On a bright spring morning in 1913, the shades of the many windows of the third floor corner suite of the Grand Hotel, Rome, were pulled down. Passing tourists knew that behind the shades lay John Pierpont Morgan, dead.
Last week dozens of millions of newspaper-tourists were permitted to tramp freely through, over and around the House of Morgan. Most of them, as ignorant of finance as they are of art, knew little more when the trip was over than when it began. But many thousands—and especially those who were themselves minor financiers— were able for the first time to put together a coherent and fairly complete account of what has been the greatest and most legendary private business of modern times.
The John Pierpont Morgan who died in Rome before the War was descended from a line of wealthy New England traders. His grandfather, Joseph Morgan, had kept an inn and had been a pioneer in the extremely lucrative insurance business of Hartford, Conn. John Pierpont Morgan went to New York as a private banker. In 1894 he took partners forming the present firm. In the following years, as everyone knows, he performed dazzling feats of finance on a scale unprecedented. These included the formation of U. S. Steel and many another of the greatest corporations which have made a large part of industrial history since. When he died, his son inherited most of a $68,000,000 estate and magnificent art treasures. But what made his inheritance unique and vastly more valuable than any other inheritance in American History was the right to succeed to his father's private banking business at No. 23 Wall Street. Banking being a business of reputation, John Pierpont Morgan II, then 45 and now 65. inherited the world's greatest banking reputation at almost the precise moment when the U. S. was destined to become the financial centre of the world. But the Elder Morgan had also left his son (who had shown sterling qualities of character, but no genius) a group of partners who were either the ablest U. S. bankers or were credited with being so.
The greatest of these was the late Henry P. Davison who, raised among Pennsylvania farmers, said he had spent more time milking cows than attending directors' meetings. Others: Thomas W. Lamont, 62 (who succeeded on Mr. Davi-son's death in 1922 to the greatest reputation in the firm); and three much older men: Charles Steele, a venerable lawyer of the early "trust" forming days; Philadelphia's Edward T. Stotesbury, a drummer boy in the Civil War whom the present generation recollects as a socialite yachtsman; and Horatio G. Lloyd who leads a homey life in recent years, has specialized as Welfare Commissioner of Philadelphia and treasurer of Quakerish Haverford at a salary of $1 a year.
These Morgan-chosen partners and the partners they have subsequently chosen have instinctively known that their chief business was to maintain and by their deeds live up to the tremendous name which they inherited.
That much about the Morgan business has always been known to the world. And like the first dazzling effect of a great pile like St. Peter's, that remains the essential fact. But details? Just what did the firm do every day? How did they do it? How much money did they make?