My story . s who believed inthe movement and wanted it to win. The moneyed peo-ple were against it, particularly of course those whoowned stock in the old company. Our fight was the moredifficult because it was directed against a company ownedby resident stockholders. It would probably have lackedsome of the bitter personal features if the ClevelandElectric had been owned by outside stockholders. TheConcon added two local bankers to its board of directorsat this juncture. Public subscriptions were opened forlow-fare stock making It more attractive than a savings-bank deposit, the purchaser hav
My story . s who believed inthe movement and wanted it to win. The moneyed peo-ple were against it, particularly of course those whoowned stock in the old company. Our fight was the moredifficult because it was directed against a company ownedby resident stockholders. It would probably have lackedsome of the bitter personal features if the ClevelandElectric had been owned by outside stockholders. TheConcon added two local bankers to its board of directorsat this juncture. Public subscriptions were opened forlow-fare stock making It more attractive than a savings-bank deposit, the purchaser having the privilege of sur-rendering his stock at will and getting back his moneyplus six per cent, for the time it was invested. Thisbothered the banks a great deal for men and women werepurchasing the stock and paying for it with their savingsbank deposits. It wasnt an uncommon thing for bank-ers to try to dissuade their depositors from such a fool-ish investment, but in spite of this money came in rap- 264. THE BURTON-JOHNSON CAMPAIGN 265 idly — sometimes as high as one hundred thousand dol-lars in a single day. This novel plan of raising moneyhad many adv^antages, but the savings banks were thelosers, and they fought desperately to discredit it. With the beginning of operations on the three-centline it was suggested that a bank and trust company beestablished in the interests of the low-fare people and thenecessity for this was apparent. In order to give them atrust company in sympathy with our movement the De-positors Savings & Trust Company was organized. Thepresidency was offered to a good many young bankersall of whom declined it because they feared that con-nection with it would cut off their careers with largerinstitutions. Many of them had their pay raised lestthe offer of the presidency should tempt them to leavetheir present jobs. I was then importuned to take thepresidency. I accepted it most reluctantly, for I thoughtit a mistake at the time and I still think my
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