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Chaos to Stability. Aloof and austere in his business contacts, Erpf has a profound sense of mission about his role as a latter-day capitalist. The function of investment banking, as he sees it, is to help guide new or individually managed companies into what he regards as the highest stage of capitalism—"the large institution run by professional managers with the public conscience glaring at them." Only large corporations, Erpf believes, fully realize "the whole idea of capitalism, which is to bring solidity and stability into the market in place of chaos. I call that civilization."
His belief in the importance of corporate bigness makes Erpf a strong dissenter from the economic doctrines that inspire the Justice Department's trustbusters—whom he terms reactionaries. But he is by no means a man who refuses to listen to the other view: he is a guiding member of a New York club called The Dissenters, whose members embrace views ranging from far right to far left. Each month they meet to enjoy stinging disagreements. "We used to have a lot of Communists," says Erpf, "until they got it through their thick heads how futile Marxism is."
The Passing Show. Erpf carries his love of diverse viewpoints into his notable art collection, which so crowds his ten-room Park Avenue bachelor apartment that he has been forced to hang seven of his paintings in the bathroom. His tastes range all the way from ancient Chinese snuff bottles to the disturbing, threatening Tasso's Oak by Modern Peter Blume (price: $5,000). Art connoisseurs, asked to characterize his collection, shake their heads in despair.
This week, with his usual mixture of motives, Erpf will head for London bent on 1) buying some new drawings and 2) finding publishers who might be interested in an alliance with Crowell-Collier. Says he: "The passing show has a lot of elements of interest—and you might as well be aware of them all. Otherwise you don't get the full spectrum of experience, enjoyment and ecstasy."
* Other TV stations scheduling the lecture series: New York's WNEW, Kansas City's KMBC, Peoria's WTVH, Decatur, Ill.'s WTVP, Sacramento's KOVR.