The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1913. A GREAT MONEY KING.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 77, 1 April 1913, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1913. A GREAT MONEY KING.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that we can, do.

The death of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan can hardly ,be termed unexpected; "for tbe great financier was born in the year of Queen Victoria's accession, and if he had lived another fortnight he would have attained the ripe old age of 75 years. But, though nominally he was supposed to have retired from business some ten years ago, bo profound was the impression that his financial ability had produced on the public imagination, and so vast was the wealth that be possessed or controlled, that he had come to be regarded by most Americans and a great many Europeans as a permanent national institution. Twice at least within the past fifteen years he had saved Wall Street from disastrous .panics; and the American people have not yet forgotten that terrible day iv ISO 7 when half the wealthiest "money-kings" of —w York were trembling on the ver/re of bankruptcy, and Morgan, at an hour's notice, poured 27,000,000 dollars on to tbe Stock Exchange, and saved the situation. Morgan \v_ s a rich man, but it is doubtful if his personal wealth amounted to much more than £10,000,000. and this total is surpassed by many of his compatriots. But in his financial prestige, in his extraordinary power of control over the wealth of rich men and rich corporations, and in his remarkable capacity for inducing others to follow his lead and entrust their money to his discretion, Morgan stood alone in America, and was, indeed, a unique figure in the money markets of the world. And it is for this reason that his loss will be severely felt not only in New York, but in Paris and London,' and that his place will' ibe liard indeed to fill.

The secret of the extraordinary ascendancy that J. P. Morgan has so long exercised over even tiie greatest of his contemporaries in the v?oiid of finance is partly to be found in the nature of the man, partly in the character of his methods. Extremely tenacious, secretive, and masterful, gifted with keen insight into other men's motives and plans, and endowed with remarkable physical and mental energy and driving power, Morgan has always, been a good friend and a dangerous enemy. But friends aud enemies alike have always recognised that his word is his bond, and that he is unflinchingly true to his own standards of , financial . and commercial honesty. It is possible that these might not have satisfied his Puritan ancestors; but this much is admitted' even by J. P. Morgan's bitterest foes, thnt he never used his great talents and his unique opportunities for the purpose of wilful destruction. "For the most part," wrote A. H. Lewis some years ago, "the role he has played has been creditable to himself. His genius has been ever constructive- his money was made not by tearing enterprises to pieces, but by building them up. Mr. Morgan never wrecked an enterprise; on the contrary, he has rescued and revived many which stockjobbing footpads had struck down, robbed and left to die by the wayside. Mr. Morgan never fed his purse with rebates, as did Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Carnegie, and Mr. Havenieycr. Mr. Morgan never killed off a rival! by what overpowering underselling tactics were popular with Standard Oil and Sugar." Ho was, in fact, the great constructive genius of modern finance. Combination, not disintegration, was his forte; and even if the Billion Dollar Steel Trust had failed «s completely as the Atlantic Shipping Trust, these great conceptions alone would always mark him out from his contemporaries as one of the master minds among the financiers and organisers of the age.

Naturally enougli, a personality so aggressive and so dominating has made many enemies; and certainly Mr. Morgan's ordinary bearing was not calculated to conciliate the average man. "The manners of Mr. Morgan." save one rather indulgent critic, "are brusque, which is the French for rude. 1 f a coalheaver treated you as Mr. Morgan would treat you—assuming that you got to him personally, which a3 an enterprise is no child's play—you would thrash him if you could, and if you couldn't you would call a policeman."' On the other hand, this albrupt, self-willed, domineering man seems to have made a i most favourable impression upon most of those brought into close contact with him. "To his '"social friends," writes C. M. Keys, "not many of whom are his business associates, no man may speak ill disparaging terms of him, for they are all loyal and all are attached to him in bonds of a wonderful regard. His friendships are intense. His hatreds are equally intense. He has never been known to forgive an affront nor to forget a favour. He has never sold out his friends nor parleyed with his enemies.-' By all accounts, a remarkable and forceful character; and the spectacle of this strange man, "dressed like an agriculturist whose harvests have been killed by a. drought," and presiding with tho portentous arrogance of a Roman Emperor, as 11. G. Wells tells us, over the financial destinies of the Americans, makes a vivid appeal to the imagination.

A miser Pierpont .Morgan certainly was not. The whole world knows of the vast stores of art treasures that ho haa amassed at aa almost incredible cost in

London and New York. Leas generally know- are the huge donations and gifts in .which •he 1— expended a large part of his own private fortune. His yacht cost him £100,000, he paid £5000 for a Masarin Bible, £30,000 for a Gainsborough, £100.000 for a Raphael, £200,000 for the famous Fragonard Panels. But he has given Harvard Medical School £200,000, he spent £270,000 on a lying-in hospital, he gave £100,000 to St. John's Cathedral, £20.000 to the V.M.C.A., £100,000 to. a consumptive hospital, £00,000 for a parish house and rectory attached to his church, £25,000 for preserving the Palisades on the Hudson. These are only a few of his benefactions; but they have helped the •American public to forget the repujatiou that Pierpont Morgan gained twenty years ago us the "bold, bad buccaneer" of finance at a time when "Morgancering" was the popular synonym for privateering in the world's money markets. Yet whatever estimate might be former; of the mail's character or his intentions, there could be no mistake about the immensity of the power he wielded. Of the six or seven Money Kings who admittedly control the financial resources of America—Stillman, of the City Bank; Baker, of the First National Bank; the Rockefellers; Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb and Co.—Morgan was undoubtedly the head; and his paramount position among them lias never been challenged in recent years. "He sits to-day in the dark old glass and mahogany counting-room that he built nearly forty years ago. Across from him is the babble and chatter ot the Stock Exchange. To him come the petitions of the nation and the continent and the islands of the seas around. He sits and waits—massive, gruff, imperious, a type of the old fighting Anglo-Saxon, that has conquered and taken in his strong hands the whole Northern World. They all come to him—and through him to the system that he represents so accurately and so well." But now that the head of the system is taken away, his country has to discover by experience whether the huge and complex machinery of finance that he devised can go on working without him, or whether the structure lie reared will totter speedily to its fall, and involve friends and enemies alike in widespread ruin.