MORGAN, JOHN PIERPONT, JR. ), son of John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), succeeded his father and continued as active head of J. P. Morgan and Company, and of its associated banking-houses in Philadelphia, London and Paris. He was born at Irvington, N.Y., on Sept. 7, 1867, prepared for college at St. Paul's school and graduated from Harvard in 1889. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Cambridge uni versity in 1919 and from Harvard in 1923. In 1891 he became a member of the firm of which his father was the head, and later spent eight years with the London house of J. S. Morgan and Com pany, now Morgan, Grenfell and Company. Within 16 months after Morgan succeeded his father in 1913 as head of the house, the World War began. Almost immediately the finance depart ment of the City of New York became confronted with a grave situation. Owing to the dislocation of the foreign exchanges, the City of New York found itself unable to meet its obligations maturing in London and Paris, aggregating upwards of $8o,000, 000. Thereupon Morgan organized a successful bankers' syndi cate for $100,000,000 gold, through the operation of which the city's credit was maintained intact.
Within a year the British Government, followed by the French Government, enlisted the services of Morgan and his partners to undertake the work of co-ordinating and finally purchasing in the United States their all-important supplies of foodstuffs and munitions. The purchases which the firm made for the British and French Governments aggregated several billion dollars, and the work which the Morgan firm accomplished in organizing sources of industrial supply in America proved of great service to the U.S. Government when, two years later, in 1917, it under took to secure its supplies upon a huge scale for the prosecution of its part in the war. Before America's entry into the war, Mor gan undertook the work of financing a great part of the Allies' re quirements for credits in the United States, and prior to April 1917 had arranged total loan issues to the British and French Governments of $1,550,000,000. During the period of world re construction following the war, Morgan continued active; the loans to Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Switzer land, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Cuba, Canada and to Germany under the Dawes Plan, issued by the firm of J. P. Morgan and Company, aggregated between April 1917 and April 1926 approxi mately $1,700,000,000. During America's participation in the war Morgan served as a member of the Liberty Loan and other important committees. For five years he was a member of the advisory council of the Federal Reserve Board. In 1922, at the request of the reparations committee, he served at Paris upon a committee of bankers whose report, laying down the essentials of the German reparations problem, was an important preliminary to the work of the Dawes committee two years later. In 1929 he served as an unofficial American delegate at the conference of experts which opened in Paris on Feb. 9 with the hope of making a final and definite settlement of the reparations problem.
In 1920 Morgan presented his residence at Prince's Gate, in London, to the U.S. Government for an embassy. In 1923, by public charter, he dedicated his father's library (to which he had made important additions) as an institution of research for scholars, at the same time providing liberal endowment for it.
MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY (1818-1881), American eth nologist, was born near Aurora (N.Y.) on Nov. 21, 1818. He graduated in 1840 from Union college, and was admitted to the bar and practised at Rochester (N.Y.). His interest in the Iroquois tribe led him to live among them, studying their social organization. In Oct. 1847 he was formally adopted into the Hawk clan of the Seneca tribe, and received the name "Ta-ya da-o-wub-Rub." The fruit of his researches was The League of the Iroquois (1851 ; new ed. 1904 and 1922). The success of the book encouraged him to further research, resulting in his Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1869). In 1877 he added to his reputation by publishing Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. Morgan was a member of the New York assembly in 1861 and of the New York senate in 1868-69. In 1880 he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died in Roches ter (N.Y.) on Dec. 17, 1881. In addition to the works above mentioned, he published The American Beaver and his Works (1868), and Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines 0880 .
See W. H. Holmes' Biographical Memoir of L. H. Morgan (i908). MORGAN (SYDNEY) LADY (c. 1783-1859), Irish novelist, daughter of Robert Owenson, an actor, was born in 1783, in Dublin. She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed liter ary figures of her generation. She began her career with a preco cious volume of poems. Her St. Clair (1804), a novel of ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love, and impassioned nature-worship, in which the influence of Goethe and Rousseau was apparent, at once at tracted attention. But the book which made her reputation was The Wild Irish Girl (1806), in which she appeared as the ardent champion of her native country, a politician rather than a novelist, extolling the beauty of Irish scenery, the richness of the natural wealth of Ireland, and the noble traditions of its early history.
She was known in Catholic and Liberal circles by the name of her heroine "Glorvina." Sydney Owenson entered the household of the marquess of Abercorn, and in 1812, persuaded by Lady Abercorn, she married the surgeon to the household, Thomas Charles Morgan, afterwards knighted, but books still continued to flow from her facile pen. In 1814 she produced her best novel, O'Donnell. She was at her best in her descriptions of the poorer classes, of whom she had a thorough knowledge. Her elaborate study (1817) of France under the Bourbon restoration was at tacked with outrageous fury in the Quarterly, the authoress being accused of Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness and impiety. She took her revenge indirectly in the novel of Florence Macarthy (1818), in which a Quarterly reviewer, Con Crawley, is insulted with supreme feminine ingenuity.
Of her many other works may be mentioned Passages from my Autobiography (1859). She died on April 14, Her autobiography and many interesting letters were edited with a memoir by W. Hepworth Dixon in 1862.