African Entrepreneurship Records

  Chapter 364 Burning

   October 8, 1873.

   On the far west coast of the Atlantic Ocean, on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes, it is already late at night, but it is rare that people in the entire city have not fallen asleep.

  Hechingen Bank Chicago Branch President Odyssey and a group of employees, together with the entire West Side of Chicago, are watching.

Chicago, nicknamed "The Windy City", has turned into a sea of ​​flames except for the west city at this moment. The sky is brightly illuminated by the fire. From time to time, buildings collapse in the fire, and the flames fly straight into the sky. , thick smoke billowed.

  Countless Chicago citizens poured into the West Side from other areas, crying, roaring, and looting were heard endlessly.

  So much so that the Chicago branch of Hechingen Bank had to strengthen security work, and the security team patrolled around the bank with guns.

  Standing on the third floor of the bank, overlooking the city center, it has been completely engulfed by fire, including the business center in Chicago, where various banks and other financial institutions in the United States gather.

  The colleagues in the same industry suffered such a catastrophe, and Odyssey, the president of the Chicago branch of the Hechingen Bank, couldn't help feeling: "Oh, God bless! Fortunately, the housing prices in Chicago saved us."

The Chicago branch of the Hexingen Bank is quite special. It was built in a relatively backward area of ​​Chicago, so the main building of the Hexingen Chicago branch stands like a flock of chickens in the middle of a pile of shacks with no more than two floors. Long can watch the fire in downtown Chicago leisurely.

  The city of Chicago is located on the south bank of Lake Michigan, on the Wutai Lake Plain. It was originally a hunting ground for Indians. When the city was founded in 1834, its population was less than 1,000. Due to the western development of the United States, Chicago, which was still a remote town, developed rapidly after the Civil War.

With the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, the mining of forests and iron ore, the connection of canals and railways, the city of Chicago has a population of 350,000 in just a few decades, and it is also the largest meat trading market in the United States and the world. It has the reputation of "the slaughterhouse of the world".

The development of Chicago is enough to make the cities of the East African Kingdom feel ashamed. The combined population of the three cities in the entire Central Province (First Town, Dar es Salaam, and Bagamoyo) can barely reach half of Chicago. The first choice for immigrants from all over the world, the United States has this appeal. Immigrants from various countries have gathered here, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Germany...including Italians, Chinese, Indians, and blacks with the lowest status at this time.

  As early as 1865, Hechingen Bank started business in the city of Chicago, but the development of the Hechingen Chicago branch can only be said to be mediocre. It is far away from the central business district in downtown Chicago, which is not conducive to the staff's business.

Many businessmen and Chicago citizens will choose to handle business in the city center. However, with the prosperity of Hexingen Bank in Europe, the popularity of Hexingen Bank in North America has also greatly increased, even if the location is not good. The number of people who choose to take loans at the Chicago branch has also increased.

   Regarding this terrible location, the Chicago branch also thought about developing in another location, but it was rejected by the North American headquarters in New York.

  The reason given by the North American headquarters in New York is also very simple. Compared with the city center, the land price in the West District is very cheap. You don’t need to spend more money here, and you can save money.

But this argument is obviously untenable. After purchasing a large piece of land in Xicheng District, Hexingen Bank carried out a large-scale reconstruction of the place. The cost of the reconstruction is enough to buy a good enough location in the center of the city. .

Moreover, the North American headquarters of Heixingen Bank is not short of money at all. As North America, which is second only to Europe economically, Hexingen Bank is developing rapidly here, even more smoothly than in Europe. Here, Heixingen Bank has fully developed a bank. proper financial attributes.

  In order to show financial strength and gain the trust of depositors, the North American headquarters in New York built an extremely luxurious seven-story reinforced concrete building with elevators in Manhattan.

The North American part of Hechingen Bank is mainly engaged in German business. In the United States, Germans are a huge group. In addition, Germans generally have a high level of education and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, just like the fraud industry that floods the entire United States. Making counterfeit money, making fake accounts, issuing fake certificates, high-end financial fraud, etc. are almost certainly mostly Germans.

  In these industries, of course, it is better to have a certain culture or some skills. German immigrants who have popularized compulsory education have a natural advantage. Like Italy, they can only do rough work like gangsters.

And there is another characteristic of the Germans, who want to go back to their hometown to show off if they are a little bit out, so many rich German businessmen and rich people like to deposit their money in the Hechingen Bank. Checks from the Hechingen Bank are directly exchanged in Europe, and so are ordinary Germans. When remittances to their families, they also directly choose the Hechingen Bank, which can save a lot of trouble, such as language barriers.

Only relying on the Germans in the United States, Hechingen Bank has a great advantage in the development, especially the German-speaking community. In 1860, there were more than 250 German-language newspapers and periodicals in the United States. Whether it is a big city or a community, as long as there are Germans German-language newspapers and magazines existed everywhere, and by 1871, 80 percent of non-English-language publications in the United States were German-language newspapers and periodicals.

  So the Germans in this period were quite powerful in the United States, especially after the reunification of Germany, even if the United States wanted to promote the assimilation policy, it had to think about it.

   All in all, Hechingen Bank is not short of money at all, and other city banks at the same time as the Chicago branch are also established in luxury business districts, with the exception of the Chicago branch.

  This kind of unreasonable decision made Odyssey very angry at the beginning. Any high housing price is an excuse. It must be that the head of the New York headquarters was kicked by a donkey.

   Today, Odyssey is uncharacteristically singing praises to the New York headquarters. At the same time, Odyssey deeply sympathizes with the tragic experience of his colleagues in Chicago, so much so that he drank a few more glasses tonight.

When the Chicago branch was built, the first thing to do was to remove the surrounding wooden plank roads and replace them with masonry structures. Most of the buildings in Chicago were built with wood from the forests of Wisconsin, and even its roads And sidewalks were also built of planks, cheap lumber allowed Chicagoans to splurge, much of the city housed poor immigrants in dilapidated shacks, and even wealthier townspeople often had their homes built of wood. So much so that when the Chicago branch was built, the price of masonry building materials was much higher than in other cities. After all, the demand was small and the production scale could not be raised.

Chicago has not seen a drop of rain since July of this year, and in early September, the city's most prominent newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, criticized the city for being made up of "fire traps," adding that many buildings "are fake and shingled." , but this still did not arouse people's vigilance.

   Until today, Chicago suddenly burned. At the same time, forest fires broke out in many places around Chicago. The cause of the fire is unknown.

  (end of this chapter)