IRC

The Perils of Organizing Credit Unions - 1920s Style

by Gabriel Kirkpatrick, CUNA Archivist

Organizing credit unions in the early days of the movement was an adventurous, not to say a "hair-raising," experience. Roy Bergengren, initially the only organizer for the Credit Union National Extension Bureau, battled train delays, bad weather, the opposition of bankers and loan sharks, and "lady drivers" in his treks across the country to attend organizational meetings.

On March 17, 1927, Bergengren met with Father Roney, pastor of a parish in Dougherty, Iowa, to talk about organizing a credit union. Together they went to call on 16 parishioners to invite them to a meeting the following evening. Then Bergengren went to Davenport with plans to return the next day for the meeting. Returning to Dougherty in the middle of a howling blizzard, he met Father Roney at the rectory.

"I never realized before," Bergengren wrote, "what a lonely, utterly desolate and monotonous tune a high wind can play on telephone wires in open country." Despite the storm they made it to the meeting hall, but found only four of the parishioners present. It developed that the local banker had followed them around on their visits the previous day and had managed to convince most of the potential organizers that there was something sinister going on and that Bergengren's motives were less than honorable. The parish did eventually get a credit union despite the banker's opposition. Strangely, in the account of this story in Crusade, the banker has a leading role in the failure of the meeting, but in The Bridge, the story does not mention a banker.

On another occasion, Bergengren was scheduled to organize a credit union for teachers in Detroit, Michigan. He was met at the station by a "lady teacher" who was appointed to drive him across town to the meeting. Bergengren described the ride: "We were all over the road, sometimes on the wrong side, often bumping the curb, sometimes so close to a collision that I finally closed my eyes and tried to compose myself for the inevitable." When they finally arrived at their destination, the lady turned to Bergengren and exclaimed, "That was the first time I ever drove an automobile in my life!"

The meeting started off badly, too, when the gentleman who introduced Bergengren announced, "There are three good reasons why Detroit teachers will never organize a credit union. First, they don't need it; second, they won't use it...., and third, there never was a Detroit schoolteacher who could manage his own money, let alone manage anyone else's money." The teachers did, however, organize a credit union, which prospered under the direction of J. Clarence Howell.

The Bridge, was the ancestor of Credit Union Magazine. It began publication in June 1924 with Bergengren as the editor, and except for a brief hiatus between mid-1934 and February 1936, has been in continous publication since, with a few name changes.

Copyright © 2008 - Credit Union National Association, Inc.