The Great Pierpont Morgan (35 page)

The letter from Morgan's father about Drexel is from the recollection of a former Morgan partner. The amount added to reserves, 1871–75, I found listed on a sheet of paper in a wallet preserved at the Morgan Library. For Morgan's houses, travels, and recreation, my main source has been Satterlee. The quotation from William H. Vanderbilt about “public sentiment” is from CFC, November 29, 1879, quoting the New York
Tribune
.

Chapter IV—Morgan the Peacemaker

The Carnegie-Vanderbilt conversation is from H, II, 26. The
Corsair
conference has been picturesquely chronicled many times; for the route followed and the direct quotations I have followed S 225–226. For the remark to Judge Ashbel Green, S 226–227. The CFC comment on the
Corsair
compact comes from CFC, July 25, 1885. The passenger fares between New York and Chicago, from CFC, April 3, 1886. The quotation from the
Commercial & Financial Chronicle
on the anthracite coal combination, from CFC, March 27, 1886.
The New York Times
's comment on the anthracite combination, much shortened by me, is from an editorial on “The Proposed Coal Monopoly,” February 16, 1886. For the data on Supreme
Court action, the source is
The United States Since
1865, by Louis M. Hacker and Benjamin B. Kendrick, p. 276. For the railroad conference of 1888–89, I have relied chiefly upon the daily press of the time, especially the New York
Daily Tribune
, January 11, 1889, which contains Morgan's reply to Roberts and a reference to the Windsor Hotel meeting; Morgan's reply may also be found in CFC, January 12, 1889; the ironical
Times
story appeared on January 11, 1889.

Chapter V—No. 219

Most of the material in this chapter is based upon facts set forth in Satterlee, about Morgan's daily and weekly routine, the developments at Cragston,
Corsair II
, the Corsair Club, Morgan's voting, and especially the account of electric wiring of No. 219 and the resulting troubles, which is based upon S 207–216. The ruins of Cragston are described as I saw them in September 1948. The long quotation on Morgan's confrontation of Everitt H. Johnson is from S 213. But the account of the interior of the Morgan house, especially the library, is from
Era of Elegance
, by Andrew Tully (Funk & Wagnalls, 1947); the details of the William H. Vanderbilt house are from
Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection
, described by Edward Strahan, published by George Barrie, in 2 volumes; the account of Rainsford's acceptance of the call to St. George's is from R 201; the Satterlee quotation on the prosperity of 1881 is from S 199; the William Graham Sumner quotation is from
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
(1883), as quoted on p. 724 of Vol. II of
The Shaping of the American Tradition
, by Louis M. Hacker (Columbia University Press, 1947); and the account of the turning on of the electric lights in downtown New York is from
Edison: His Life, His Work, His Genius
, by William Adams Simonds (Bobbs Merrill, 1934).

Chapter VI—Railroad Reorganizer—and Emperor?

My most generally useful source for this chapter has been
The Reorganization of the Railroad System
, 1893–1900, by E. G. Campbell (Columbia University Press, 1938). The Noyes figures on the bankrupt condition of the American railroads are from N 218 and N 276. The data on the Richmond Terminal legal agreements are from Campbell, p. 154, and
also appear in Satterlee. For the testimony of William Z. Ripley before the Industrial Commission on reorganization stock and bond issues, see U. S. House Documents, Vol. 72, 57th Congress, 1st session, p. 291. The London
Economist
's comments on the Erie reorganization charges appeared August 31, 1895, and are quoted in Campbell, pp. 169–170; its comments on the Baltimore & Ohio accounting scandals appeared December 26, 1896, and are quoted on p. 141 by Campbell, whose account of the adventures of the B & O at this time is useful.

As to the passage on the contest over the Reading Railroad, my data on the status of the New Haven road in 1892 are from CFC,
Investors' Supplement
for July 1892; the alleged “peanut stand” statement by McLeod is hesitantly quoted by Campbell but has been accepted by some other writers and sounds to me genuine; Morgan's part in the onslaught on Reading was tentatively suggested by Thomas F. Woodlock before the Industrial Commission (see U. S. House Documents, Vol. 72, 57th Congress, 1st session, p. 456) and was more definitely charged by McLeod as quoted in the
Railway World
, April 29, 1893, whence come the remarks by him which I have quoted. On the Richmond Terminal operation, my quotation of Clyde is from the recollection of a former Morgan partner.

Chapter VII—Gold for the Government

On the general condition of the gold reserve, my chief source has been Noyes; but see also Grover Cleveland's article on “The Cleveland Bond Issues,”
Saturday Evening Post
, May 7, 1904, and the “endless chain” passage in Cleveland's Annual Message, December 3, 1894. The figures for withdrawals from the gold reserve in the last week of January 1895 are from CFC, February 2, 1895, p. 192. The Sullivan quotation on the general mood of unrest is from Sullivan, I, p. 137. The Drexel-Morgan partners' dinner at the Metropolitan Club comes from material in the files of J. P. Morgan & Co. The data on Bacon's college prowess are from
Robert Bacon: Life and Letters
, by James Brown Scott (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1923) as is the “lieutenants” quotation.

On the daily events beginning on Thursday, January 31,
and continuing through the following week, I have had the advantage of being able to inspect and quote from the original cable books of J. P. Morgan & Co., in which copies of the cables, uncoded, were preserved in longhand—both those sent and those received from London. I have quoted many of them, and drawn from them at other points, as where I mention Morgan's private expectation of being able to compromise on 3⅝ per cent. And they proved especially useful in clearing up an awkward confusion as to the date of the crucial meeting at which Morgan persuaded Cleveland. According to Satterlee, this meeting took place Monday morning; according to Grover Cleveland's
Post
article, Thursday evening; according to Allan Nevins'
Grover Cleveland, A Study in Courage
(Dodd, Mead, 1932) there were apparently two sessions, one on Tuesday morning and a more important one on Thursday. After studying the testimony in the hearing held not long afterward by the Senate Committee on Finance (U. S. Senate, Committee on Finance, Investigation of the Sale of Bonds, 54th Congress, 2nd session, Senate Document 187, Vol. 5), I had pretty well made up my mind that the chief session was held Tuesday morning, with perhaps a supplementary one on Thursday (and of course a session at the Treasury on Friday morning, at which Cleveland was not present); and the fact that the daily papers recorded Cleveland as having had a state dinner at the White House on Thursday evening fortified me; the cables seem to me to clinch my case, especially the “we have carried our point” cable sent on Tuesday.

Morgan's hiding out at Mrs. Warren's is from S 286, as are most of my other statements about Morgan in Washington (checked, however, against other sources); the Cleveland-Morgan quotation on the guarantee is from S 292; the Cleveland quotation on his “watchfulness” of Morgan and the later quotation of his question to Morgan and Morgan's answer are both from
Recollections of Grover Cleveland
, by George F. Parker (Century Co., 1909), p. 325.

Morgan's subsequent testimony on the episode is from the hearings before the Senate Committee on Finance, as cited above. The specific figures on the actual profits are drawn from the original Syndicate Book, which still exists at J. P. Morgan &Co.

Chapter VIII—Triangulation

Obviously there are four principal sources of the material in this chapter. The first is Steffens, I, 188–190. The second is Rainsford, the successive quotations being from R 277, 265, 278, 278, 285, and (the long series of quotations on the vestry meeting and its sequel) 278–284. The third is Satterlee, the passage on Morgan's start at collecting being from S 247–248, the one on the Spanish painting from S 443–444. The fourth is
Roger Fry
, by Virginia Woolf (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1940), pp. 129–131 and 141; my comments upon Fry, Morgan, and the museum were based partly upon having had access to the (incomplete) file, at the Metropolitan Museum, of correspondence between Fry and the museum officials.

Various minor points: The quotation from the admiring writer on the Vanderbilt house is from the Introduction to
Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection
(cited above under Chapter V). The comparison between Morgan and Mrs. Gardner draws upon material in
Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court
, by Morris Carter (Houghton Mifflin, 1925). The Mitchell quotation on Morgan as a collector is from
Memoirs of an Editor
, by Edward P. Mitchell (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924); the
Burlington
editorial comment on Morgan appeared in May 1913. As for the data on rich men's estates, I took my Carnegie figure from the
Dictionary of American Biography
and the others from
America's Sixty Families
, by Ferdinand Lundberg (Vanguard Press, 1937). The anecdote about Morgan's gift to the Harvard Medical School comes from an article by Joseph B. Gilder in the
Century Magazine
, Vol. 86, p. 461.

Chapter IX—Billion-dollar Adventure

The Noyes quotation is from N 257. The size of the Carnegie income is conservatively stated; in 1900 it was about $25,000,000; see H, II, 53. The Hunter figures from
Poverty
may be found in
The Shaping of the American Tradition
, by Louis M. Hacker (Columbia University Press, 1947), II, 931–932. For Steffens on Dill, see Steffens, I, 192–196. The data on Morgan's travels and recreations in 1897 are from S 320–325,
except that certain details, and the Newport quotation, are from contemporary issues of
Harper's Weekly
.

The story of the various steel promotions, culminating in the launching of U. S. Steel, has been frequently told (I have told it once before myself, in the first chapter of
The Lords of Creation
). For my quotations of dialogue, I have drawn chiefly upon Miss Tarbell's life of Gary, written while he was still living, and Hendrick's very careful life of Carnegie; and those books have been most useful in checking other points. To be more specific: the “You must be president” talk between Morgan and Gary is from T 94; the “I would not think of it” remark of Morgan's, from T 111; the account of Gates and Gary and Morgan's ultimatum, from T 122–123; the Morgan-Gary conversations about buying the Rockefeller ore mines, from T 118–120. My chief source on the plans of Frick and Phipps is H 77–86. On Morgan's being approached in this connection (before the “I would not think of it” approach), see H 84, quoting Robert Bacon's testimony in the suit against the Steel Corporation in 1913, pp. 5473–5474. On the struggle in 1900 between Carnegie and the other steel combinations, H 114–128; Carnegie's letter and cable to his associates, H 117–118; the Carnegie-Schwab talk about making tubes, H 123. On the University Club dinner, H 128–132. On the negotiations which followed, H 132–143. The Morgan call on Carnegie and the shipboard conversation are from H 139 and 142. The account of the call made by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Rogers on Morgan is from
John D. Rockefeller
, by Allan Nevins (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), Vol. II, pp. 419–420.

The data on total capitalization of U. S. Steel and the underlying values are from
Report on the United States Steel Corporation
, by the Bureau of Corporations, as quoted in
The Shaping of the American Tradition
, by Louis M. Hacker (Columbia University Press, 1947), II, 947; on the Pittsburgh Steel millionaires, from
The Romance of Steel
, by Herbert N. Casson (A. S. Barnes & Co., 1907); the quotations on the public reaction to the news of the launching of U. S. Steel are all taken from Sullivan, II, 351–355, including the subsequent quotation of John Brisben Walker.

The actual Syndicate profits are all from the original Syndicate Book at J. P. Morgan & Co. and the books of the firm
for 1902. I might add that I have not set down the exact total profits because they could be computed in more than one way, since they would depend partly upon the value of the stock distributed and the participations in the new syndicate.

Incidentally, it may interest some readers to know that the syndicate which launched the Steel Corporation consisted of approximately three hundred participants, who were down in the Book for varying amounts totaling two hundred million dollars; that each participant was called upon to pay 12½ per cent of the amount of his participation, but no more; and that the participants who were down for amounts of $1,200,000 or more were as follows: