In an advertisement which appeared a hundred years ago today in the New York Sun, October 3, 1914, the American Bankers Association does its best to put a positive spin on things. Instead of announcing the obvious proposition that its travelers’ cheques probably aren’t very useful in Europe, it instead begins by proudly announcing that their sale continues as usual “for use throughout the United States” and that they continue to afford travelers “in ‘the States’ their customary service of protection and convenience in respect to money matters.”

Only then does it go on to announce, in smaller print, that sale of the cheques for foreign use had been temporarily discontinued, given that tourists could not be assured that they would be uniformly honored under conditions which change from day to day. However, it assured that their sale for use abroad would be resumed as soon as conditions warrant.

The ad then seems to downlplay the plight of Americans in the first days of the war, when Americans in London found themselves destitute, despite having travelers’ cheques and letters of credit from American banks. Their plight was relieved only when Herbert Hoover set up shop and started dispensing his own cash “against personal checks signed by unknown but American-looking people on unknown banks in Walla Walla and Fresno and Grand Rapids and Dubuque and Emporia and New Bedford.”

The chaotic situation ameliorated by Hoover with his personal cash was described in much more pleasant terms by the bankers’ association:

Through the co-operation of the Officers of the United States Government, Committees of Bankers in New York, London and Paris were enabled in a very short time to perfect arrangements for protecting all forms of travelers’ credits issued by American institutions and firms, and holders of travelers’ cheques and letters of credit have been by this means relieved from the serious consequences of the sudden paralysis of customary banking facilities abroad.

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