend he once wrote in appalling taste: "A thousand-and-more years before our Country's famous Hyde Park tenor made his premier appearance in front of the microphone, the principles underlying sound banking existed. They will always exist--not even the melodious croonings of an embittered and frustrated President can change them."

Last summer he published an advertisement suggesting as a G. 0. P. slogan: "Landon Knox Out Roosevelt." On his latest statement, with startling restraint, Banker Nichols simply splashed the FDIC legend with red ink, below the smudge printed: "A Blot On Our Statement."

Last week "100%" Nichols made what looked like his last possible grandstand play short of shutting down completely. Down to the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank he marched, drew out some $2,500,000 in cash and Government bonds, leaving only the $639,700 legally required as backing for his $5,806,463 deposits. Then he stuffed the $2,500,000 into safety deposit boxes in two Loop banks. Blustered he: "Now the politician will have to think up a new idea before he can get his hands on this money." Reason Banker Nichols can do anything he likes at his bank to make headlines is that he inherited 60% of its 2,000 shares from his father, who got control of the institution 33 years ago. At the bank, "100%" Nichols has a private office but spends most of his time at a desk in the lobby where he can watch people come and go. He travels to work in a Duesenberg, which he likes to drive fast, piling up in a ditch not long ago. Now 45, short, black-haired, profane, he talks out of the side of his mouth, looks not unlike the late Huey Pierce Long.

*The Fox Valley Mirror's slogan: "Free, White, and Twenty-one."

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