It is a rare occurence, even among so versatile a people as Americans, that any man attains marked success and distinction in two wholly disconnected lines of business at any age or with any measure of experience. But Mr. Malott, of Indianapolis, receiver of the Chicago & Atlantic Railway Company, has been surpassed by no man in the Northwest in successful management of both banking and railroad business, or in the confidence his success has inspired in his integrity, energy and prudence, and that at an age which has hardly attained the maturity of "middle age." He is still in the prime of life and usefulness, and has made his position so safe and commanding that the limit of his usefulness is the limit of his physical ability to do and endure the work that falls to his share in keeping the world going. And he is not content to take merely the duties that come in his way and solicit his care, but a desire to know the resources of the State and to make them known, where the knowledge will contribute to the welfare of the State, has impelled him to establish or assist a number of enterprises, in which his individuality appears only in the well-directed energy and success of the work. Few men in

the State have done so. much to push forward into commercial importance the resources that are now fast spreading through the nation a knowledge of their extent and value..

Volney Thomas Malott known commonly and almost exclusively as Thomas-was born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, on the 9th of September, 1838. His father was William H. Malott, a farmer of that county, his mother Leah P. McKown by birth. In 1841, the family removed to Salem, Washington County, Indiana, where the father in connection with his brother, Major Eli W. Malott, engaged in the mercantile business till his death in 1845, November 5th. It may be appropriately noted here that the grandfathers of Thomas, on both sides of the house, were in the military service of the country, one in Canada, in the war of 1812 with Great Britain, the other in the Indian wars in Indiana. The death of his father left to his mother the support of himself and another brother and sister, the former an infant who followed the father in a few weeks. Two years later she was married to Mr. John F. Ramsey, a wealthy and respectable furniture dealer and manufacturer of Indianapolis, who brought

her and her son and daughter to his own house, where they have since lived uninterruptedly. Thomas received his first schooling in Salem, under the direction of John I. Morrison, afterwards State Senator from Washington County, and later State Treasurer. Coming to Indianapolis in 1847, he first attended a private school, kept by Rev. W. A. Holliday, and later took his last scholastic advances in a half-public school kept by Benjamin L. Lang in the "Old Seminary," a noted institution in the early days of the city. Mr. Malott's school training did its best work on him in the discipline of his faculties rather than in the accumulation of knowledge, most of which was irrelevant to all the later duties of his life.

But like all strong characters he could absorb what he would assimilate from what was useless, and profit by it, and the process strengthened the ready perception, the alert deduction, the prompt decision, which have marked, and largely made, the success of his

career.

At intervals, during his school vacations, his aptitude for business and his clerkly attainments gave him employment as clerk and messenger in the Traders' Bank of Indianapolis, owned by John Woolley and Andrew Wilson. At the age of sixteen he took a permanent place in the Bank of the Capital, of which John Woolley was cashier and manager. He acted as teller of this bank for two or three years, but resigned in 1857, before the storm that overtook the State Free Banks of Indi

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ana, organized under the legislative act of 1853, in which it went down. teller was soon made teller of the Indianapolis branch of the Bank of the State, intended by its founders to take the place of the old State Bank, which had proved an incalculable benefit to the people, as well as great profit to the State and other stockholders. In this anticipation they were disappointed, the war and its financial necessities breaking up what was left of the State Free Banks under the pressure of the National Banks. In the five years' experience obtained in his position in the bank he developed the qualities. that have since been so largely in demand for dealing with important or urgent financial conditions.

It might be too much to say that this apprenticeship, ending in his twentyfourth year, made him the safe and sagacious financier he has proved to be, but certainly it had laid the foundations of the strong and impressive structure that has been erected on it. It surveyed the road to success, if it did not grade and bridge it.

One incident of this period illustrates the versatility of his application to business as well as the variety and accuracy of his information of its details. When the free banks began to shake under the financial strain of 1857, the daily papers of Indianapolis found it necessary to follow the market changes of bank values very closely, for the public took and gave their bills usually at the rate indicated in the reports of the Indianapolis morning papers. As there

were scores of these banks, little and big, scattered over the state, and their bills were circulating everywhere at home, it was no small task to keep track of their constant fluctuations. But our boyish bank teller did it so closely and carefully that one of the papers regularly obtained its currency reports from him, no little enterprise for a boy but nineteen years old, and they and the reports furnished the other papers by the private banking house of Fletcher & Co. really fixed the market rates of Indiana currency for many months.

In August, 1862 he was elected secretary and treasurer of the Peru & Indianapolis Railroad Company. Though but twenty-four years old, his reputation as a careful and thoroughly trustworthy business man placed him in this important position. The road had not proved very successful, and a change was desirable. Improved conditions soon followed, and aided in making for Mr. Malott a reputation as a railroad manager, equalling, if not surpassing, his earlier repute as a banker. Two years later, in 1864, he was appointed a state director in the branch bank of which he had shortly been teller, and had been tendered and declined the cashiership in 1862. He was now put fully in the parallel paths of railway and bank management that he has followed for the last quarter of a century. It has rarely happened in any country or time that a young man of twenty-six is placed by the free selection of competent men, determined

solely by his reputation for ability and reliability, in two positions of such responsibility at the same time. In 1865 he was the active and directing agency in organizing the "Merchant's National Bank of Indianapolis," and was made cashier while still remaining secretary and treasurer of the Peru Railroad Company.

In the spring of 1870 he resigned his place in the Merchant's Bank to take charge of the construction of the Michigan City & Indianapolis Railroad. This was finished under his direction the following year, and passed with the Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville railroad, under the control of the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago railroad company, originally the Indianapolis & Peru company, of which Mr. Malott was first secretary and treasurer, and, later, director also. In 1875 he was elected general manager of the combined lines, and in 1879 was made vice-president, acting as president, and taking the management till the whole affair was leased, in 1884, to the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific railroad company.

transformed by nationalization from the "Indianapolis Branch of the Bank of the State of Indiana," in which he had served five years as teller. Of this he was made president, a position position he still holds. When the Citizen's National Bank was wound up a few years ago, its fine stone front banking building was sold and Mr. Malott bought it for himself, but put his own bank in it, and occupies it still. One of the most gratifying incidents of his experience as a banker occurred some years after his assumption of this last position. Three private banks, two of them the oldest in the city, and all of them well supported and freely trusted, went down together in 1885, and made, naturally, an uneasy feeling in the public that needed little to aggravate it into a panic. A run on most of the banks began, but the Indiana National went on just as usual, undisturbed by timid depositors and showing no signs of the surrounding excitement except in the increase of its deposits. Scores of depositors withdrew from other banks and took their money to Mr. Malott's. This striking exhibition of confidence in his financial prudence and integrity, it may be easily conceived, was gratifying to him and his friends, and it helped to place his bank, where it still stands, at the head of all in the state as a deposit bank.

Though giving his attention mainly to his railway and banking duties, Mr. Malott was always alive to the value of enterprises for developing the resources

of the state. Under this impulse he aided effectively in organizing the Brazil Coal Company, one of the first in the business, not only with a view of enlarging the state's fuel supply, but to benefit the lake railways which brought down great quantities of lumber with no adequate return freight. This deficiency was supplied by the "block" and bituminous coal of the great southwestern field, of which Brazil, in Clay county, was then and is still the metropolis. He still retains his connection with it. With the same view of enlarging railway business and state resources, he aided in forming the earliest and most extensive icedealing firm in Indiana, Hill & Co., and still has an interest in it. In 1886 he helped organize the Brazil National Bank, of which he is a director In 1888, with the same energetic but pru dent enterprise, he assisted Mr. Harry Bates and some other young men in opening an Oolitic stone quarry at Romona, the product of which is largely distributed in Chicago and the north and as far east as New York. He aided in organizing that company, and is a director of it.

During this time and since he has built several of the largest and finest business houses of the city. Soon after he gave up the acting presidency of the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago Railroad he was elected vice-president and manager of the Union Railway Company of Indian-. apolis, a position in which he encoun-, tered more difficulties probably than in:

any other part of his railway service. He entered the Union Company in July, 1883, and in September following he aided greatly in bringing about an agreement of all the companies concerned, on a new plan of organization. The old one formed by three companies in 1849, when but one railroad was completed to Indianapolis-the old Madison, now a part of the Indianapolis & Jeffersonville lines -and the other two were barely organized, had been enlarged from time to time by the admission of other companies, as their roads were completed and it became necessary for them to use the Union tracks and depot, but the organization had remained. unchanged in other respects, and hardly fitted the condition of railway business nearly forty years later. By active and persistent effort on the part of Mr. Malott, this scheme of organization was sanctioned by an act of the legis lature in 1885, which further authorized the formation of Union companies. in all cities of the state of 50,000 or more population. There had been some jolting and jarring in the Indianapolis Union Company for some years, and it was practically impossible to get any effective work out of it in the way of needed improvements. But in the consultation regarding a reorganization the matter of a new Union depot or station building, and the necessary adjuncts, was broached and discussed, but without reaching any conclusion till after the State legislature had legalized the change.

In

the meanwhile, pending the scheme of reorganization and the legal authorization to act under it, the Belt Railway, then circling the greater part of the circumference of the city and connecting all the railways but one, completed in the fall of 1877, though leased by the Union Company in 1882, was used for the transfer of freight by but one or two roads, the others running through and across the city streets, to the infinite embarrassment of business in the south half, and the occasionally fatal and always serious obsstruction of passage by vehicles or pedestrians. One of Mr. Malott's first important acts in his new position, as manager of the Union Company, was to require all the roads to make their transfers of freight by the Belt, clear outside of the city, where it was possible to do so without serious detriment or inconvenience. This order was issued on the 1st of May, 1884. To give it effect he superintended the extension of the Belt railway, so as to include all in the city. The relief to the city and its business was speedy and conspicuous, and elicited warm commendation from the press, though few knew that Mr. Malott was the moving agency of the improvement.

After the legalization of the new organization of the Union Company in the winter of 1885, the subject of a new station building came up in a more definite and urgent form, and it was decided to take steps to make an improvement, so long and obviously needed, at once. The plan was pre