3. Through interlocking directorates.
4. "Through the influence which the more powerful banking houses, banks, and trust companies have secured in the management of insurance companies, railroads, producing and trading corporations and public utility corporations, by means of stock holdings, voting trusts, fiscal agency contracts, or representation upon their boards of directors, or through supplying the money requirements of railway, industrial, and public utility corporations and thereby being enabled to participate in the determination of their financial and business policies" (p. 56).
5. "Through partnership or joint account arrangements between a few of the leading banking houses, banks, and trust companies in the purchase of security issues of the great interstate corporations, accompanied by understandings of recent growth—sometimes called 'banking ethics'—which have had the effect of effectually destroying competition between such banking houses, banks, and trust companies in the struggle for business or in the purchase and sale of large issues of such securities" (p. 56).
Morgan & Co., the First National Bank, the National City Bank, the Bankers Trust Co., and the Guaranty Trust Co., which were all closely affiliated, had extended their control until they held,—
118 directorships in 34 banks with combined resources of $2,679,000,000.
30 directorships in 10 insurance companies with total assets of $2,293,000,000.
105 directorships in 32 transportation systems having a total capital of $11,784,000,000.
63 directorships in 24 producing and trading companies having a total capitalization of $3,339,000,000.
25 directorships in 12 public utility corporations with a total capitalization of $2,150,000,000.
The investment banker had become, what he was ultimately bound to be, the center of the system built upon the century-long struggle to control the wealth of the continent in the interest of the favored few who happened to own the choicest natural gifts.
6. The Cohesion of Wealth
The struggle for wealth and power, actively waged among the business men of the United States for more than a century, has thus by a process of elimination, subordination and survival, placed a few small groups of strong men in a position of immense economic power. The growth of surplus and its importance in the world of affairs has made the investment banker the logical center of this business leadership. He, with his immediate associates, directs and controls the affairs of the economic world.
The spirit of competition ruled the American business world at the beginning of the last century, the forces of combination dominated at its close. The new order was the product of necessity, not of choice. The life of the frontier had ingrained in men an individualism that chafed under the restraints of combination. It was the compelling forces of impending calamity and the opportunity for greater economic advantage—not the traditions or accepted standards of the business world—that led to the establishment of the centralized wealth power. American business interests were driven together by the battering of economic loss and lured by the hope of greater economic gains.
Years of struggle and experience, by converting a scattered, individualistic wealth owning class into a highly organized, closely knit, homogeneous group with its common interests in the development of industry and the safeguarding of property rights, have brought unity and power to the business world.