J. P. Morgan and the Nation’s Wealth
The Pujo Committee, the committee of Congress looking into the matter of trusts and wealth control, have brought out some interesting facts, we are told, concerning the financial panic of 1907. At that time, J. P. Morgan & Company came to the rescue of the country, and he was greatly praised for his patriotism. People supposed that he was using his own money; but the committee has brought to light the fact that President Roosevelt placed $39,000,000 of the government funds, without interest, at the direction and disposition of this company. Mr. Morgan merely furnished the money of the United States, and drew interest on it at six per cent. The investigations of this committee have also brought out the tremendous wealth of Mr. Morgan, and the wealth controlled by him. The amount of securities of interstate corporations marketed in the United States by J. P. Morgan & Company during the last eleven years, amounts to the vast sum of $1,914,226,000; and it is stated that November 1, 1912, he had on deposit in his New York and Philadelphia banking-houses more than $162,000,000 waiting investment, and in addition to this, at his command, the reserve resources of nearly seventy of the greatest railroads and industrial concerns in the United States. Surely such colossal wealth as that, controlled by one man, indicates an unhealthy condition of a country. It recalls the prophetic words of the poet,— “Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
When wealth accumulates and men decay.”