Richard Jarvis

“ Earle's office you enter a high-ceilinged room, green carpeted, and see, sitting at a massive roll-top desk and behind a little wall of methodically arranged papers, a slightly stoop-shouldered man whose age, however, you would be unlikely to set at fifty-two years. ”

“ Earle, of Philadelphia, as a Business Doctor and Financial Surgeon.
It is an axiom of medical research that, for every new disease which is discovered, sooner or later a new cure is made known, and much the same law seems to apply to ethics and to business. Thus the bank-wrecker had be-come a too-familiar danger, and the average receiver was generally, though by no means always justly, looked upon as of small assistance—or worse. ”

“ The company must go into the hands of a receiver, and when it goes there is only one man who can cure it, only one man who can get it on its feet again, preserve our business integrity and save the money of our stockholders. ”

“ Earle's life is something more than he would have one believe. Many men who have observed the careers of our most conspicuous money-makers have asked: Does it pay to play fair?" George H. Earle, Jr., is the answer, and the answer is "Yes." ”

“ The best pruned trees bear the best plums, and one of Mr, Earle's specialties has always been pruning. He gathered other young men about him, pruned that warehousing company's tree, and began using fertilizer—which came in the shape of a purchase of certain wharves. Why he wanted wharves nobody then knew, but after the purchase—some time after—the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, entering the city, began fighting the Philadelphia & Reading for wharf room: that warehousing company's stock now fluctuates between seventy-five and a hundred dollars a share. ”

“ Once the money was in his hands, Mr. Earle went even farther in his demands upon the confidence of the depositors and stockholders. He called for proxies.
In return," said he, "I promise to pay the depositors one third in cash and give them, for the balance, preferred stock in the reorganized company carrying an accumulative dividend of six per cent."
The response to this was instant. Each mail brought in hundreds of proxies, until the receiver had authority to act for every dollar on deposit. ”

“ Earle into national prominence. In the late summer of 1906 that institution, theretofore regarded as a local Gibraltar, fell with a crash. By a single shot from his revolver its president ended his own life and, to all appearances, the life of the institution of which he had been the unworthy head.
Investigation revealed seeming ruin. The head of the company had advanced tremendous sums of money on wild-cat securities. Hundreds of poor people with their little all in those vaults swarmed vainly to the doors. Angry depositors engaged counsel and started a legion of suits. ”

“ The depositors nodded.
"Now then, I will save your money."
And already it was as good as saved!
Mr. Earle went to the directors—not at them, but to them. He talked with them and found them willing to advance two and a half million dollars in cash. That sounds amazing. It is amazing. People even hinted that Mr. Earle had "put the screws on" those directors. But he denies this. Like most successful men, he is an optimist. ”