Over the past year, Banker & Tradesman has been celebrating its 140th anniversary by highlighting pages from our past issues.
From 1872 to today, our focus has been in-depth coverage of the financial and real estate industries in Massachusetts. And while that may seem like a narrow niche to some, it has given us a close-up view of the most important events in Massachusetts, the United States and the world for the past 140 years – from the Oct. 29, 1929 stock market crash to the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, and from the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the Sept. 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks.
We have witnessed the elections, depressions, crashes, crusades, tragedies and triumphs that have united and defined us as a nation.
Many of the topics – some lighthearted, some weighty – that we wrote about years, decades and even a century ago are the same issues confronting us today:
On May 6, 1897, stock prices for the latest inventions were soaring: “An investor who bought 20 shares of the original Edison Electric stock at $45 costing $900 sold half of it about a year later realizing $30,000 for ten shares.”
On April 24, 1937, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Boston found the Social Security Act invalid, citing “the intrusion of the federal government in a field reserved by the Constitution of the States.”
On Sept. 5, 1942, as World War II raged, we complained about self-involved members of Congress who seemed more concerned about upcoming elections than their constituents.
On April 8, 1967, as the Vietnam War and the draft loomed over a generation, we noted the reluctance of the younger generation to buy new homes.
And on March 27, 1987, we decried the Wall Street scandals caused by a rare breed of rascals called investment bankers.
The Warren family’s ownership of Banker & Tradesman began in 1902 when Willard C. Warrren purchased what was then called The Banker newspaper. Keith F. Warren followed his father into the family publishing business in 1918.
In 1946, Timothy M. Warren joined his father, Keith Warren, in the family business. In 1973, Timothy M. Warren Jr., the current CEO and publisher of The Warren Group, came aboard, becoming the fourth generation of the Warren family to be actively involved in management.
As a fourth-generation-owned family business, Banker & Tradesman represents the story of a family business in a publishing industry dominated for decades by publicly owned newspaper chains that answer to Wall Street rather than their readers.
And in reporting on the real estate and financial industries since 1872, this newspaper has in turn told the stories of us all – tellers and tycoons, have-nots and homeowners, plain folk and politicians.
We hope to keep sharing your stories – and ours – for another 140 years.
