The Money Question

Eighteen-ninety-four seemed like anything but the right time to get into finance. The last great depression of the nineteenth century was in full swing and no place was immune. The crisis turned one-fifth of the nation’s labor force onto the streets. Eastern factories went silent, thousands of businesses shut down, 500 banks closed their doors.1 Tappan could see in his own backyard that people were suffering terribly. Up in the iron district, mines were still, shrouded in a blanket of snow. Penniless old men wandered the streets in working-class St. Paul. Across the river in Minneapolis, railroad baron James J. Hill wrote, “very few farmers have any money, and the local banks are unable to aid them. The banks themselves, including many which had been considered entirely strong, are terribly pinched.”2