Merkel Landis

Merkel Landis, circa 1901

Merkel Landis (January 5, 1875 – September 28, 1960) was an American lawyer and banker. A native resident of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he was the treasurer and president of Carlisle Trust Company in Pennsylvania. During that time he started the Christmas club savings program, now used by many banks nationwide.

Early life

Landis was born at Carlisle on January 5, 1875, to John B. Landis and Barbara Merkel Landis.[1] He grew up and lived his childhood on North College Street. Landis attended the local Carlisle public schools and graduated from Carlisle High School in 1891. He then went to the Dickinson Preparatory School before entering Dickinson College.[2]

Landis started at the college in 1892 for a four-year degree of Bachelor of Philosophy and graduated in 1896.[1] He was 21 years old when he graduated. He then worked at the Carlisle Deposit Bank as a clerk for about a year. Landis then went back to Dickinson School of Law to get his law degree and passed the Cumberland County Bar exam. He was admitted in 1899.[2]

Christmas Savings Club

A Christmas Savings Club booklet for coupons, signed by Merkel Landis on 12/29/1909

In 1901 Landis returned to the Carlisle Bank, which had been renamed Carlisle Trust Company in 1905, to become their treasurer.[3]

One Saturday in December 1909 three men from the local Carlisle shoe factory came to his office with an idea. They asked if they could open a joint account under their names. Landis, as the bank treasurer, set up an account where they were going to collect money from the fellow workers and deposit one cent a week for the first week and continually add a penny to the total amount collected for the next fifty weeks, with the last deposit of 50 cents in December. They then were going to distribute the amount obtained, just before Christmas.[4]

Landis took this idea a step further and published display advertisements in the local paper that his bank was forming a Christmas Savings Club. Starting in the first week of January 1910 club members were allowed to make weekly deposits of any amount until the week before Christmas.[5] They would get paid three percent interest on their amount saved before being distributed. Landis, treasurer of Carlisle Trust Company, had originated the world's first Christmas Savings Club.[6][7][8][9] The television game show Jeopardy! once posed the question, "Bank president Merkel Landis founded this in Pennsylvania?" The answer: "What is The Christmas Club?"[10]

The Christmas Saving Club Landis set into place involved a system of coupons and booklet envelopes.[11] The system was simple and required very little bookkeeping.[12] It was a coupon-sheet system where a Club customer made a deposit of a nickel, dime or quarter and a coupon was torn off a 14×14-inch coupon sheet as a receipt.[13] The customer kept the coupons in a booklet envelope. In December the customer turned in their coupons and received a check.[14] A similar system is still used by banks and thousands of credit unions throughout the United States.[15][16] The club is often referred to by many banks as The Landis Christmas Savings Club.[17]

A British-born traveling salesman bought the right later to use Landis' idea and sold the concept to other banks throughout the United States.[14][13] In 1928 he purchased the Savings Club Company initiated by Landis and formed a corporation. The headquarters of the corporation is in New York City. That corporation supplied coupon books and promotional ideas to banks nationwide. That same principal has been used from the 1960s and 1970s with deposits of $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, or $20. The Club membership then ends in November and checks are mailed from the local bank to the depositors for Christmas shopping. The state of New York usually has the most memberships, with Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California next in line. These four states produce about 50 per cent of all Christmas Club depositors.[4]

Personal life

Landis was associated with the Carlisle Red Cross, the Hamilton Library, Sigma Chi, T.N.E., and was editor of Dickinson College yearbook. He played college baseball as a shortstop.[2]

Landis was married twice. His first wife was Helen R. Boyd, whom he married on October 12, 1905. After her death in 1932 he then married Mary Kirtley Lamberton in the summer of 1933. He had a son, Joseph Boyd Landis, and a daughter, Katherine Gorden Landis (whose daughter is the children's book writer Lois Lowry, being Landis' granddaughter).[18]

Later life and death

Landis had an ongoing illness in his early eighties. He was 85 years old when he died on September 28, 1960. His remains are interred at Westminster Memorial Gardens in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.[19]

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Cooper 1903, p. 39.
  2. 1 2 3 "Merkel Landis (1875–1960)". Archives & Special Collections. Dickinson College. 2017. Retrieved December 27, 2017.
  3. ↑ SC 1935, p. 205.
  4. 1 2 Remas, Michael (December 14, 1966). "Christmas Saving Club, It All Began In 1909". Xenia Daily Gazette. Xenia, Ohio. p. 17 – via Newspapers.com .
  5. ↑ "Christmas Savings Club". The Sentinel. Carlisle, Pennsylvania. December 27, 1909. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com .
  6. ↑ CCBF 2001, p. 72.
  7. ↑ Kane 1997, p. 248.
  8. ↑ Giesecke 2002, p. 35.
  9. ↑ Kane 1935, p. 55.
  10. ↑ Chaston 1997, p. 2.
  11. ↑ "Most Christmas Club Savings used Elsewhere". The Courier-Express. Dubois, Pennsylvania. November 8, 1971. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com .
  12. ↑ "Unique Savings Scheme / Christmas Saving Plan Inaugurated in Carlisle". Valley Spirit. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. February 15, 1911. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com .
  13. 1 2 Wheeler 1936, p. 42.
  14. 1 2 Baldridge, Dorothy (December 23, 1964). "Prepaid Christmas". Wilmington News-Journal. Wilmington, Ohio. p. 50 – via Newspapers.com .
  15. ↑ "Christmas Clubbers Use Funds Elsewhere". Alamogordo Daily News. Alamogordo, New Mexico. November 5, 1971. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com .
  16. ↑ Duffy, Marcia Passos (2011). "Are Christmas club accounts still a good idea?". Bankrate. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Carlisle leads; others follow / The Carlisle Trust Co. Started The Christmas Club Plan". The Sentinel. Carlisle, Pennsylvania. December 22, 1914. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com .
  18. ↑ Cress 2013, p. 99.
  19. ↑ "CARLISLE, Pa. (AP)". The Gettysburg Times. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. September 30, 1960. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com . Merkel Landis, retired banker and civic leader who was credited with having started the Christmas savings club plan in 1910, died Wednesday.

Bibliography

  • CCBF (2001). Cumberland Justice. Cumberland County Bar Foundation. ISBN 978-0-9712599-0-4. Merkel Landis and the First Christmas Club Bankers and lawyers have long worked together and, as has already been noted, over the years many prominent bankers have been lawyers...
  • Chaston, Joel (1997). Lois Lowry. New York, New York: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-4034-9. Lowry recalls that he was once mentioned in a question on the television game show Jeopardy: "The question was, 'Bank president Merkel Landis founded this in Pennsylvania.' The answer was: 'The Christmas Club.'
  • Cooper, H.C. (1903). 20th Century Bench. H.C. Cooper, Jr., Bro. & Company.
  • Cress, Joseph David (3 September 2013). History of Cumberland Co. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-62584-058-5. Landis told the story of how he had originated the first Christmas savings club in the financial world
  • Giesecke, Ernestine (1 June 2002). Money Business: Banks. Chicago, Illinois: Heinemann-Raintree, Heinemann Library. ISBN 978-1-58810-953-8. Christmas club In 1909, Carlisle Trust Company in Pennsylvania offered the first Christmas savings club at a bank. Merkel Landis, the bank's treasurer, was responsible for the idea.
  • Kane, Joseph Nathan (1935). More First Facts. The Bronx, New York: H. W. Wilson Company. The first Christmas savings club was originated by Merkel Landis, treasurer of Carlisle Trust Company in Pennsylvania, in 1909 and placed in operation by that bank the same year. The first payment was received December 1, 1909.
  • Kane, Joseph Nathan (December 1, 1997). Famous First Facts (5th ed.). The Bronx, New York: H.W. Wilson Company. ISBN 978-0824209308. The first Christmas savings club at a bank was started by Carlisle Trust Company in Pennsylvania, in 1909. The idea originated with Merkel Landis, the bank’s treasurer. The first payment was received December 1, 1909.
  • SC (1935). Magazine of Sigma Chi. Sigma Chi. Originated the first Chrisimas Savings Glub By MERKEL LANDIS President, Carlisle (Pa.) Trust Company Here is the unusual story of a successful Sigma Chi banker who started a plan later adopted by 90 per cent of the nation's bank
  • Wheeler, Edward Jewitt (October 1936). "Merkel Landis". The Literary Digest. 122 (14–26). What he bought was permission to distribute the Christmas savings club idea invented two months before by the bank's cashier, Merkel Landis. Since ideas must take physical form to receive legal protection against encroachment, Landis had translated his Christmas Club plan into a 14-by- 14-inch coupon sheet.
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