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Mr. Adams' "precious document" was a power-of-attorney from the Deutsche Bank, whose agent he had been in the Northern Pacific reorganization, for gold bullion enough to buy 200 million dollars' worth of U. S. Government bonds.
The Morgan cigar quickly resumed its normal angle. Banker Stillman and others came in and, at Banker Adams' suggestion, formed a syndicate. Banker Morgan, of course, took the lead while Banker Adams, ever "the quiet undertone," retired once more to the background. The Government issued bonds which the public, led by the syndicate, oversubscribed. Panic was thus averted, the country stabilized.
Until 1921, when he resigned the last of them, Mr. Adams' directorships in 21 companies, and his active positions in 19 scientific, artistic, educational, religious and charitable organizations, ranging from the National Research Council and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Rumson (N. J.) Borough Improvement Association, not to mention his memberships in 45 other societies, academies and institutes, were keeping him so sufficiently occupied in 1918 that he was not among the group which that year founded the Edison Pioneers, a society of Inventor Edison's oldest friends and associates organized to perpetuate his name and works. But the Pioneers sought him out. In 1926 he was their vice president and last February he completed a term as president. Completed is more accurate than finished, for he is still at the forefront of the Pioneers' efforts to help Henry Ford collect all original Edison tools, models, memoranda and memorabilia for preservation in the Edison Museum at Dearborn.
Among the memorabilia will be an Edison hat which Mr. Adams one day acquired in exchange for one of his own during an investigation conducted by Mr. Edison. The object of this investigation was to discover which head was the larger, the Edison or the Adams. To the soft-chuckling satisfaction of Mr. Adams the result showed that, differ though the contents might in their special aptitudes, the heads are precisely the same size.