United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul

by Arundel Cotter

John Pierpont Morgan was the son of Junius Spencer and Juliet Morgan. He was born on April 17, 1837, and educated at the English High School of Boston and the University of Gottingen. He entered the banking business at the age of twenty, with the firm of Duncan, Sherman & Co., and later, from 1864 to 1871, was a member of the banking house of Dabney, Morgan & Co. Still later he helped to form the firm of Morgan, Drexel & Co., which afterward became J. P. Morgan & Co. He died in Rome within a few weeks of the close of his 76th year, on March 31, 1913.

Having a peculiar genius for financial organization and arriving at the heyday of his power at the period when vast consolidations of capital and industry were the order of the day it was natural that he should have figured prominently in the carrying through of many of these. Among the large concerns with the organization of which he was closely identified was the International Harvester Co., and he took a prominent part in the reorganization and refinancing of several large railroad enterprises, notably the Erie, Reading, Santa Fe, and Northern Pacific. He has generally been blamed for the New Haven débâcle and there is no doubt that he occupied an important position in managing its affairs; in fact, according to the former president of that system, he dictated its policies and actions.

But the financing of the United States Steel Corporation was beyond all question his magnum opus.

So great was Morgan’s influence in the management of most of the companies with which he was connected that it was said of him, as of the McGregor, that “where he sat was the head of the table.”

But so far as the Steel Corporation was concerned at least, it seems to be fairly well established that, keen as was his interest and great as was his pride in the big company, he never assumed an attitude in the least dictatorial. He was the Corporation’s banker—nothing more. Questions of operation and policy he left entirely to those having direct charge of them. This was particularly true in the last six or eight years of his life, by which time, other directors of the Corporation have stated, he had come to place such implicit reliance on the judgment of Judge Gary that he always accepted the latter’s ideas upon all matters connected with the welfare of the great enterprise.

Morgan himself regarded the amalgamation of many of the country’s leading steel concerns into United States Steel as the crowning achievement of his career. He took a personal pride in his connection with the Corporation’s organization—and who shall say it was not a worthy pride? He lived to see it firmly established and exerting an influence for good on the steel trade and on industry generally; to see it gain the confidence of the public as evidenced by the growth that was, even before his death, taking place in the number of its stockholders, many of whom held only a share or two and regarded them almost as gold bonds; to see it earn the good will of its competitors and the loyalty of its—at the time—two hundred thousand odd employees.

But unfortunately he also lived to see it attacked by the Government. No doubt this was a sore grief to the great financier. And its vindication did not come until several years after his death.

To those who knew him by sight only Morgan appeared a solitary, stern figure, perhaps a little too much inclined toward impressing his own will on others. Those who enjoyed intimacy with him declare that under his cold exterior beat a heart as tender as a woman’s, that he took the keenest interest in all things human and that, while never figuring publicly as a philanthropist, the list of his private benefactions was enormous.

Newspaper men, who perforce had often to seek an interview with the great banker, found him rather unapproachable. But when he consented to talk his statements could be relied on absolutely. And he was not without a subtle sense of humor. On one occasion a financial writer who had been assigned to get Morgan to talk by hook or by crook invaded his private yacht and was only saved from being ejected by the banker himself who invited his visitor to the saloon and treated him like an honored guest.

He discussed in the fullest detail the subject on which the writer wished to interview him but—at the end, when his self-invited guest was taking his leave, Morgan said with a shadow of a smile: