(3 of 4)
Nor was there anything intangible about the man who steered the ship of U. S. prosperity through the storm, who at length felt the helm respond. More than most men, Thomas William Lament can be touched, appraised. In obvious and literal ways, this right hand of John Pierpont Morgan is freely extended among men. A cosmopolite, he knows, understands, and likes the thousands of people of all nations with whom he does business. Because he is patient and urban, he is the Morgan diplomat. In more subtle ways, Mr. Lament can be described as a tangible person. Tell him a joke and he will laugh. Offer him an idea and he will develop it. Put him in the middle of a problem and he will begin to solve it. The doors of his mind swing easily ajar. That is why he left Exeter (1888) and Harvard (1892), to become a good reporter (and later, a good copy reader) on the New York Tribune. And why in 1902, he could bring order out of the chaos of an importing and exporting house which became Lamont, Corliss & Co. (agents for Cream of Wheat, Rainbow Dye, Pond's Extract, O'Sullivan's, Peter's Chocolate), of which he is now chairman. It is why the late Henry P. Davison called him, in 1903, to be secretary-treasurer of the Bankers Trust (Lament: "All my business life I have been borrowing money. I don't know how to loan it." Davison: "That's why we want you. We want a man who knows how the borrower feels and looks."); why George F. Baker summoned him five years later, to be vice president and director of the First National Bank, succeeding the same Davison; why J. P. Morgan gave him the banking accolade of a Morgan partnership in 1911. All his life, he has been a known quantity; his assets have been realizable.
Liquidate Mr. Lamont tomorrow, and many an achievement of his 18 years with Morgan would have a historic value. To him came the financing of the New York Central Railroad and he is today the firm's chief railroad adviser. To him came most of the overseas muddles into which its vast foreign interests plunged the Morgan house. In China (the Consortium), Mexico (International Committee), France (Anglo-French $500,000,000 loan), Austria (1923 joint loan), he has been at one time or another the most important financial factor. When these and many another nation gather together, as at Versailles in 1919 and at Paris in 1929, Mr. Lamont is summoned to speak for U. S. finance. He himself considers his work at Paris last summer the most significant of his life.
Outstanding as a financier (and his chief is the only living banker who might conceivably be said to outrank him), he is scarcely less an intellectual. His friends include John Masefield, with whom he travels—H. G. Wells, who visits him— Ramsay MacDonald, who dined with him last month. A liberal himself (he supported Cox and Davis because of the League issue, voted for Hoover last fall), he has in his immediate family almost every shade of liberal opinion. His eldest son (Thomas S.) is now, at 31, a Morgan partner, is far more conservative than Corliss, who voted for Smith and now teaches Philosophy at Columbia University. And while Mr. Lamont has received many an honorary degree, it was Mrs. Lamont who, after raising four children, earned a Ph.D. at Columbia.