The Versatile Banker

From Meditations on the Ten Commandments to The Toastmaster's Hand book to Term Loans and Theories of Bank Liquidity, the titles of books he has written indicate the versatility of Herbert Victor Prochnow (rhymes with stock low), 58, vice president of Chicago's First National Bank, largest in the Midwest. Last week Herb Prochnow took on a new and demanding job: the State Department's top economic post, Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Affairs.

Prochnow, who succeeds Samuel Waugh (now president of the Export-Import Bank), will help handle foreign aid, trade and tariff negotiations, and programs to stimulate overseas investments. He got off to a flying start: while his nomination was in the works, he left with Under Secretary Herbert Hoover Jr. for a flying tour of trouble spots in the Far East. By the time his appointment was duly approved and signed by the President, convalescing in Denver, Prochnow was in Tokyo talking with Japan's top officials.

"A Certain Experience." Born in Wisconsin's dairy country of German stock. Herb Prochnow was a high-school principal at 20. When the U.S. entered World War I, he volunteered but was turned down for weak eyesight. He wrote to President Wilson, pleading to serve. Presidential Secretary Joseph Tumulty wrote back, telling Prochnow he could become a noncombatant medical corpsman. Prochnow was in Europe within the month, stayed there 14 months on a hospital train.

Back in the U.S., Prochnow went to the University of Wisconsin, got his bachelor's degree in commerce and his master's in economics (he won his Ph.D. in finance at Northwestern University at 50), and went to work as a purchasing agent for Chicago's Union Trust Co., which later merged with the First National Bank. As vice president at First National, in charge of foreign banking, Prochnow traveled to nearly every country in the world. "Out of this," he says drily, "has come a certain amount of experience."

When spare, grey Herb Prochnow speaks conversationally, his low voice can barely he heard over the humming of the air-conditioning units in the vast First National Bank building. Yet he is one of Chicago's most popular speakers. Besides The Toastmaster's Handbook, he has written The Public Speaker's Treasure Chest, The Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms, The Speaker's Treasury of Stories for All Occasions, and 1001 Ways to Improve Your Conversation and Speeches.* Some Prochnow advice: "Do not overemphasize to the listener or reader that the story you are about to relate is an extraordinarily good one. Your praise may be too lavish . . . You should not applaud your own story. If the story you have told has made no impression on the listener, do not repeat it in a vain attempt to get some response . . . Unless you are very good at it, never use a dialect in telling an anecdote."

A typical Prochnow story:

Waiter: May I help you with that soup, sir?

Diner: What do you mean, help me? I don't need any help.

Waiter: Sorry, sir. From the sound I thought you might wish to be dragged ashore.

"The Greatest Force." Late in August Prochnow got a telephone call from Under Secretary Herbert Hoover Jr., asking him to come to Washington to see Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whom he had never met. He found Dulles a relaxed, amiable host, who appeared to want to talk mostly about religion. "He seemed to know all about my church work," says Prochnow, who, like Dulles, is a prominent Presbyterian layman.

The two talked for a while about the problems of church administration, then Dulles came to the point, asked Prochnow to take over the economic-affairs job. Prochnow went back to Chicago to think it over, accepted. Says Prochnow: "To me, the greatest single economic force in the world today is the determination of the common man to raise his standard of living. In some cases, private industry is trying to do the job, in others the people are being shepherded by governments. I would like to see other countries developed under the free-enterprise system, but we cannot force or compel them. We can only try to persuade them by setting a good example. America can show the world that it has developed an exceptionally rewarding society."

*Prochnow's output, if not his sales, surpassed that of another banker-author, Manhattan's Bank of New York Vice President Edward Streeter, who wrote Dere Mable, Father of the Bride, etc.

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