Labor Banking

The railway brotherhoods last week entered a third field of finance. For several years now they have operated successfully as commercial bankers. Last February they organized American Home Builders Inc., to finance house construction at low rates. (Here they compete with savings & loan societies.) Last week's creation was the Continental Bank, at Cleveland, to lend money to workers upon personal securities. Although Continental Bank and similar personal loan banks to be set up over the country with railway brotherhood financing will to some extent compete with the various Morris Plan Banks,* their chief aim is to undermine loan sharks and salary buyers. William Granville Lee, President of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, is Chairman of Continental Bank; Walter Flavins McCaleb is President. (He is also President of American Home Builders Inc.; was onetime Vice Chairman of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank.)

*Organized through the Industrial Finance Corporation after the plan of Arthur J. Morris, Manhattan lawyer-banker.