Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use ItBrandeis, Louis Dembitz
History
Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use It
Brandeis, Louis Dembitz
Banks and banking -- United States; Finance -- United States
Once Lee, Higginson & Co. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. were active
competitors. They are so still in some small, or purely local matters;
but both are devoted co-operators with the Morgan associates in
larger and interstate transactions; and the alliance with these great
Boston banking houses has been cemented by mutual stockholdings and
co-directorships. Financial concentration seems to have found its
highest expression in Boston.
Somewhat similar relations exist between the triple alliance and
Chicago’s great financial institutions--its First National Bank, the
Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, and the Continental & Commercial
National Bank--which together control resources of $561,000,000. And
similar relations would doubtless be found to exist with the leading
bankers of the other important financial centers of America, as to
which the Pujo Committee was prevented by lack of time from making
investigation.
THE AUXILIARIES
Such are the primary, such the secondary powers which comprise the
Money Trust; but these are supplemented by forces of magnitude.
“Radiating from these principal groups,” says the Pujo Committee, “and
closely affiliated with them are smaller but important banking houses,
such as Kissel, Kinnicut & Co., White, Weld & Co., and Harvey Fisk &
Sons, who receive large and lucrative patronage from the dominating
groups, and are used by the latter as jobbers or distributors of
securities, the issuing of which they control, but which for reasons
of their own they prefer not to have issued or distributed under their
own names. Lee, Higginson & Co., besides being partners with the inner
group, are also frequently utilized in this service because of their
facilities as distributors of securities.”
For instance, J. P. Morgan & Co. as fiscal agents of the New Haven
Railroad had the right to market its securities and that of its
subsidiaries. Among the numerous New Haven subsidiaries, is the New
York, Westchester and Boston--the road which cost $1,500,000 a mile to
build, and which earned a _deficit_ last year of nearly $1,500,000,
besides failing to earn any return upon the New Haven’s own stock and
bond investment of $8,241,951. When the New Haven concluded to market
$17,200,000 of these bonds, J. P. Morgan & Co., “for reasons of their
own,” “preferred not to have these bonds issued or distributed under
their own name.” The Morgan firm took the bonds at 92 1/2 net; and the
bonds were marketed by Kissel, Kinnicut & Co. and others at 96 1/4.
THE SATELLITES
The alliance is still further supplemented, as the Pujo Committee
shows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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