The international banking house of Speyer & Co. was 100 years old in 1937. Also, its arteries were beginning to harden. Polished little James Speyer, born in
Manhattan, apprenticed in family firms in Paris, London and Frankfurt, still had a thick German accent which he kept more nearly intact than his Manhattan banking house kept its European affiliations.
Since the World War, European connections had lost a lot of their value as the capital of the financial world moved to the U. S. There was a time when Speyer & Co. could raise $50,000,000 by cable overnight without calling on a...
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