Pine & William Sts.
Fire engines sirened their way up to the Kuhn, Loeb building at Pine and William Streets, Manhattan, last week. People went running. There was a fire in the building basement. Firemen on trucks swore at the pedestrians. The smoke was very thick. It smelled catastrophic. Firemen on foot, carrying extinguishers elbowed† passage through the crowds. Policemen were angry. Gum-chewers gaped. There were at least 15,000 Wall Street clerks there, crowded so thickly that they forced Kuhn, Loeb & Co.'s employes to fight their way out of the smoked banking offices to watch their own fire.
60th Anniversary. The fire damage was trivial (old boxes, rubbish and wastes in a fireproof sub-basement). Yet it caused more excitement in Kuhn, Loeb & Co.'s marbled offices than did the celebration, the same week, ef the firm's 60th anniversary. Bankers of the neighborhood, had sent in some flowers; there were felicitations; and that was all. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. employes are trained to show no emotions. They treated the $3,000,000 of South African gold their company bought last week (the largest purchase of gold from London in several months) as a bookkeeping item. Nor did they consider any more important the $95,000,000 they loaned to the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
That is the largest amount of money that any U. S. railroad has ever borrowed through a single banking house. But in the 60-year history of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., it represents but a hundredth part of their money transactions. In 1867 Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb left the Jewish community in Cincinnati where they had become prosperous commission men. They realized better than most men that the Civil War meant a change to U. S. civilization, that the railroads —then grimy, haphazard affairs, spattered with tobacco juice—would become a great factor in that civilization. They went to Manhattan where Jay Gould (1836-92), James Fisk (1834-72) and Daniel Drew (1797-1879) were forcing from Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) control of the Erie, and where Commodore Vanderbilt himself was forcing his way to the control of the New York Central. When the Fisk-Gould machinations around President Grant brought on the "Black Friday" panic of 1869, Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb had money. They loaned it out, and their firm has continued to loan out money. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. on its own account and in combination with other banking houses has loaned $10,000,000,000 during 60 years. Much of the money went to these railroads, among others:
B. & O. Internat. & Gt. Nor.
C. & O. L. A. & Salt Lake
Chi. & Alton Mo. Pac.
Chi. & East. Ill. N. Y. Ont. & W.
Chi., Mil. & St. P. N. O. Tex. & Mex.
Chi. & N. W. Norfolk & West.
Del. & Hud. Nor. Pac.
Denver & R. G. Pennsylvania
Gulf, Mobile & N. Sou. Pac.
Hud. & Man. Tex. Pac.
Ill. Cent. Union Pac. Wabash
And Kuhn, Loeb & Co. have been the bankers for these corporations, among others:
American Smelting & Refining
American Telephone & Telegraph
Central Leather
Inland Steel
Republic Iron & Steel
U. S. Rubber
Consolidated Coal
Famous Players-Lasky
Western Union
Westinghouse