Once upon the '90s, SPY magazine  had a section called "Logrolling in Our Time"  that described how authors would hail each other's works in turn. The upshot was a certain lack of objectivity. Well, Logrolling is an art, I guess, and I have a regular Stradivarius  in this blog.

First off, there's a new feature in here, "Ask the Expert." Have a question and want a personalized, somewhat smart-alecky answer? Welcome aboard, matey—hit the button, and your response is only hours away (maybe months—it's up to me.) But The Expert is IN.

Seriously, though, we get questions in the comments box, and we want to answer reasonable questions with reasonable answers. (And the opposite, too.) So ask us those tough questions you expect on exam day. We're here to help.

Now to Logrolling. The bloggers at our companion site, The Student LoanDown, are about to celebrate their one-year anniversary in the 'sphere, and it's my duty to not only wish them a Happy Birthday, but to send you, dear reader, to The LoanDown. You see, the blogosphere was developed in anticipation of The LoanDown—it combines all the best of knowledge, service, help, wit and flat-out graphical beauty.

It's the promise of the Internet, fulfilled.

And I'm not just saying that. Earlier this week we all met and discussed stuff that affects us as bloggers—and, yes, as artists—and it was all those bloggers at LoanDown who are driving the Wells Fargo presence on the blogosphere. What you see here was built there.

Happy Birthday, LoanDown! Keep it going! But slow down a little, will ya? It's hard for an old fogey like me to keep up.

Posted by Charles at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Found in At Work, Branding, Experts, Holidays, Misc, Perspective, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

Social history  is all about detailing the experiences of ordinary people. Bob Chandler shares some letters from from his personal collection, and some he found in the Archives, of Wells Fargo's working people. They describe their day at work, and it sounds an awful lot like yours.

An1890s railroader in upstate New York  wrote, "I am all alone. Have all the operating to do and all waybilling. It makes a fellow hustle to keep up and not get trains muddled up. This is double track."

In 1914 Detroit, a Wells Fargoan wrote that when one of his colleagues went on vacation, that man's work came to him, and "kept me pretty busy. The Boss did not handle much of the correspondence. He was in and out all the time, so that left it all to me, but I managed to keep it going, but it kept me going."

A classic account of working for Wells Fargo comes from Arcata, Calif., in 1909:

"This job of mine is a korker. I am here from 8 AM until 10 PM every night and sometimes later, but I have made good. Business is good and the Wells Fargo Auditors say that this office is in better shape than it was before, so the glory helps me some, but holy macarony, I am tired."

From a social history point of view, one gets a more accurate history from regular people, the opposite end of the scale from kings and generals. This is certainly true. But these letters prove another thing that is certainly true: The one constant that pervades social history is hard work and achin' feet.

Posted by Charles at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Found in Artifacts, At Work, First-hand Accounts, Misc, Perspective, Railroads, San Francisco, Wells Fargo Bank

Long hours for Wells Fargoans are not new, nor are part-time jobs that suddenly develop into full-time. Letters from the Archives, and some in Bob Chandler's personal collection, present the hard-working life of people before our modern world. We all know too well how hard it gets at a relentless office. It's nice to know—or it's cold comfort—that the past was also not so halcyon .

From California's Central Valley in 1892, Bob reports, came this simple statement: "I have spent the week the same as usual, ‘Work and Sleep.'" An Oregonian in 1896 explained his situation: "The Agent is going to lay off for a month in August and I will be in his place. Will be quite a change from nights," he wrote, adding that he "Don't like to work nights very well."

Another letter in Bob's collection described one railroad and telegraph clerk, near Bakersfield, Calif., who prided himself on sending and receiving 40 words a minute. He had left home two years earlier rather than work for "starvation wages" for a local company. As the clerk took over for three months while the agent vacationed, and he saw his big break, he reported: "I am getting $85 here, but expect to get more next place as I will have a station with W.F. & Co. Ex, which pays 15 per cent."

Hustling was the name of the game, then and now. In many cases, one person represented Wells Fargo, the railroad, and telegraph company all at once, and took care of customers in a variety of ways. Bob has a letter from one Wells Fargoan, who wrote to his sweetheart from Kansas one Sunday night:

"It is the first time I haven't been busy since last Sunday night. I sure have the work to do here. Every night I am so busy I don't have time to write letters or anything else, except on Sunday night. All the work I have to do that day is to do the wire work [telegraph] and sell tickets for one train."

He added: "This sure is a fine depot and nice to work in."

What an assessment of the workplace! There's a guy with a good attitude.

Posted by Charles at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Found in Artifacts, At Work, First-hand Accounts, Misc, Museums, Perspective, Remember, San Francisco, Wells Fargo Bank

History is never as neat and simple as you would like it to be. Right now, sitting in my office, I have the grave site marker of Silas St. John . How it got to be in my office and how Wells Fargo is trying to return it to its rightful place in the world is worthy of a book rather than a post.

Cutting to the bone, an amateur historian brought the story of St. John  to me and explained how this pilfered grave-marker bronze, cast by the famous artist Donal Hord , had come to reside at the San Diego Historical Society. Wouldn't we like to see it back where it belonged, seeing that it was Wells Fargo that had sponsored the bronze honoring St. John in the first place in 1942? And BTW, it just so happens to be the 150th anniversary of the first transcontinental express shipment—in which St. John played an integral part.

Problem: St. John was never a Wells Fargo employee—even though the bronze says he was.

Yet he was an honest-to-goodness historical character of note. And regardless of how you might feel about him, you have to admit a man deserves the grave he was meant to have . The solution as it stands is that we will indeed publicize the restoration of this important piece of art and mention the truth of the story with hat held politely in hand. Old Town State Park in San Diego  will allow us to tell the story at its celebration of the first Overland Mail on Sept. 1. This also gives us the opportunity to take a historical artifact out of a dark archive and place it back into the public experience. The Overland Mail is intimately associated with Wells Fargo's history, a historical fact that resonates among our customers.

Posted by Allan at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Found in Artifacts, Misc, Museums, Perspective, Remember, San Diego, Stagecoach, Transportation, Wells Fargo Bank

In Wells Fargo's Archives, not every document is "Minutes of the Board of Directors" meeting from 1904. Exciting as that always is, there are many other documents—Gold Rush-era transactions, letters between local agents and the Head Office ... Many documents tell everyday stories of people working for the company.

William Muir in Chicago in the early 1890s gives a story of working for Wells Fargo. He told his family on Sept. 16, 1890:

"I am now with Wells, Fargo & Co. Express. It is a much better job than the last one. On each wagon, there are two men, a driver and conductor. I am driver. I have it pretty easy as I have nothing to do, only drive. The other man does the delivering. I don't need to take care of the team at all. All I do is unhitch them and chase them upstairs (the wagons remained on the ground floor—Bob) and the hostlers  take care of them after. I start at 7 A.M., quit at 6 P.M. out of which I get two hours for dinner."

Six months later, Muir had a different story to tell. Wells Fargo saw aptitude, and responsibility made Muir a better man. Said he on March 31, 1891:

"I have a much better job than driving. I am conductor on a money wagon, delivering money to the banks. It is a very responsible position to hold and also I have to be very careful to whom I give the money. For instance, yesterday I had about 100,000 dollars to deliver."

Muir gave Wells Fargo a good days' work. Wells Fargo gave Muir a greater opportunity as a result. And he delivered.

Posted by Bob at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Found in Animals, Artifacts, At Work, First-hand Accounts, Misc, Perspective, Photographs, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

I was born and raised in Wisconsin, spent winter vacations in Upper Michigan , and spent summer vacations camping around the country. My husband was raised in Indiana, where the ice storms  are legendary. We were both taught to have an attitude of preparedness. Our cars are outfitted with jumper cables, emergency shovels, sleeping bags, windshield scrapers, and (of course) umbrellas.

We don't have hammers.

When your car falls into water, you can't open the door because of the pressure from the water. If you have manual windows, you can open a window and swim out. If you have power windows, you must break a window in order to escape. How do you prepare for this? Keep a hammer in your car, within reach of the driver's seat.

The night of the I-35W bridge  collapse, I watched regular-channel programming for the first time in two years. I watched all night. By the time the rescue efforts were called off for the night, I had finally figured something out. All along, people had been saying that there were 50 or more cars on the bridge when it collapsed. But on the news coverage, there were more like 20, if that. I finally realized that all those missing cars were underneath the part of the bridge that was in the water.

Did those people keep hammers in their cars? Could I have gotten out?

There is a running joke in Minnesota that all we can talk about is the weather . There's a good reason for that: We have a lot of weather, and it causes the natural disasters that we deal with here. We have blizzards, we have tornados, we have flooding. We don't have earthquakes, or hurricanes, or tsunamis. So, of course, we talk about the weather. But now we're talking about bridges.

The I-35W bridge across the Mississippi is as complicated in its death  as it was simple during its life . For many of us, it is as though we lost a family member. Many of us drove that bridge twice a day; I myself drove it about twice a week. Its death has caused tangled emotions and tangled conversations, no less than it has caused tangled traffic. Some of us ran to give first aid help; some of us ran for our cameras; some of us ran away. Some of us want to get as close to it as possible; some of us can't even see pictures without shedding tears. Some of us blame the mayor; some blame the governor; some blame the legislature; some blame the construction company doing repairs. Some of us want to spend more on all of our highways; some of us want to spend more on mass transit; some of us want to spend more on maintaining the status quo.

I just want to buy a hammer .

Posted by Phyllis at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Found in At Home, At Work, Events, Get Involved, Minneapolis, Misc, Museums, Natural Disasters, Perspective, Prepare, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

Well, I wrote it before and I'll write it again—he's the best. Now, he's the King. Barry Bonds is the all-time home run leader in Major League Baseball.

After the post last June, when I discussed the negative attitudes from watchers that Bonds has had to endure (including the commissioner's! ), I got several responses from people who had good insights on the issue. More than anything else, people who didn't want Bonds to take the crown seemed to harbor a dislike for Bonds.

I think I have that one figured out. And it comes from the most genuine source I can cite—my own heart.

I have tickets to tonight's game. The game after the Great Moment . Thirty-three-dollar tickets that are now worth $33. Tickets to a game where I have a chance to catch a ball that will be just a ball. Tickets that I'll share with my kid for his birthday, where we'll have to rely on bonds of family and affection for our memories.

I wanted to be there. I wanted to give my son a moment of history. I wanted to have a memory I could hold when all the rest of life is pedestrian and unremarkable and nothin' ever really goes my way . Barry kinda messed that all up by hitting 756 last night instead. Barry didn't do what I wanted him to do.

So all these people who don't like Barry or don't want him to be home run king for one reason or another are upset because Barry doesn't do what they want him to do—confess, fail, be nice to reporters, do ads for hamburgers, leg out a ground ball to second base, live in Springfield, make $1 million and be happy with it, yuk it up with Terry Bradshaw in a halftime piece.

And mostly, they're mad because he doesn't play in Arlington, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, St. Louis, Toronto, Phoenix ...

And the record-breaker? A 400-foot monster to dead-away center, the deepest point in the ballpark. Oh yeah, one more thing—it was the go-ahead run.

Posted by Charles at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Found in Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Baseball, Hank Aaron, Misc, Perspective, Remember, San Francisco, Substance abuse, Wells Fargo Bank, Willie Mays

Chris Terzich, with our Incident Management Team in Minnesota, noted my post from last October, "How Do You Prepare For Crime?" In it, I wrote:

I could use a little help. My neighborhood is being infiltrated by criminals, and I honestly don't know how to "prepare" for crime ... I want to have the right pieces in place to prevent it from happening, or to lessen the impact on my property and my peace of mind ...

How do you prepare for crime? What does the Preparedness Kit consist of?

Chris dropped me a line with some advice that sounds like the surest bet—people getting together to protect the neighborhood. To have each other's back, so to speak.

"Hi Charles," Chris wrote:

"Locks, maybe alarms and a good habit of using them are important, but the most effective, if not most efficient, way to prevent crime is to know your neighbors. National Night Out  looks to accomplish that. It seems odd that a little grillin' and chattin'  will do anything meaningful to reduce crime, but it can. After eight years in our neighborhood, I know my neighbors and they know me. They may not be home all the time, but if I leave my garage door open, or someone comes to my house when I am out of town, I can expect a call.

"It takes time, and one National Night Out may not change a whole lot, but it is a good start."

Well, that sounds pretty good to me. Grillin' and chattin'  itself is motivation enough to get to know the neighbors, even the odd ones. If it adds to the "insurance" we all need against harsh reality, so much the better. An added note—the neighborhood organized a meeting with police shortly after the original post. The cops said pretty much what Chris said. Strong neighborhoods are the surest bet to discourage crime.

And start gettin' the word out! 

Posted by Charles at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Found in At Home, At Work, Barbecue, Crime, First-hand Accounts, Get Involved, Misc, Neighborhood watch, Participate, Perspective, Prepare, Wells Fargo Bank

In the 19th century, we are apt to think travel difficult, yet across the country and back never deterred Wells Fargo from aiding a customer. It happened like this:

In February 1895, two Johnson boys borrowed $275 from Sarah W. Swanton, a hotel keeper in Pescadero, Calif.  When they could not pay, they fingered Uncle R. Augustus Johnson in New York City, and Mrs. Swanton asked Wells Fargo to collect.

Wells Fargo sent the note across country to New York, where its banker Hosmer B. Parsons added his endorsement. Meantime, Uncle Augie thought his brother, Lorenzo M. Johnson, had deeper pockets, leading Wells Fargo to hurry the note to Chicago. General Agent Bernette Wygant quickly sent it to Johnson in Winnetka , a wealthy suburb 20 miles from downtown. But Winnetka was an American Express town—rather than cash, it accepted Johnson’s check for $275.

Without a national check-clearing system  as we have today, Wells Fargo could neither cash the check nor dispatch the money. By then, Johnson had left for Piedras Negras, Mexico , across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas , where he ran ranches, railroads, telegraphs and, especially, coal companies.

In this quandary, Wells Fargo's Chicago Agent Wygant quickly provided a solution. "In consideration for you," Wygant wrote Johnson on September 21, 1895, "we accepted the check and forwarded it to Eagle Pass for collection, and in turn forwarded the money from there to California without extra charge."

Wells Fargo's service, from California to New York to Chicago to Eagle Pass to California, made Mrs. Swanton a satisfied customer.

Posted by Bob at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Found in First-hand Accounts, Misc, Remember, Transportation, Travel, Wells Fargo Bank

Yesterday evening, the I-35W bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul collapsed during rush hour. Many died or suffered major injuries. At this point, the rescue operations are still going on, and it's hard to know what the ultimate toll will be.

Guided By History has bloggers in Minneapolis, and there are many people who work with us in preparation and publication. We all like each other a lot, laugh a lot about some of the things we put together here, and really believe in our company and its outreach. At this point, I know some are OK. I have not heard about others, but the calls are in and I'm waiting to hear.

The whole thing freaked me out because these are people I know and care about. I've been to Minneapolis on business, winter and summer, and it's a wonderful place. We have a terrific relationship with the Minnesota Historical Society  in St. Paul. Twin Cities people are my neighbors, and I feel this tragedy deeply.

Please contact the Red Cross chapter in Minneapolis  and do what you can to help. If you are part of this blog community, send an email or comment to let me know how you're holding up.

Posted by Charles at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Found in Events, Get Involved, Minneapolis, Misc, Museums, Natural Disasters, Perspective, Wells Fargo Bank

On Christmas Eve, 1884, Wells Fargo express agent Richmond Smith stood impatiently on the station platform in Reno. The train carrying the daily express shipment was late coming over the snowy Sierras. When the train arrived later that evening, one of the express packages had holiday trimmings and a bright express label which read "Please do not open until Christmas."

From the doorway, her mother’s voice asked, "Is it Santa Claus, darling?" "No, mother," the little girl replied, "it’s Wells Fargo!"

Don't even tell me that story doesn't make you weep uncontrollably—I know you're fibbing.

In the 1910s, Wells Fargo advert ised its express services as vital to the winter holiday season. Christmas wasn't always as big a holiday as it became in the 19th century.  In the 20th century, the icon of Santa Claus  was firmly established in Western imagination and the standards of gift-giving and a season of celebration  were embedded.

The real story behind Flossy the Doll is just as good as legend, though. Wells Fargo & Co’s Express delivered the  German bisque doll to four-year-old Ivan E. Sessions in 1884. She named the doll "Flossy" and spent many hours sewing clothes for her. Flossie was deluxe—she even had her own doll. In 1891, Ivan and Flossy won ?rst prize for best dressed doll at the Nevada State Fair. A century later, Ivan’s daughter donated Flossy to the Wells Fargo History Museum in San Francisco. Flossy lives in the Archives to this day, and emerges every holiday season as a display in the Museum.

Children of all ages still love Flossy. But there are fewer things more precious than one child's love for their doll. Which might be as close to "the true meaning of Christmas" as anything else.

Posted by Charles at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Found in Artifacts, Christmas, Holidays, Misc, Museums, Perspective, Photographs, Remember, San Francisco