JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN. 



47i 



But Morgan had not only vision, but 

 the courage to act. He had learned to 

 rely upon the accuracy of his own in- 

 tuitive judgments, and he acted upon 

 them. His decisions were prompt and 

 final. Having made them, he had the 

 courage to carry them into effect. His 

 whole business life was the underwrit- 

 ing of enormous risks, and it is through 

 the taking of risks — whether you call 

 them speculations or not — that the 

 world made such marvellous progress in 

 the past century. When he said he 

 would do a thing he did it. Confidence 

 in his good faith, even more than re- 

 liance upon his intuition and courage, 

 made him a leader among men. Faith 

 in his word was as strong in small 

 tilings as in great. 



A VAST POWER. 



It was this combination of intuition, 

 courage, fidelity, and imagination in one 

 personality, that constituted Morgan's 

 character — that character which was the 

 secret of his success, and which, as he 

 himself declared to the Pujo Commit- 

 tee, is the basis of credit. 



In the last twenty years of his life, 

 Morgan wielded a power that, as I have 

 already said, no other private citizen 

 and few statesmen in the world exer- 

 cised. His power was fiercely assailed 

 on the ground that no private indivi- 

 dual ought to possess such authority 

 over the lives and fortunes of millions 

 of other persons. 



But analyse that power, and it will 

 be discovered that it was a delegated 

 power. Morgan was as truly chosen 

 by the people as President Wilson is. 

 He did not obtain his power by con- 

 quest. He did not arrogate it to him- 

 self by any assertion of brute strength. 

 It came to him by what may truly be 

 called the suffrages of the people. 



SOME OUTSTANDING OPERATIONS. 

 It is not possible here to go into the 

 details of his many financial operations. 

 His early New York Central deals by 

 which he marketed $25,000,000 of its 

 stock, mostly abroad, and by which later 

 he acquired for that road control of the 

 West Shore ; his restoration of the Bal- 

 timore and Ohio from depleted vital- 

 ity ; his purchase of the Louisville and 



Nashville to save it from what he con- 

 sidered the control of adventurers ; his 

 vast railroad reorganisations after the 

 disaster of the 1893 panic ; his long- 

 continued efforts for railroad peace ; his 

 work in behalf of the Government credit 

 during Cleveland's second administra- 

 tion, when the country was trembling on 

 the edge of the suspension of specie 

 payments ; his colossal industrial com- 

 binations, notably the organisation of 

 the billion-dollar steel corporation ; his 

 part in the rehabilitation of the Read- 

 ing and other coal roads, and later in 

 the settlement of the coal strike ; his 

 organisation of the banking resources 

 of the country for the protection of 

 commercial and banking credits in the 

 panic of 1907 — each one of these events, 

 as well as many others, needs a separate 

 article for adequate narration. 



It will be seen that he was an em- 

 pire-builder. He did not, indeed, like 

 Washington, found a government, or 

 like Hamilton, Madison, and Franklin, 

 draft a constitution, or, like Lincoln, 

 save a nation. But he organised and 

 led the material development of the 

 United States from a financial depen- 

 dency and commercial province of 

 Europe, into an independent great 

 world power. He was the Cecil Rhodes 

 of America, or rather, it would be more 

 proper to say that Cecil Rhodes was the 

 Morgan of South Africa. The prob- 

 lems he solved were those that would 

 have taxed the resources of the world's 

 ablest statesmen. 



It was he who applied government 

 to the railroads. Before him there had 

 been anarchy, riot, revolution. But he 

 established government. He was the 

 governor, the dictator, if you will, but 

 still the government ; able, stable, 

 sound, constructive, statesmanlike gov- 

 ernment. 



Then the Government stepped in, the 

 political power, the elect of the people, 

 and said to Mr. Morgan : " You have 

 gone thus far, but go no further. The 

 empire you have builded threatens to 

 become more powerful than the auth- 

 ority from which it obtained its char- 

 ters and grants." By suit the Northern 

 Securities Company was dissolved. By 

 act of Congress, the Interstate Com- 



