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REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



houses in New York, Philadelphia, 

 London, and Paris, his operations cov- 

 ered the globe. The units of his enter- 

 prises were continental. He was truly a 

 citizen of the world, and though he was 

 a patriotic American, yet no one country 

 could claim him entirely as its own. We 

 may dispute about the economic signifi- 

 cance of the movements in which he was 

 the leader ; we may differ about the 

 effects of his achievements upon the 

 future of the United States, and we 

 may have opposing ideas as to his ulti- 

 mate place in history, but there seems 

 to me to be no reason for contention as 

 to the naturalness and simplicity and 

 absolute fidelity of his character and 

 career. He represented, as no other 

 American did, the commercial enterprise 

 of the times. Within his life-time pro- 

 gress was made, and revolutionary 

 changes in economic forces and condi- 

 tions were brought about, vaster than 

 had been achieved in perhaps the pre- 

 ceding five centuries. During the 

 severity-six years of Mr. Morgan's life 

 the world has lived every year as long 

 as five years in the preceding century, 

 great in results as that was. During at 

 least tmrty-six of these years, Mr. Mor- 

 gan was a leader, and during twenty, 

 the commanding figure among all his 

 contemporaries engaged in commercial 

 enterprises. 



A GREAT HANDICAP. 



Mr. Morgan had the advantage of 

 good blood in his veins. His father, 

 Junius Spencer Morgan, was an able 

 and eminent man. His maternal grand- 

 father was a preacher, a poet and a 

 patriot. We know that the sons and 

 grandsons of upright and intellectual 

 fathers and grandfathers are often 

 worthless and vicious. But in Mr. Mor- 

 gan's life we can plainly perceive the 

 ennobling effect of his noble ancestry. 



But Mr. Morgan had the disadvan- 

 tage of being born rich — not rich, ind- 

 deed, in the sense of the wealth he has 

 himself bequeathed, but rich in the 

 degree which a successful man of af- 

 fairs had attained in the first half of 

 the last century. To be a rich man's 

 son is a fearful handicap. Sympathise 

 with the poor, always ; but the present- 

 day talk about the dreadfulness of 



poverty is mostly sentimental twaddle. 

 Most men who amount to much in this 

 world were born poor and are glad of 

 it. The attempt to abolish poverty is 

 an attempt to abolish progress, for 

 poverty is the dynamo of ambition. One 

 of the biggest merchants in New York 

 recently told me that he refused to take 

 into his employ any of the sons of his 

 wealthy acquaintances, and hired only 

 poor boys from the farms or the sons 

 of immigrants. These were being 

 trained for the high places in his great 

 business. That indicates the kind of 

 handicap which rich men's sons have 

 to surmount. About the only thing their 

 fathers can give them is money, which 

 is often the worst thing they can have 

 in starting out in life. Success has 

 had its hardiest growth in the soil of 

 poverty. The fact, therefore, that two 

 of the most remarkable personalities of 

 our age, J. Pierpont Morgan and Theo- 

 dore Roosevelt, were born in homes of 

 affluence, culture, and refinement, ought 

 to be an inspiration to other rich men's 

 sons. 



A USELESS DIRECTOR. 

 Mr. Morgan matured slowly — that is 

 to say, he did not attain leadership, or 

 apparently seek for leadership, until 

 after years of preparation. Even with 

 the powerful backing which his father 

 was able to give him, he did not become 

 a young Napoleon of finance. After 

 leaving the University of Gottingen in 

 Germany, in 1857, he became a clerk 

 first in his father's banking house 1 in 

 London, and two years later with the 

 then noted New York banking firm of 

 Duncan, Sherman and Co. He began 

 his business career as a clerk when he 

 was twenty years old. Seven years 

 later, in partnership with Charles H. 

 Dabney, he established an independent 

 banking business in New York. But 

 this was still a period of preparation. 

 There was no hot-house growth. There 

 was no grasping for control. There 

 was no sensationalism in his progress 

 He was a follower, not a commander, 

 and so quiet, retiring, and modest was 

 he, that it is related that a corporation 

 that made him one of its directors 

 dropped him after a year, because he 

 never took any initiative at the meet- 



