CHAPTER XII

MORGAN AS "THE SAVIOR OF THE NATION"

All previous panegyrics lavished upon Morgan became stale and inadequate compared to the apotheosis of him during the panic of 1907. What climax of earthly splendor does Morgan reach? He becomes the "Savior of the Nation."

Around their genesis, methods and characters, the magnates weave romantic yarns. They supply the inspiration; a host of writers and orators, trained to transfer that romancing into catchwords and phrases, carry it to the people and popularize it until it becomes an almost adamantine tradition. Always it is the same species of romance; the toil, the thrift, the integrity, the wonderful ability by which the magnates reaped their fortunes; their heroism in time of war, their saving philanthropy in all great crises.

The audacity of these "literary" puffers is as great as the imposture of the magnates whom they cover with adulation. In the very commission of vast frauds and thefts, the magnates will pose as public-spirited, patriotic men. Their puffers hasten to paint them likewise. There is no judicious waiting until time has receded, and the actual facts are more or less forgotten. The very enormities of the magnates are at once transformed into acts of the greatest purity, and the people are called upon to applaud. In every conceivable manner the press, or at

least a considerable section of it, is manipulated to counteract the effect of disclosures.

A CHARACTERISTIC EULOGY OF MORGAN.

1

Shortly after the panic of 1907 had set in, an article (and it was one of many such productions) entitled "Morgan the Magnificent" was published in a "popular magazine." Its bombastic style, if nothing else, must provoke a wondering interest, yet it was strictly in accord with the quality of most of the matter published in books and magazines. This trash was called popular" not because the people wanted it, but because to a great extent many publishers considered it "safe." It did not antagonize the vested interests of wealth. The article began with this lurid introduction:

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There were scenes in the saving of Wall street by John Pierpont Morgan that never can be written; things said and done that cannot and should not even be remembered, even in those days of excitement, horror and confusion; heroism, crimes, blunders, treacheries and martyrdoms that spanned the whole capacity of man for glory or shame; for, until the continent came, half-crying, half-cursing out of the trembling madness that threatened to bring down the banking system of the country into ruins, smash the credit of the nation and smirch its name, men were in a nameless bewilderment of fear beyond words to express, as in the presence of some impending and irresistible convulsion of nature the boldest and keenest become craven and stupid.

Plain Mr. Morgan, fresh from the dronings of a great Episcopal church convention at Richmond, was suddenly aroused by the peril of the financial situation to a demonstration of courage, strength and personal masterfulness that brought order and confidence out of chaos and despair.

And there is a little history to compare to the sight of this stout, secretive American banker of seventy years withdrawing

1" Pearson's Magazine," issue of February, 1908.

from the passionless company of bishops and ministers intent on religious ideals, to take command of the fierce, clashing money forces of Wall street, gone crazy out of sheer fright — to become the protagonist and hero of the most cynical, suspicious, treacherous, cruel, arrogant and cowardly human elements in the world.

It might well be imagined that Morgan, the "connoisseur of art," the "lover of literature," the great arbiter elegantarium, would have sent for the author of this perpetration and caused him to be the bastinadoed on the spot. Evidently in the absence of proof to the contrary Morgan was pleased with the confection. It would not be worth notice here were it not for the fact that the point of it-that Morgan was the "Savior of the Nation" was gravely and repeatedly pressed forward by many other writers and publications.

In scrutinizing Morgan's career, one prodigious virtue is encountered. It is that of consistency. The quality of his patriotism and heroism never changed from the time of his introduction into business. That rifle sale at the outbreak of the Civil War was the first exhibition of his intense patriotism. In 1894 his patriotic nature was again displayed consistently when he and his clique squeezed a profit of $18,000,000 or more from the Government in a time of need. In the panic of 1907 his never-failing patriotism was even more prominently shown.

While the effusions of the "popular writers" were wending the rounds of the country, a recalcitrant United States Senator was boring the august Senate of the United States with a long, tiresome speech. The bulk of the august Senate did not care to hear what this Senator, one La Follette, of Wisconsin, had to say, but were compelled to by the rules. The Senate of the United

States was most sensitively jealous of its prestige and dignity. Most of its members were multimillionaires. La Follette lacked that highly important qualification. Still more, he was painfully deficient in caste in another respect. He had not bought his way into the Senate of the United States, thereby outraging one of its most sacred canons. Hence he could give no real test of standing or any guarantee of wise, conservative statesmanship.

But the majority of his colleagues had good reason to be impatient of La Follette's speech. His was a voice. from the past. They represented the newer order, that of centralized industry, and a Government run directly by the magnates themselves. He was a relic of the old creed, that of the age of competition in industry.

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For four long days, on March 17, 19, 24 and 29, 1908, he delivered his lugubrious wail. "In their strife for more money, more power more power, more money," he explained in describing the great magnates, "there is no time for thought, for reflection. Government, society and the individual are swallowed up in the struggle for greater control." Thus he stumbled through mazes of facts the purport and interpretation of which he did not understand. Neither did he comprehend the fundamental fact that commercial upheavals are not the work of individuals, but of the whole capitalist system; that certain powerful individuals or interests could accelerate or retard them, but could not be held responsible for their causation. According to him, a crowd of conspirators, headed by the Standard Oil Company and Morgan had deliberately brought on the panic; he fulminated against them and denounced them as arch criminals.

Amid his accusations, lamentations and platitudes,

Senator La Follette embodied certain facts of real historic value facts confirmed by the records of what actually took place, and familiar to all close observers of events during the panic.

The panic of 1907, like previous panics, supplied the propitious opportunity to the great magnates to crush out lesser magnates and seize the control of their property.

The requirements of industrial centralization demanded the effacement of certain minor magnate groups which, from the point of view of the great magnates, had possessed themselves of a rather dangerous degree of industrial and financial power. These ambitious little magnates had imitated the methods of the great; they had combined fraudulent financial manipulation with the oppressive exercise of political power, and thereby had tricked or forced out the owners of various properties, and had then vested the ownership of those properties in themselves. The form was the usual one of organizing large corporations, with immense amounts of watered stock. These corporations were built upon the ruin, extinguishment or buying out of numbers of former independent business men.

HOW THE LITTLE MAGNATES GET THEIR MLLLIONS.

One of these minor capitalist cliques was what was called the "Heinze-Morse-Thomas Group." Its control comprised twelve banks and two trust companies; a coastwise steamship company, consolidated by the inclusion of a number of steamship companies; large copper mines, a trust in ice, and various other properties. The control of some of these properties was largely secured by means of the enormous profits robbed from the poor