The Great Pierpont Morgan Read Online Free PDF Page B

primary sources which puts a somewhat different light upon the matter.
    That Morgan lent Stevens the $20,000 is beyond doubt. How much he knew at that moment about what Stevens was up to we shall probably never know; but there is no evidence that he had previously known the man, though Stevens’ sister had once been a schoolteacher of his at Hartford and Stevens’ brother was known to Junius Morgan in London. At the earliest moment when Morgan could detach himself from the operation, he did so. Within a month he was refusing to lend Stevens more money (Stevens got it elsewhere), and within six weeks he had been paid and was out of the business entirely. He did not share in Stevens’ profit; his commissionfor his services (aside from $156.04 interest on the loan) was $5,400—a rather small sum to have been subsequently described by Myers as “the real beginning of J. Pierpont Morgan’s business career.” The only reason why Morgan’s name figured in the scandal later was that—as a War Department Commission stated—“Morgan having loaned Stevens money, the carbines passed into the possession of Morgan as a security for the advance thus made, and were by him delivered to General Fremont, under the sale made by Stevens to him; and the bills against the government were made out in favor of Morgan.” Although the Hall Carbine scandal was promptly aired, being investigated by two congressional committees and by a special War Department commission, Morgan himself was never called before any of them nor personally censured by any of them; apparently they were convinced that his connection with the business was not only brief but incidental. Nevertheless it was an ugly thing to have been involved in, however inadvertently; Morgan, at the age of twenty-four, had at least been headstrong, injudicious, and a bad judge of the character of a well-connected but disreputable customer.
    The other episode—which has likewise been vigorously aired in recent years—took place after Mimi’s death, and involved a speculation in gold. During 1863 Morgan and a young man named Edward Ketchum bought gold quietly and in small amounts; then all at once they conspicuously shipped abroad half of what they had acquired, in order to lift the price and sell the remainder of their hoard at a handsome profit. The scheme worked, and according to some reports they divided a profit of $160,000. From one point of view this was a legitimate, if crafty, speculative coup. It was probably regarded in 1863 somewhat as, let us say, a successful short sale of securities was regarded in 1931, or as a gamble in wheat prices was regarded in 1947: it seemed reprehensible to people distant from the exchanges but quite acceptable to people engaged in the constant push-and-pull of speculative trade. Yet from another and larger point of view this gold deal was a shabby operation, since it was in effect an attempt to depreciate, at least temporarily, the national currency in time of acute emergency. It is quite possible that Junius Spencer Morgan, hearing of it, may have breathed more easilyin the knowledge that his son would henceforward have an older and wiser head in the office with him. (At about this time Charles H. Dabney joined Pierpont as senior partner and the firm became Dabney, Morgan & Co.) For once again the young man had been a bad judge of character: his crony in this deal, Edward Ketchum, came of a highly respectable family but subsequently got into other speculations which turned out disastrously, and in the collapse of the Ketchum firm forged a large number of gold checks and thereupon went to prison.
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    Quite aside from these adventures, the war years were busy ones. Young Morgan had his hands full at times putting through sales of American securities on behalf of the Peabody firm’s anxious English clients, who doubted if the Union would survive and wanted to unload their American holdings. And