The Great Pierpont Morgan [VINTAGE 1949]

Allen, Frederick Lewis

Verlag: Harper & Brothers, New York, 1949

Beschreibung

Fine unread condition red linen boards with gold spine lettering enclosed within a black and gold block border. Includes List of Other Books by Frederick Lewis Allen; Preface by Frederick Lewis Allen; Sources and Obligations; and Index. Illustrated with a black-and-white photographic portrait plate frontispiece of Pierpont Morgan. "I first encountered Pierpont Morgan's personality some fourteen years ago, when I was working on an informal financial history called The Lords of Creation and read his testimony at the Pujo investigation - that testimony which is cited in the first chapter of this book, and again in the last few pages. Here, I thought, is an extraordinary man, strikingly different from the other financial and industrial princes of his day, and different, too, from the impression which he made upon the public mind. Ever since then I have played with the idea of writing about him at greater length. But not until 1947 could I find the time to begin it; and as soon as I went to work, the difficulty of the task became obvious. This difficulty lay in the nature of the evidence about him. In the first place, it was curiously scanty. He himself had been very reticent, unwilling to be interviewed or written about. This reticence continued in his son, who both worshipped him and was reluctant to have anything written about him; and it spread like a contagion among his family and associates. Furthermore, most financial reporting tends to be impersonal and to give few dramatic glimpses of men in action; and the contemporary financial chroniclers had walked with special circumspection when they approached 23 Wall Street. There were legends and anecdotes galore, but many of them were of uncertain veracity. Finally, what evidence had accumulated about Pierpont Morgan was strikingly divided between the one-sidedly laudatory and the one-sidedly derogatory. Believing as I do that it ought to be possible to write about a man of note, whether he be a master of capital or a labor leader or a politician, without being wholly swayed by prejudice for or against the type of institution which he represented, and believing especially that it is a disservice to history to depict the conflicts between men of opposing social and economic ideas as conflicts between saints and sinners, when common sense should tell us that human beings are not thus compartmented, I have tried to steer a true course between the Morgan-praisers and the Morgan-dispraisers. Pierpont Morgan was a man with whom I would have disagreed strongly on most political and economic issues if I had been his contemporary. To me he represented a trend in the direction of economic affairs which had to be altered for the good of the country. But I am also convinced that he was a man great in character and force, whose immense influence was in many respects salutary. What I have tried to do, therefore, has been to show what sort of man he really was; how his ideas developed out of his background and the traditions of the group to which he belonged, and out of his experience; how both his ideas and his actions conflicted with those of others whose background and experience differed from his; and how they influenced, and were affected by, the course of American history. Owing to the nature of the evidence, this has not been easy. As to the facts in this book I have been scrupulously careful, rejecting unverifiable legend. As to the interpretation of Morgan's impulses and ideas and view of affairs, that is my own. I have tried to ask myself, "From all the evidence available, and from whatever intuition I may have acquired about human nature, and especially about the impulses and ideas of men whose background and circumstances and position have in one way or another been comparable to Morgan's , why do I think he acted as he did?". - excerpt from the Preface by the author. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 008189

Bibliografische Details

Titel: The Great Pierpont Morgan [VINTAGE 1949]

Verlag: Harper & Brothers, New York

Erscheinungsdatum: 1949

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Fine