The business of manufacturing electrical machinery and apparatus is only a little over thirty years old. J. P. Morgan & Co. became interested early in one branch of it; but their dominance of the business today is due, not to their “initiating” it, but to their effecting a combination, and organizing the General Electric Company in 1892. There were then three large electrical companies, the Thomson-Houston, the Edison and the Westinghouse, besides some small ones. The Thomson-Houston of Lynn, Massachusetts, was in many respects the leader, having been formed to introduce, among other things, important inventions of Prof. Elihu Thomson and Prof. Houston. Lynn is one of the principal shoe-manufacturing centers of America. It is within ten miles of State Street, Boston; but Thomson’s early financial support came not from Boston bankers, but mainly from Lynn business men and investors; men active, energetic, and used to taking risks with their own money. Prominent among them was Charles A. Coffin, a shoe manufacturer, who became connected with the Thomson-Houston Company upon its organization and president of the General Electric when Mr. Morgan formed that company in 1892, by combining the Thomson-Houston and the Edison. To his continued service, supported by other Thomson-Houston men in high positions, the great prosperity of the company is, in large part, due. The two companies so combined controlled probably one-half of all electrical patents then existing in America; and certainly more than half of those which had any considerable value.
In 1896 the General Electric pooled its patents with the Westinghouse, and thus competition was further restricted. In 1903 the General Electric absorbed the Stanley Electric Company, its other large competitor; and became the largest manufacturer of electric apparatus and machinery in the world. In 1912 the resources of the Company were $131,942,144. It billed sales to the amount of $89,182,185. It employed directly over 60,000 persons,—more than a fourth as many as the Steel Trust. And it is protected against “undue” competition; for one of the Morgan partners has been a director, since 1909, in the Westinghouse,—the only other large electrical machinery company in America.
THE AUTOMOBILE
The automobile industry is about twenty years old. It is now America’s most prosperous business. When Henry B. Joy, President of the Packard Motor Car Company, was asked to what extent the bankers aided in “initiating” the automobile, he replied:
“It is the observable facts of history, it is also my experience of thirty years as a business man, banker, etc., that first the seer conceives an opportunity. He has faith in his almost second sight. He believes he can do something—develop a business—construct an industry—build a railroad—or Niagara Falls Power Company,—and make it pay!
“Now the human measure is not the actual physical construction, but the ‘make it pay’!
“A man raised the money in the late ’90s and built a beet sugar factory in Michigan. Wise-acres said it was nonsense. He gathered together the money from his friends who would take a chance with him. He not only built the sugar factory (and there was never any doubt of his ability to do that) but he made it pay. The next year two more sugar factories were built, and were financially successful. These were built by private individuals of wealth, taking chances in the face of cries of doubting bankers and trust companies.
“Once demonstrated that the industry was a sound one financially and then bankers and trust companies would lend the new sugar companies which were speedily organized a large part of the necessary funds to construct and operate.
“The motor-car business was the same.
“When a few gentlemen followed me in my vision of the possibilities of the business, the banks and older business men (who in the main were the banks) said, ‘fools and their money soon to be parted’—etc., etc.
“Private capital at first establishes an industry, backs it through its troubles, and, if possible, wins financial success when banks would not lend a dollar of aid.
“The business once having proved to be practicable and financially successful, then do the banks lend aid to its needs.”
Such also was the experience of the greatest of the many financial successes in the automobile industry—the Ford Motor Company.
HOW BANKERS ARREST DEVELOPMENT
But “great banking houses” have not merely failed to initiate industrial development; they have definitely arrested development because to them the creation of the trusts is largely due. The recital in the Memorial addressed to the President by the Investors’ Guild in November, 1911, is significant:
“It is a well-known fact that modern trade combinations tend strongly toward constancy of process and products, and by their very nature are opposed to new processes and new products originated by independent inventors, and hence tend to restrain competition in the development and sale of patents and patent rights; and consequently tend to discourage independent inventive thought, to the great detriment of the nation, and with injustice to inventors whom the Constitution especially intended to encourage and protect in their rights.”
And more specific was the testimony of the Engineering News: