MORGAN, J.

PIERPONT

(1837-1913), banker and art collector. Morgan headed J. P. Morgan and Company,
the most important force in American finance in the quarter century before World
War I, a time when the burgeoning American economy grew to be the largest and
most powerful in the world.

Morgan was born into a wealthy family in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1854, his father,
Junius Spencer Morgan, became a partner of George Peabody's banking house in
London and took over the firm when Peabody retired, renaming it J. S. Morgan and
Co.

From his earliest days Morgan was exposed both to international banking at the
highest levels and to the idea held by Peabody and his father that personal integrity
was indispensable to success in that field; these were to dominate and characterize his
life. In his last years Morgan was asked by a congressional committee if money was
not the basis of commercial credit. "No sir," he replied, "the first thing is character....
a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."

After completing his education at the university at G?tingen, Germany, in 1857,

Morgan went to work on Wall Street. In 1862 he opened his own firm and in 1871
joined forces with the Drexel firm of Philadelphia. The new firm, Drexel, Morgan and
Co., opened its offices at the corner of Wall and Broad streets where the headquarters
of the Morgan Bank have been located ever since.

American railroads expanded rapidly after the Civil War, but their profitability waned
owing to rate wars and competitive overbuilding. Frequent mergers and bankruptcies
often left railroads with bizarrely complex corporate structures. Morgan's firm did
much to rationalize the companies in the eighties and nineties, reorganizing, among
others, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and the Erie lines.

Morgan's success as a banker derived from his formidable physical presence and
dominating personality almost as much as from his capital, expertise, and creativity.
He looked and acted like a man of supreme authority and wisdom, and most people
took him at face value. In 1890, when his father died, he took over J. S. Morgan and
Co. in London and renamed it and the New York firm J. P. Morgan and Company.

About this time he began to collect art, an interest that soon became a sort of inspired
mania. By the time of his death his collection was the largest in private hands the
world has ever known and included paintings, drawings, jewelry, ceramics, sculpture,
and manuscripts. Although somewhat dispersed after his death, the bulk of his
collection is today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library in
New York and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.
As industrial companies came to dominate the American economy, it was his firm
that financed many of them, including General Electric and International Harvester.
In 1901 Morgan was instrumental in the creation of U.S. Steel, the largest corporate
enterprise in the world at the time, capitalized at $1.4 billion.

By the turn of the century Morgan had become the very symbol of Wall Street, the
man the financial community looked to for leadership. In 1907, when a banking panic
threatened to spin out of control, Morgan took command, rallied the other bankers,
and restored confidence. This panic led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System
in 1913, the same year Morgan died in Rome, Italy.

Frederick Lewis Allen, The Great Pierpont Morgan (1949); Ron Chernow, The
House of Morgan (1990).
 J.P. Morgan

John Pierpont Morgan, the son of a successful financier, was born on 17th April,
1837. Educated in Boston and Germany, he trained as an accountant at the New York
banking firm of Duncan, Sherman and Company. In 1867, Morgan transferred to his
father's banking company and ten years later became a partner in Drexel, Morgan and
Company. This was reorganized as J. P. Morgan and Company in 1895, making it one
of the most important banking houses in the world.

In 1891 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thompson-
Houson Electric Company to form General Electric, which then became the country's
main electrical-equipment manufacturing company. After financing the creation of
the Federal Steel Company he joined with Henry Frick to merge it with Carnegie
Steel Company to form the United States Steel Corporation.

Morgan had good links with the London financial world and was able to arrange the
capital for growing industrial corporations in the United States with money from
British bankers. This enabled Morgan to become a member of the board of directors
in several of these companies including most of the major railroad companies. By
1902 Morgan controlled over 5,000 miles (8,000 km) of American railroads.

In his final years, Morgan concentrated on gaining control of various banks and
insurance companies. This in turn gave him influence over most of the nation's main
corporations. Some muckraking journalists began to criticize the enormous power
that Morgan now had. John Pierpont Morgan died on 31st March, 1913.