Financier, art collector, and philanthropist. Born on April 17, 1837, in Hartford, Connecticut. Son of a banker, Morgan went into the family business and became one of the most famous financiers in the history of business. After working for his father, he started his own private banking company in 1871, which later became known as J. P. Morgan & Co. His company became one of the leading financial firms in the country. It was so powerful that even the U.S. government looked to the firm for help with the depression of 1895. The company also assisted in thwarting the 1907 financial crisis.
During his career, his wealth, power, and influence attracted a lot of media and government scrutiny. During the late 1800s and even after the turn of the century, much of the country's industries were in the hands of a few powerful business leaders, especially Morgan. He was criticized for creating monopolies by making it difficult for any business to compete against his. Morgan dominated two industries in particular—he helped consolidate railroad industry in the East and formed the United States Steel Corporation in 1901. A crucial material in the extensive growth of the nation, U.S. Steel became the world's largest steel manufacturer. The government, concerned about Morgan had created a monopoly in the steel industry, filed suit against the company in 1911. The following year, Morgan and his partners became the subject of a congressional investigation by the Pujo Committee in 1912.
Morgan had many interests beyond the world of banking. He enjoyed sailing and participated in a number of America's Cup yacht races. He was an ardent art collector, creating one of the most significant collections of his time. He later donated his art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his collection of written works to the Morgan Library—both in New York City.
Morgan's first marriage to Amelia Sturges was brief. She died a few months after their 1860 wedding. Five years later, Morgan married Frances Tracy. The couple had four children: John Pierpont, Jr., Louisa, Juliet, and Anne.
Morgan died on March 31, 1913, in Rome, Italy. At the time of his death, he was hailed as a master of finance and considered one of the country's leading businessmen.
When he returned to the US in 1857 he got a job working for the private banking house Duncan, Sherman and Company. In 1860 he was appointed as the American agent and attorney for George Peabody & Company in which his father was a partner. This later became J.S. Morgan & Co and when his father died in 1890 he left it to JP Morgan giving him important European connections and enabling him to run a large foreign reserve business.
By the time of his father's death, JP Morgan had already established himself as a financier through Dabney, Morgan & Co. and later Drexel, Morgan & Co. It was after the Civil War that he started buying distressed businesses and especially railroad companies. Some of these railroads include the West Shore, Philadelphia and Reading, Richmond Terminal, the Erie and the New England railroads. His process of buying and consolidation of railroads came to be known as Morganization.
On several occasions, JP Morgan also helped the government in its finances. In 1877, together with August Belmont and the Rothschilds, they floated $260 million in US government bonds. After the government ran into some gold problems, he bought $200 million worth of government bonds with gold thereby preserving the credit of the United States. Some of his detractors had, however, heavily criticised him for the harsh terms of the loan. This had also resulted in a Congressional hearing in 1912, but he walked away largely unscathed.
Perhaps the biggest deal he was ever involved in was the forming of the US Steel Corporation, the first billion-dollar corporation. He had bought some mills from Andrew Carnegie and together with some other steel assets formed US Steel - worth approximately $1.2 billion. He was also involved with several other companies and sat on quite a few boards. A few of the better known ones include Western Union Telegraph Company and General Electric.
At the time of his death on March 31, 1913 he had an estate worth $80 million (today around $1.2 billion). Compared to his peers of the time, especially Rockefeller, it was not such a large estate. In fact, it was Rockefeller's comment at the time, "And to think he wasn't even a rich man." Yet, JP Morgan's power did not lie in the millions he had, it lay in the billions he controlled.
ince the primary sources are unavailable, there is no definitive biography of Morgan. The best is Frederick Lewis Allen, The Great Pierpont Morgan (1949). Of considerably less value are John Kennedy Winkler, Morgan the Magnificent: The Life of J. Pierpont Morgan (1930), and Herbert Livingston Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan: An Intimate Portrait (1939).
Many books deal with a history of Morgan's firm or with particular episodes in which Morgan was prominent: Henry Meyer Balthasar, A History of the Northern Securities Case (1906); Abraham Berglund, The United States Steel Corporation: A Study of the Growth and Influence of Combination in the Iron and Steel Industry (1907); Stuart Daggett, Railroad Reorganization (1908); Alexander D. Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance (1909); Lewis Corey, The House of Morgan (1930); Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland (1944); Paul Studenski and Herman E. Krooss, Financial History of the United States (1952); and Edwin P. Hoyt, Jr., The House of Morgan (1966). Excellent selections are in N. S. B. Gras and Henrietta M. Larson, Casebook in American Business History (1939), and Jonathan R. Hughes, The Vital Few: American Economic Progress and Its Protagonists (1966). Robert Gordon Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair: A Study in Contemporary Folklore (1948), is a historiographical exercise concerning Morgan's complicity in an event used to attack his integrity.
For background see John Moody, The Masters of Capital: A Chronicle of Wall Street (1919), and Frederick L. Allen, The Lords of Creation (1935). The biographies of two of Morgan's partners are worthy of mention: Thomas Williams Lamont, Henry P. Davison (1933), and especially John A. Garraty, Right-hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins (1960). Morgan's role as art patron is treated in Francis Henry Taylor, Pierpont Morgan as Collector and Patron (1957), and Aline B. Saarinen, The Proud Possessors: The Lives, Times, and Tastes of Some Adventurous American Art Collectors (1957).
In 1893 America experienced a major economic downturn which, in conjunction with questionable monetary policies (resulting from pressure from the silver inflationists), put an impossible burden on the U.S. Treasury's gold reserve. President Grover Cleveland's attempts to replenish the gold reserve were ineffective. In 1895 Morgan played the role of central banker, sold government bonds for gold (half obtained abroad through his foreign affiliates), and guaranteed to protect the gold reserve. Though Morgan was charged with profiting exorbitantly and taking advantage of the dire straits of the government, he never revealed the precise amount of his profits, so the validity of such allegations is impossible to assess. His syndicate succeeded temporarily in its objectives; public and private ends harmonized at a price which was probably not excessive, considering the service rendered to the nation.
In 1901 a tremendous conflict opened between James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman for domination of the railroads west of the Mississippi and in the northern half of the country. Morgan was allied with Hill, and in the course of this contest the price of Northern Pacific stock shares jumped to astronomical heights. The compromise reached was based on pooling all interests in the Northern Securities Company. When this company was dissolved in 1904 as a consequence of successful prosecution under the Sherman Antitrust Act, modern antitrust enforcement had been inaugurated.
Morgan founded the U.S. Steel Corporation in 1901. The culmination of a wave of similar consolidations, it was the largest industrial concern of the time. U.S. Steel never controlled the entire steel industry, and its share of the market has declined steadily.
Solving the Panic of 1907 represents Morgan's highest achievement; never again would private power be vested with so large a public responsibility. When the panic hit, the financial community of New York rallied around Morgan, and the Federal government entrusted its funds to his disposition. He recruited brilliant lieutenants to investigate the resources of the various New York banks and trust companies, determine which were solvent, and act to save them. (There was no central bank, as the Federal Reserve System was created only in 1913 as an after-math to the panic.) Morgan and his cohorts were, for all practical purposes, the central bank.
An Assessment
Morgan was preeminently suited to the world in which he lived. During the years of his power the American economy grew at a prodigious rate. Morgan was one of the "vital few" who made it happen. He was a superb organizer in an economy that was replacing competition with concentration. He chose extremely able associates but reserved the crucial decisions for himself. He earned his economic reward by linking those who needed capital with those who had it to invest, whether in Europe or America. The success of his endeavor actually lessened the investment banker's significance, as enterprises became internally financed and less dependent on external financing.
As an art collector, Morgan avidly sought paintings, sculpture, and tapestries. He made the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York the equal of any museum in the world, although he contributed to others, too. "The Morgan collections represent the most grandiose gesture of noblesse oblige the world has ever known," wrote Aline B. Saarinen (1957). He was a man of genuine taste. His death in Rome on March 31, 1913, left a void, for his was a personal, not an institutional, power and hence not readily transferable.
Further Reading
Since the primary sources are unavailable, there is no definitive biography of Morgan. The best is Frederick Lewis Allen, The Great Pierpont Morgan (1949). Of considerably less value are John Kennedy Winkler, Morgan the Magnificent: The Life of J. Pierpont Morgan (1930), and Herbert Livingston Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan: An Intimate Portrait (1939).
Many books deal with a history of Morgan's firm or with particular episodes in which Morgan was prominent: Henry Meyer Balthasar, A History of the Northern Securities Case (1906); Abraham Berglund, The United States Steel Corporation: A Study of the Growth and Influence of Combination in the Iron and Steel Industry (1907); Stuart Daggett, Railroad Reorganization (1908); Alexander D. Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance (1909); Lewis Corey, The House of Morgan (1930); Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland (1944); Paul Studenski and Herman E. Krooss, Financial History of the United States (1952); and Edwin P. Hoyt, Jr., The House of Morgan (1966). Excellent selections are in N. S. B. Gras and Henrietta M. Larson, Casebook in American Business History (1939), and Jonathan R. Hughes, The Vital Few: American Economic Progress and Its Protagonists (1966). Robert Gordon Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair: A Study in Contemporary Folklore (1948), is a historiographical exercise concerning Morgan's complicity in an event used to attack his integrity.
For background see John Moody, The Masters of Capital: A Chronicle of Wall Street (1919), and Frederick L. Allen, The Lords of Creation (1935). The biographies of two of Morgan's partners are worthy of mention: Thomas Williams Lamont, Henry P. Davison (1933), and especially John A. Garraty, Right-hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins (1960). Morgan's role as art patron is treated in Francis Henry Taylor, Pierpont Morgan as Collector and Patron (1957), and Aline B. Saarinen, The Proud Possessors: The Lives, Times, and Tastes of Some Adventurous American Art Collectors (1957).
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: John Pierpont Morgan
(born April 17, 1837, Hartford, Conn., U.S. — died March 31, 1913, Rome, Italy) U.S. financier. The son of a financier, he began his career as an accountant in 1857 and became an agent for his father's banking company in 1861. In 1871 he was named a partner in the firm of Drexel, Morgan, which became the chief source of U.S. government financing. In 1895 it became J.P. Morgan and Co. In the 1880s and '90s Morgan reorganized several major railroads, notably the Erie Railroad and the Northern Pacific. He was instrumental in achieving railroad rate stability and discouraging overly chaotic competition, and he became one of the world's most powerful railroad magnates, controlling about 5,000 mi (8,000 km) of railway by 1902. After the panic of 1893, Morgan formed a syndicate to supply the U.S. Treasury's depleted gold reserves. He led the financial community in averting a general financial collapse following the stock-market panic of 1907. He financed a series of giant industrial consolidations, organizing the mergers that formed General Electric, United States Steel Corp., and International Harvester Co. (see Navistar International Corp.). A noted art collector, he donated many artworks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; his book collection and the building that housed it became the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City.
For more information on John Pierpont Morgan, visit Britannica.com.
US History Companion: 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 Göttingen, 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
Early in the Civil War, Morgan lent money to a man who bought rifles from the Federal government and resold them to it; this is the notorious Hall carbine affair, but there is no evidence that Morgan was other than a creditor. Less than 2 decades later Morgan became instrumental in the periodic reorganization of American railroads, emerging as a decisive factor in railroading. He refinanced bankrupt railroads, acted to stabilize rates, and consolidated competing lines. In addition, to protect individuals who purchased railroad securities from his firm, Morgan placed his own representatives on the railroads' boards of directors.
Financial Rescue of the Government
In 1893 America experienced a major economic downturn which, in conjunction with questionable monetary policies (resulting from pressure from the silver inflationists), put an impossible burden on the U.S. Treasury's gold reserve. President Grover Cleveland's attempts to replenish the gold reserve were ineffective. In 1895 Morgan played the role of central banker, sold government bonds for gold (half obtained abroad through his foreign affiliates), and guaranteed to protect the gold reserve. Though Morgan was charged with profiting exorbitantly and taking advantage of the dire straits of the government, he never revealed the precise amount of his profits, so the validity of such allegations is impossible to assess. His syndicate succeeded temporarily in its objectives; public and private ends harmonized at a price which was probably not excessive, considering the service rendered to the nation.
In 1901 a tremendous conflict opened between James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman for domination of the railroads west of the Mississippi and in the northern half of the country. Morgan was allied with Hill, and in the course of this contest the price of Northern Pacific stock shares jumped to astronomical heights. The compromise reached was based on pooling all interests in the Northern Securities Company. When this company was dissolved in 1904 as a consequence of successful prosecution under the Sherman Antitrust Act, modern antitrust enforcement had been inaugurated.
Morgan founded the U.S. Steel Corporation in 1901. The culmination of a wave of similar consolidations, it was the largest industrial concern of the time. U.S. Steel never controlled the entire steel industry, and its share of the market has declined steadily.
Solving the Panic of 1907 represents Morgan's highest achievement; never again would private power be vested with so large a public responsibility. When the panic hit, the financial community of New York rallied around Morgan, and the Federal government entrusted its funds to his disposition. He recruited brilliant lieutenants to investigate the resources of the various New York banks and trust companies, determine which were solvent, and act to save them. (There was no central bank, as the Federal Reserve System was created only in 1913 as an after-math to the panic.) Morgan and his cohorts were, for all practical purposes, the central bank.
