23 Wall Street

Advertising pays just as liberally in Wall Street as elsewhere. Gilded on its windows or carved on its lintels, appear the names of countless bankers and brokers, all just as anxious to impress the passer-by with their particular names as firms are anywhere else. Even the Stock Exchange and the Chamber of Commerce feel it necessary to label themselves quite plainly for the benefit of the man in the street.

On the southeast corner of Wall and Broad streets, however, there is a low, massive building with no label at all. Over its door one sees ” 23 Wall Street”—that is all. Not to know it, however, argues yourself unknown, for this is the office of J.P. Morgan & Co.

Nothing is quite so impressive as complete impersonality. Perhaps a leading reason why the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. is so often accused of completely illogical and ridiculous things—such as starting panics and thereby depreciating its own securities and properties—is the contrast which this building affords to its neighbors and its generally bland, inscrutable and complete impersonality.

The personality of Mr. J. P. Morgan himself is as indefinite a conception in the public mind as the identity of his office to the tourist in Wall Street. Like the latter, he is thought of as substantial, powerful, unobtrusive—and there one stops. He seems more an institution than a human being with likes and dislikes, habits, abilities.

The question usually asked about the present Mr. Morgan is whether he is ” as able as his father.” Without attempting an answer to this natural query, it must be recognized that the period from 1880 to 1910 was fundamentally different from the period from 1910 to 1923, and that the qualities which were called for in practical and successful finance were quite different than those demanded at the present time. The former period was one of inevitable consolidations and mergers in both the railroad and industrial fields;the times in which the former J. P. Morgan proved preeminent called for dominantwillpower, great audacity of vision and action. Great personalities in finance and inbusiness arose because individual leadership was imperative.

The period during which the present Mr. Morgan has been the head of the firm, however, calls for effort by whole organizations. The complexity and scope of modern business has become too great for any single individual, however able, to dominate it. Moreover, it has become necessary to sustain the existing corporate structure of business, as well as to create huge new companies. Teamwork rather than individual genius is the order of the day.

The present Mr. Morgan has in consequence surrounded himself with partners who represent outstanding ability in many different lines. Some were originally bankers, some lawyers, some merchants. More probably than any partnership in the country, the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. has in the selection of new partners recognized individual merit and disregarded money. The firm is not seeking additional funds from its new partners—it has ample resources already. What it sought are ”brains,” and it has obtained them. In the past, the new partners of the firm here included both wealthy men and men of very moderate means, but all have been possessed of marked ability.

The business of J.P. Morgan & Co. is mainly in securities. The firm is a leader in the underwriting and syndicate business. Its largest issue was the half-billion Anglo-French loan floated in 1915, but it has handled successfully many issues of $100,000,000. Apart from acting as financial agents and bankers for such railroads as the New York Central and such industrial companies as U.S. Steel, the firm is the fiscal agent in this country for Great Britain and France. The Hearst newspapers recently howled because a “smiling portrait of King George” hangs in Mr. Morgan’s office; it is equally likely that a picture of Mr. Morgan hangs in King George’s office—if he has one.

Mr. Morgan is now abroad on a vacation, but near enough to the Continent to be available in case the German financial crisis requires his personal presence. Some months ago, he vainly attempted to arrive at a basis with the German leaders, upon which American financing could safely assist in straightening out their awkward economic problems. Teutonic stubbornness brought this attempt to nothing. The house of Morgan was, however, instrumental in obtaining American funds for Austria. If the German statesmen are as ready now to meet sound banking requirements as the Austrians have been, it may be that Mr. Morgan may yet render the cause of international peace and domestic prosperity another service, by directing American investment funds with something more mutually beneficial than speculation in marks.