MORGAN, John) Pierpont, American financier: b. Hartford, Conn., 17 April 1837; d. Rome, Italy, 31 March 1913. He was the son of _I. S. Morgan (q.v.). He was educated at the English High School in Boston and at the University of GOttingen, Germany. He began his business career in the banking house of Duncan, Sherman & Co., New York City; in 1860 he became agent and attorney in the United States for George Peabody & Co. of London; in 1864 junior member of the banking firm of Dabney, Morgan & Co., and later mem ber of the firm of Drexel, Morgan & Co., of which his father was also a partner. By the death of the older members of the firm he became the head of the latter house and the firm name was changed to J. P. Morgan & Co. He also controlled the firm of J. S. Morgan & Co. of London and had partnership interest in Drexel & Co. of Philadelphia. For many years his chief interest lay in railroad nego tiations and combinations, and he gradually gained control of the New York Central sys tem, the New York, New Haven and Hartford, the Reading, the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, the Southern, the Northern Pacific, the Big Four and the Chesapeake and Ohio. Shortly after this great railroad consolidation was com pleted (1901), he succeeded in organizing the States Steel Company?) uniting the Carnegie Steel Works and other large concerns with a capitalization of $1,100,000,000, and dom inating the steel industry of the United States. In the same year he bought up a large English shipping line with the evident design of organ izing a trust for the control of transatlantic shipping, but did not succeed in completing the consolidation. He was the head of both the anthracite and the soft coal trusts, and was several times prominent in the settlement of miners' strikes. In 1895 he organized the syndi cate which floated the United States bond issue of $62,000,000, for the increase of the gold re serve; and in 1901 secured American subscrip tions of $50,000,000 to the British war loan. In 1912 he testified before the Pujo Banking Com mittee in Washington, appointed by the House of Representatives to investigate the alleged Trust.° Probably no other American
capitalist was so well known and so thoroughly trusted in Europe as Mr. Morgan.; particularly was this true as regards England, and a large majority of English investments in American securities were made through his house; every where he was recognized, not merely as a man of vast wealth, but also as a man of unusual organ izing and constructive ability. He gave largely to many charities and institutions, particularly to hospitals, churches and the Trade School in New York, and to Harvard University. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman, was for two years commodore of the New York Yacht Club and built the yacht Columbia, which de feated Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock in the international yacht races. Mr. Morgan was the greatest art collector of his time, his col lections being among the most varied and im portant ever owned by an individual. The historic and romantic aspects of art appealed more strongly to him than the purely aesthetic. He built a beautiful library adjoining his home, wherein he housed a collection of important manuscripts and rare and handsomely-bound books. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1913 exhibited most of his collections. Thir teen galleries were needed to house the many rare specimens of Byzantine and Gothic en amels and ivories, bronzes and marbles of the Renaissance, metal work, crystals, Flemish tapestries, a great collection of , miniatures and paintings by artists of the first rank. His col lection ofporcelains, French furniture and objects of decorative art and the paintings of the celebrated Fragonard room were sold by his son in 1915. Mr. Morgan published elabo rate catalogs of nearly all of his collections. Consult the catalogs published by the New York Museum of Art (1914), and for much valuable material on Mr. Morgan's career as financier, art collector and philanthropist, con sult the New York Evening Post of 31 March 1913.