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Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 From a photograph by Pach
THE MORGAN LIBRARY, EAST THIRTY-SIXTH STREET, NEW YORK
(Architects, McKim, Mead, and White)

MR. MORGAN’S PERSONALITY

AS VIEWED BY HIS FRIENDS

BY JOSEPH B. GILDER

I T was in the panic days of 1907—late October. The Secretary of

the Treasury had hurried from Washington to New York, and was
spending his days (long days they were, too) at the Sub-Treasury
and his evenings at the Manhattan Hotel, where all who needed to
could see him. Meanwhile the bankers conferred daily at Mr.
Morgan’s office, across the street from the Sub-Treasury, and nightly
at his library in Thirty-sixth Street. While they put their heads
together and worked out details, their host spent most of his time in
his private room in the library building, not infrequently playing
solitaire. But he was always within reach when counsel was needed;
and his word was law.
To allay popular fears, it was decided to issue a public statement,
and the library conferees prepared one and took it up to show to
Secretary Cortelyou at his hotel. Mr. Morgan went with them. He had
not yet seen the statement, and when one of the party started to
read it aloud, he stopped him at the first sentence. “Is that correct?”
he asked. “It will be by the time the statement is published,” was the
reply. “No, gentlemen, that won’t do. If it isn’t so now, we can’t say
it. We’ve got to state the facts exactly as they are. The public must
have the truth and nothing but the truth.” And the statement was
modified accordingly.
Mr. Morgan had had just half a century’s preparation for doing
the public the immense service he rendered it in “composing” the
panic of 1907; for he had been in the banking business since 1857—
another panic year. Ability, experience, character, reputation, and
financial resources were his, and had put him in a position to ride
the whirlwind and direct the storm. He had done wonders to
preserve the national credit before the year 1907, but it had never
fallen to his lot to do anything quite so spectacular (though
unintentionally so) as he did at this time. What he did, no one else,
however capable, could have done, or, at least, have done so well. It
needed just the combination of attributes and qualities he possessed
to give the needed authority to his acts.
His whole character was summed up in the brief sentences
addressed to his fellow bankers in Mr. Cortelyou’s presence. Always
his words were few; but always they were pregnant and
unequivocal. What he said he meant, and what he meant he said.
It is no truer that Wall Street—“the Street” par excellence—is the
financial center of the Western world than that Mr. Morgan was the
dominant personality therein. He himself was not the Street, for that
term includes the Stock Exchange, a large part of the activities of
which are purely speculative; and at no time in his life was Mr.
Morgan a speculator. Wall Street signifies, and will increasingly
signify, as time goes on, the abiding-place of bankers rather than of
brokers; and it was in the banking world that Mr. Morgan reigned
supreme.
The transactions in which he was the chief factor ran all the way
up to the more than $1,400,000,000 capital of the United States
Steel Corporation. The total amount involved in his organizations and
reorganizations of railways, industrial concerns, and public utilities,
and his flotations of American and English government bonds, was
thousands of millions of dollars. Never has one man exercised such
control over the accumulated wealth and undeveloped resources of a
great country. The power appeared to be despotic, but if it really
was so, the despotism was so tempered by probity and a high sense
of responsibility as to lose all the terrors the term usually connotes.
An old friend, a banker in close touch with many of Mr. Morgan’s
most important operations, was asked the secret of his success.
“There was no secret about it,” said he. “I think his chief asset was
integrity. Of course, being honest doesn’t make a man rich. He must
have—as Mr. Morgan had—immense energy and ability. But a man in
the banking business can’t make a great success with these qualities
alone. At the ‘Money Trust’ inquiry it was shown that the Morgan
house had more than a hundred million dollars on deposit; and this
was by no means high-water mark. Probably these deposits have
been twice as great, at times. Now, no matter how brilliant a man is,
people don’t put more than two hundred million dollars in his hands
unless they know him to be honest to the core, as Mr. Morgan was.”
When I quoted this to a clergyman, he said: “That is the business
man’s point of view.” “So much the better for business,” I replied.
The president of a great commercial bank made this confirmatory
comment: “Mr. Morgan’s power lay in his keen sense of trusteeship.”
 An intimate friend of Mr. Morgan’s, speaking of the financier’s
mental attributes, remarked that his mind never appeared to work
deliberately, logically, but to attain its results by intuition, as it were;
in other words, he was a man of genius. What the business man
usually lacks is imagination; but imagination was perhaps the largest
element in Mr. Morgan’s mind. It was this that made his actions
great. It was his constructive imagination that made it possible for
Mr. Claflin, President of the New York Chamber of Commerce and
himself a distinguished man of affairs, to say: “Like the founders of
this nation, Mr. Morgan had prophetic vision; like them, he was an
organizer of scattered possibilities and a builder of mighty structures
such as no man had built before.” It was because of his imaginative
force that Senator Root called him “the greatest master of commerce
of the world”; and that Mr. Choate said that “only once in a
generation is such a mind born in such a body.” And it was this that
prompted our English kin to liken him to Cecil Rhodes, to Bismarck,
and to Napoleon.
Mr. Morgan’s great gift to Harvard University was made in a way
that illustrates his habitual promptness of decision. He and Mr.
Rockefeller were among those who were asked to contribute to the
habilitation of the Medical School. The latter caused a thorough
investigation to be made, which lasted for six months. At the end of
that time he received a favorable report and was advised to give
$500,000. He bettered the advice, however, by giving a round
million. Mr. Morgan’s course was equally characteristic. When the
needs of the school were explained to him, he made an appointment
to see two or three of the professors at his office. Entering from his
private room with his watch in his hand, he said: “I am pressed for
time and can give you but a moment. Have you any plans to show
me?” The plans were produced and unrolled; and moving his finger
quickly from point to point, “I will build that,” he said, “and that—
and that—and that. Good morning, gentlemen.” The cost was over a
million dollars. Mr. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller had reached exactly
the same conclusion as to the merits of the case and the amount of
his contribution, but by what different methods!
 Mr. Morgan’s activities and achievements in the financial field
divide themselves into three main groups: the reorganizing of
bankrupt railways, or railways threatened with bankruptcy; the
forming of great industrial organizations, and the floating of
corporate or government bonds. His chief performance in the last-
mentioned line was the flotation of United States Government bonds
in the year 1895, when, incidentally, Messrs. Morgan and Belmont
arranged with President Cleveland and his Secretary of the Treasury
further to protect the national credit by putting a stop to the
menacing outflow of American gold to Europe.
At the age of seventy, the veteran financier was called upon to
render another great service to the country by organizing and
directing the forces that put an end to the panic of 1907, as noted at
the beginning of this article. His efforts at this trying time won the
gratitude and applause of all right-thinking men. Yet, five years
thereafter, in the spectacular search for a bogy popularly styled the
“Money Trust,” he was put upon the rack by a congressional
committee and subjected to a prolonged quizzing. To a man so
proud, so shy and so sensitive, the ordeal was a dreaded one, but
he had made no attempt to evade it. In the end, it afforded him an
opportunity of bearing emphatic witness that personal integrity is
the basis of all credit. The tonic effect of this testimony was felt from
one end of the land to the other, and, had the witness been a
younger man, his gratification would have much more than
outweighed the strain upon his nervous system. As it was, his
friends do not attribute to this ordeal his collapse a few weeks later,
while on his way to the scene of the excavations in Egypt which the
Metropolitan Museum of Art was conducting at his expense.
Nothing has been said oftener of Mr. Morgan than that he was “a
‘bull’ on America.” One of his old friends disclosed, the other day, the
origin of this “bullishness.” As is well known, Mr. Morgan was an
optimist. His father’s temperament was the same, and the older man
impressed upon his son—when he was returning to America more
than half a century ago, to go into business—his own belief in this
country and his faith in its future. “Any man who is a ‘bear’ on
America is bound to fail,” he said. Coming from the lips of his father,
whom during his life the son leaned on and respected, and whose
memory he revered and honored, these words made an indelible
impression on the young man’s mind; the more indelible as they
confirmed his personal feeling and conviction and, in later years, his
experience. As it turned out, his confidence in the country’s future
was a potent factor in its material prosperity.
Current report has it that once, when Mr. Morgan invited into his
firm a young man who had made a name for himself, he said, “I
want you to come down here and ‘do things.’” Less well known—
though as well worth preserving—is his word to another bright
young man, in similar circumstances. Surprised no less than gratified
at the invitation, the fortunate one exclaimed, “But what can I do for
J. P. Morgan and Company?” “I don’t ask you to make money for us,”
was the reply; “but we have a great many duties and responsibilities
here, and I want you to come in and help us bear them.”
It is related that Mr. Morgan’s father once threatened to withdraw
his power of attorney from the son, if the latter persisted in
overworking. If the warning was given, it probably was heeded; but
Mr. Morgan was always a great worker, though in his later years, at
least, he realized the value of holidays, as is shown in the saying
ascribed to him: “I can do a year’s work in nine months, but not in
twelve.” Apropos is the legend that partnership in the Morgan house
meant a short life, if not a merry one. Undoubtedly, all the members
of the firm had their work cut out for them. It could not be
otherwise in a house that stood at the top and meant to maintain its
position. There was an immense amount of work to be done, and
they were there to do it. But they were always men who liked to
work; and the fact is that when a partner died or retired, it was at
an age when death or retirement was not unnatural. There have
been few exceptions to this rule. And one, at least, of Mr. Morgan’s
former partners has survived his chief, though several years his
senior.
 Mr. Morgan’s own stalwart physique and capacity for work were
an inheritance from his father, whose death, at seventy-seven, was
due to an accident. Some of his indomitable energy must have come
to him from his maternal grandfather and namesake, John Pierpont;
for, when the Civil War began, that poet, patriot, preacher, and
ardent reformer, after seventy-six strenuous years, had the pluck to
enlist as a chaplain (though for a very brief service) and lived to be
eighty-one years old.
It is recalled that at school Mr. Morgan was a writer of verse, but
it does not appear whether this was due to the example of his
grandfather, one of whose poems on the death of a child—“I Cannot
Call Him Dead”—has gone into the anthologies.
An interesting incident relating to the poet is told me by a friend.
During the Civil War, Father Pierpont (as he was called) was a clerk
in the Treasury Department at Washington, and while there was
often a visitor at the house of Paul H. Berkau, well remembered in
Washington as president of the Schillerbund, a club for the study of
German literature. The Berkaus were abolitionists, friends of Sumner
and Julian, and other men of that faith, and this was a bond
between them and their friend the poet. One day, when he came to
see them, he found on the table a copy of his volume, “Airs of
Palestine and Other Poems.” He took it up and wrote on the fly-leaf
these lines:

“Shame! that my book should to my friend be sold

Rather than made a present of, or lent;
Sold, too, for paper, not so good as gold
By forty-eight or forty-nine per cent.

Jno. Pierpont.
Washington, D. C., 3 Dec., 1863.”

In 1902 one of the owner’s family, coming into possession of this

volume, presented it to Mr. Morgan with this inscription:
 This volume, formerly the property of my uncle, Mr. Paul H. Berkau, to
whom the poet wrote the inscription, is respectfully presented by me to
Mr. John Pierpont Morgan, who has done so much to keep our “paper” as
“good as gold.”

Mr. Morgan received the volume with evident delight.

For many years it was Mr. Morgan’s custom to engage a furnished
house in the city in which a general convention of the Episcopal
Church was to be held (he himself being always a lay delegate from
New York), and to entertain therein, as long as the convention
lasted, a group of his particular friends in the episcopate. A private
car conveyed these parties to their destination; and once, when the
place of meeting was San Francisco, a special train was engaged for
the long journey. Mr. Morgan’s guests on these occasions were
usually Bishop Potter or (later) Bishop Greer of New York, Bishop
Doane of Albany, the Bishops of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and
the wives or other members of the families of these gentlemen. The
present bishop of New York relates that once, when some one raised
the question of the familiarity of the members of the party with the
services of the church, it proved that their host was better versed in
the collects, the hymns, and the Shorter Catechism than any of his
clerical guests. This only confirms other anecdotes illustrating the
extraordinary retentiveness of his memory; for, while he was a
habitual church-goer, never missing a Sunday morning service if he
was within reach of a church, he could hardly have attended as
many services, in the course of his life, as the youngest of the
bishops present. His similar hospitality and constant attention to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of the Church of England, during
that prelate’s visit to America a few years ago, caused a wit to speak
of His Grace as “Pierpontifex Maximus.”
His devotion to the interests of the church was of long standing.
It showed itself, of course, at Highland Falls, on the Hudson, the
village nearest his summer home; and more conspicuously at St.
George’s in Stuyvesant Square, New York City, where the simple,
impressive service chosen by himself was read at his funeral on the
fourteenth of April. To the activities of this church—a body less
distinguished for the wealth and social prominence of its members
than for its work among the poor—he was for many years a liberal
subscriber. The spacious, well-equipped parish-house
commemorated his father-in-law, Mr. Charles E. Tracy, a former
vestryman. And at a time when there was special need of larger
revenues, he made it known that, for a considerable period, he
would duplicate every contribution made by other parishioners. At
the time of his death, he was senior warden of St. George’s, and he
never had missed a meeting of the vestry when he was in New York.
His interest in denominational affairs manifested itself in other
directions. To the building fund of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral
in Albany he gave handsomely. When subscriptions were first asked
for the building of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York,
he put his name down for half a million dollars; and to this sum he
afterward added $100,000. At a meeting of a committee appointed
to raise money for a synod house, when he learned that $50,000
had been subscribed but that $250,000 more was needed, he made
himself responsible for the whole amount, requesting that the earlier
subscribers be relieved of their obligations. Finding, however, that
Mr. Bayard Cutting wished to participate on equal terms in this gift to
the General Convention, he contented himself with assuming one
half the entire burden—which in its entirety proved to be $350,000
instead of the estimated $300,000. Thus his gifts in connection with
the new cathedral amounted to nearly $900,000, and his friends in
the church were not surprised that his will made no further provision
for this great undertaking. Not only at home but abroad was he the
cheerful giver the Lord is said to love, as witness the installation of
electricity in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, at a cost approximating
$200,000.
The benevolent institution that ranked next to the church in Mr.
Morgan’s regard was the Lying-In Hospital, near St. George’s Church,
in Stuyvesant Square. Having bought the house and grounds of the
late Mr. Hamilton Fish, skirting Second Avenue from Seventeenth to
Eighteenth Street, and some adjoining houses, he sent Dr. James W.
Markoe abroad to study the hospitals of Europe, and in due time
authorized the preparation of plans for a model building to cost
about $750,000. By the time these plans had been drawn and
specifications had been worked out, the price of materials had
greatly increased, and the estimated cost proved to be about half a
million more than was expected. Instead of abandoning the project,
or waiting for prices to decline, or demanding a drastic revision of
the plans, Mr. Morgan’s word was, “Go ahead—and cut out nothing.”
When the hospital was built and thoroughly equipped, Mr. Morgan
made up for the city’s inadequate annual contribution to this great
charity by giving $100,000 a year toward its maintenance.
Harvard University, especially the Medical School; the Art
Museum at Hartford, founded in memory of his father, Junius
Spencer Morgan of London; the New York Trade School, which he
handsomely endowed; the American Academy in Rome, and the
Loomis Sanatorium were the other chief beneficiaries of his
discriminating bounty. But the institutions, causes, and individuals
(many of the latter personally unknown to him) that were indebted
to Mr. Morgan for substantial aid, at one time or another, were
innumerable as the autumnal leaves of Vallombrosa. Many of his
benefactions were not publicly recorded, and if he recollected them
himself, it was only because his memory was incapable of relaxing
its grasp on anything, large or small, that had once entered it. As
the London “Spectator” said, never was there a millionaire so set
upon effacing his name from his deeds of beneficence.
Mr. Morgan’s connection with the Metropolitan Museum of Art
dated from 1871, when the institution was organized. For twenty-
five years he was one of the trustees, and since 1904 he had been
president. He took an intense interest in its upbuilding, contributing
thereto not only of his wealth but of his time and affection. So
conspicuous was his identification with the art museum that it
obscured his relations with the American Museum of Natural History,
on the other side of Central Park. Yet these were equally close and
well-nigh as important, involving forty years’ activity as a trustee and
long service, first as treasurer and again as vice-president. Here,
too, his gifts were lavish. His love of beauty showed itself in the
presentation to the museum of large and choice collections of
minerals and precious stones; but these were only a small part of his
contributions, which included money for endowment, maintenance
and research, as well as innumerable objects for exhibition.
Owing largely to modern facilities for travel and communication,
the personality of the American Mæcenas was probably better
known in foreign countries than that of any private citizen of the
past. He was a very familiar figure in England, where he succeeded
years ago to the headship of his father’s firm, as well as to the
ownership and yearly occupancy of his father’s town house and
country-seat; where most of his collections were kept for many
years; and where his gift to St. Paul’s Cathedral showed his lively
interest in the Church of England and in the City of London. He was
equally well known in France, where he was the head of a banking-
house and a benefactor of his favorite health resort, Aix-les-Bains; in
Germany, where his presentation of an important letter of Luther’s to
the Imperial Government was heartily appreciated; in Italy, where he
endeared himself to Pope and people by the restoration of the cope
of Ascoli, and where his last hours were passed; and finally in Egypt,
the antiquities as well as the climate of which had an attraction for
him that grew constantly stronger. Moreover, his fame as a collector
made him an object of intense, if not altruistic, interest in the
various lands in which he sojourned.
Having achieved an international reputation as a maker of money
for his clients and customers, as well as for himself, Mr. Morgan
found no less pleasure, but rather more, in making a new and quite
as wide a reputation as a spender. His collections were made en
prince. He never haggled over a bargain, but took a thing on the
seller’s terms or left it. When he declined a book, a manuscript, or
an object of art at the owner’s price, he must have been aware that
that price was exorbitant; for his purchases were made with an open
hand, many of them at figures that somewhat discounted the
appreciation in values when competition should have become even
keener than it was when he entered the field. His activities as a
buyer doubtless caused a general rise in the price of rarities—an
inevitable result of the rather rapid making of a collection that has
recently been insured for $23,000,000 and would probably fetch a
much larger sum if disposed of under favorable conditions. In
estimating the commercial value of such a collection, it must be
borne in mind that the number of masterpieces is virtually fixed,
while the number of potential competitors for their possession
continually increases.
When Mr. Morgan bought the house adjoining his father’s former
home, No. 13 Princes Gate, London, joined the two, and filled the
addition with things for which there had been no space before—
having a room especially designed to hold the series of Fragonards;
when he left in the National Gallery the Colonna Raphael, for which
he had given a hundred thousand pounds or so; when he filled case
after case in the South Kensington Museum with priceless treasures,
he had no prevision that by far the greater part of his collections
would be coming, before long, to New York. Their departure did not
follow hard upon the passage of the law exempting from tariff
charges works of art more than twenty years old. But when Mr.
Morgan learned, last year, from Mr. Lloyd-George’s own lips, that if
he should die while his collections remained in England, his estate
would have to pay $300,000 or more on the Raphael alone, he
promptly arranged to transfer his treasures to his own country,
where the death duties are less onerous. And now that they are
safely arrived, word comes, through his will, that in due time they
may become permanently accessible to the American people.
Already the literary treasures, safeguarded in the exquisite library
building adjoining his house in Thirty-sixth Street, are accessible to
accredited students and amateurs; hundreds of his art works—
paintings, porcelains, carvings, tapestries, etc.—are on view in the
Metropolitan Museum; and only the erection of a suitable building
(presumably in the form of an addition to the museum itself) delays
the revelation of the full extent of the rich and varied collections the
acquisition of which gave so keen a zest to the financier’s later
years.
 Of Mr. Morgan’s many activities, he enjoyed none more keenly,
and found none more beneficial, than yachting. As many days and
hours as he could spare, he passed aboard his steam yacht, the
Corsair, often spending the summer nights in New York Bay or on
Long Island Sound, early in the week, and running up the Hudson,
to his country home, for the week-end. Longer trips were made to
Newport or Bar Harbor—with the New York Yacht Club, when its
annual cruise was on; at other times with only his personal guests.
From 1897 till 1899, he was the club’s commodore; and his hand
went deep into his pocket to build the Columbia, which defended the
America’s cup in the last of these years, and was used as a trial boat
in 1901, when Reliance was the defender. The Corsair of 1891 (a
242-foot boat) was sold to the Government, as other yachts were,
when we were at war with Spain, in 1898. As the Gloucester, under
Captain Wainwright, she gave a very good account of herself at
Santiago. That year the Sagamore served as flagship; but on the
very day the Commodore sold the Corsair he had commissioned her
designer, Mr. J. Beavor Webb, to build a boat sixty-two feet longer
than the old one; and the next year the new Corsair was launched.
Mr. Morgan’s private signal was known in Europe as well as in
home waters, though he never crossed the ocean on anything but a
great liner, usually the flagship of the White Star Line. This line—the
chief subsidiary of the International Mercantile Marine Company, one
of his many organizations—was in a sense his pet; and the sinking of
the Titanic, in whose construction he had taken the keenest interest,
was probably a heavier blow to him than to any one to whom it did
not bring personal bereavement.
Mr. Morgan’s great liking for collies is known to all lovers of dogs,
and the Cragston kennels are decorated with many a first prize won
at the Madison Square Garden and elsewhere. As a rule, the
animals, young and old, are confined to their own quarters, well
away from the house, and separated from the house grounds by the
public road that runs along the bluff on the west shore of the
Hudson at this point. Despite the comfort, not to say luxuriousness,
of their surroundings indoors, they are always overjoyed to be let
out; and one of their owner’s keenest pleasures was to see them
released; to watch them dash, in a pack, to the gateway, turn
sidewise in the air as they sprang through, then tear like mad down
the road in the direction of Highland Falls and West Point, yelping as
if possessed. After running a few hundred yards, they would turn as
suddenly as they had started, and race back, passing the gate at full
speed, and dashing another hundred rods or so, before turning
again.
“Sefton Hero,” or some other great prize-winner, was likely to be
seen about the house in the daytime; but to only one collie was
granted the privilege of permanent occupancy. This was a dog that
had been in the habit of running down the private road to meet his
master on the arrival of the yacht, the private signal of which he had
learned to recognize. One afternoon, in his zealous haste, he failed
to see a railway train that arrived just as he reached the riverside.
The cow-catcher struck him and tossed him many feet, but happily
he landed on a bit of swampy ground with no bones broken. His
devotion, with its almost fatal consequences, won him special
privileges for the rest of his days.
Not long after the completion of Mr. Morgan’s greatest work as
an organizer, he was the chief guest at a dinner of the Gridiron Club,
in Washington—one of those functions where the newspaper “boys”
have fun with the great ones of the earth. It was, of course,
impossible to get him to talk; but leaving the room, late at night, his
arm linked in that of his old friend Mr. George F. Baker, he exclaimed,
“If only I were a speaker, how I should have liked to talk for an hour
to-night, and tell them the story of the organization of the Steel
Corporation!” He may have felt an equally strong impulse to
unbosom himself on other occasions, but if so he repressed it.
An invincible shyness, which seemed hardly consistent with the
man’s dominating forcefulness, made him as sedulous in avoiding
publicity as many are in courting it. On certain occasions it was
impossible for him to escape the spot-light; but when its rays fell full
upon him his discomfort was obvious. Such an occasion was the
dedication of the New Theatre, now the Century. As chairman, it was
Mr. Morgan’s duty to receive the silver key of the building from the
architect. For once he had to take the center of the stage in only too
literal a sense. As he sat there throughout the addresses of Senator
Root and Governor Hughes, alternately glancing at, and crumpling
up, the scrap of paper on which his notes were written, it was an
easy guess that the remotest corner of the attic would have been a
preferable place of waiting; and when his turn came, and he had
pronounced his two or three formal sentences, his relief was evident.
Once, when he was called on for a speech, he said, “No, no,
gentlemen; I have never made a speech in my life, and I’m not
going to begin now.”
Now and then a business proposition of minor importance would
be submitted for Mr. Morgan’s approval, which was usually given or
withheld after apparently cursory consideration. If the matter came
up again months afterward, and there was any difference of opinion
as to its details, the recollection of the senior partner, who had given
the thing five minutes’ attention, was invariably found to be more
nearly correct than that of the juniors, who had had the handling of
the business. Once in a way, Mr. Morgan might have occasion to
borrow a small coin. If so, the next time he met the lender, no
matter how many weeks had elapsed, he would recall the
occurrence and repay the loan, as surely as if the amount were a
quarter of a million instead of a quarter of a dollar. A table or a chair
not in its accustomed place attracted his attention; a picture hanging
slightly askew disturbed him. For ten or fifteen years before his
death, it was his habit to play solitaire for a while before going to
bed, and he arranged the cards with the utmost neatness and
precision. For his mind was nothing if not orderly, and disorder in
exterior objects disturbed it. When great affairs occupied it, there
was no room for petty details; but in the absence of matters of
moment, its craving for activity had to satisfy itself with whatever
came to hand.
Mr. Morgan’s delicate sense of the fitness of things is illustrated
by an incident related by the young lady who rebound some of the
choicest books in his library. One of these is Geoffrey Tory’s “Book of
Hours” (1525). Into the cover design Miss Lahey wove Tory’s name,
as he himself was in the habit of doing; but Mr. Morgan would not
allow her to reproduce the emblem of a broken jug which the old
French artist had adopted as his sign-manual, using it on every page
of his illuminations. Mr. Morgan’s feeling was that this device was too
personal to the artist himself to be used on any work but that of his
own hands.
The public was surprised at the fervent declaration of religious
belief with which Mr. Morgan’s remarkable document began. It
almost appeared that he regarded his faith as a thing so real, not to
say tangible, as to be transmissible by legal process. Certainly it was
fundamental in his own nature, and as potent a force as any that
shaped his actions. In a noteworthy tribute in the “Outlook,” a
former partner and most intimate friend, Mr. Robert Bacon, late
Ambassador to France, sums up the matter in these few words: “He
was a man of faith; not only religious faith, but faith in the universe,
in humanity, in his country, in his associates, and in the highest
standards of honor in both his public and his private life.”
A giant frame, an iron will,
A mind that sped as lightning speeds,
Cleaving a way for wits less keen—
A man whose words were deeds.

Simple, sincere, accessible

To all that sought; but woe betide
Him who before those piercing eyes
Faltered, evaded, lied!

And yet those eyes, so quick to blaze

And sear, were no less quick to bless;
For strength and courage, in great hearts,
Mate still with tenderness.

Honest, for honesty’s own sake—

Loyal, for so his soul was made—
With one swift glance he chose his ground,
And held it unafraid.

Keen to acquire, to spend, to give,

Ardent in all things, small in none,
He joyed and sorrowed, lived and loved
And toiled till his task was done.

J. B. G.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
BY STEPHEN PHILLIPS
In the February number of “The Poetry Review,”
M. Maeterlinck speaks of the editor of that
magazine as “le bon poète, Stephen Phillips, dont
je suis admirateur, fervent et fidèle.”—ED.
MASTER Mystic over Europe
Whom we did not gladly hear,
Now a sweet revenge thou takest
In the stubborn Saxon tear.

Murmuring of the bees about thee,

With a flight how like thine own,
Upward due to utter heavens,
Happy, be the flight but flown.

Standing half-way between two worlds,

All a-dream, yet dreaming true,
Lord of shadows, yet of shadows
Passing to a perfect blue.

All the ghosts that throng thy pages

Are more real than living wights,
All our noontides are not brighter
Than the brightness of thy nights.

What the dumb moon saith in splendor,

Or the husky bird at dawn,
Thou with human note expressest
Of our murmured fate forlorn.

What the sea would say to sunrise,

Memories of a speechless wind,
This thy muffled muse suggested,
All we seek yet never find.

Yet, forsaking lovelier fancies,

In thy Monna Vanna tale
Thou couldst grip a sterner story,
Hold us fast and leave us pale.

Still th i t’ f
Still the wings we are not ’ware of,
Voices that we dully hear,
Spirit-music struggling downward,
Thou dost bring us dimly near.

I, detained in this ill island,

Where her mist the singer bars,
Hail thee angel of a twilight
Trembling momently to stars.
 SOCIALISM IN THE COLLEGES
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EDUCATORS FOR THE GROWTH OF REVOLUTIONARY OPINION

S IMON-PURE Socialism is so ugly, so red in tooth and claw, that to

be hated it needs but to be seen and understood. Yet there are
so many dilutions of Socialism on the market, emotional
adulterations and attenuations of the genuine brand, that the
inexperienced seeker is pretty sure to have a mixture far below full
strength palmed off on him, and after tasting he will be likely to say
that the stuff is not so bad, after all. Socialism is offered in the guise
of bland and salutary reforms; it takes the form of ethical standards,
of social justice, of uplift, and of progress and happiness for all; now
it is the shield that guards the poor and the helpless against the
shafts of undeserved ill fortune, and now it stays the hand of the
heartless oppressor. In its assumptions it is the Ten Commandments,
it is the Sermon on the Mount, it is Christianity. Can we wonder that
in these disguises it disarms suspicion and wins a tolerance that is
already a half-way approval?
It is time that the men and women of this country awoke to an
understanding of the true nature of Socialism, of what it is, what it
aims to do, and how it seeks to achieve its ends. Socialism is
revolution, it is blood, it is overthrow, spoliation, and a surrender of
the priceless conquests of civilization, an extinction of the noble
impulses that have raised mankind out of the condition of savagery.
It is time these things were known and understood, we say; it is
time that foolish misconception gave way to clear knowledge,
because Socialism is everywhere sowing its seeds, because it is
spreading in the land, not insidiously, but by an open propaganda;
because the principles of Socialism are taking hold upon the minds
of youth through teaching permitted, or in the name of “academic
freedom” actually encouraged, in our schools, colleges, universities,
and even in theological seminaries. And it is only here and there that
from some chair of instruction a voice is heard proclaiming the truth
about Socialism, examining its foundations, subjecting its system
and its principles to the test of reason and common sense, and
picturing forth in the clear light of experience the consequences of
substituting them for the existing social order. Having permitted this
poison to be instilled into the minds of their students, it is the belief
of men who have observed with growing apprehension the spread of
Socialistic belief, that the country’s institutions of learning will be
false to their duty if they fail to supply the antidote by establishing
courses of instruction in which the fallacies, the falsehoods, and the
dangers of Socialism shall be combatted by competent analysis in
the light of history and economic truth.
No board of trustees, no faculty, can plead an excusable
ignorance as to what Socialists intend. They differ as to plan and
method, but they are agreed upon this foundation article of their
faith:

The Socialist program requires the public or collective ownership and

operation of the principal instruments and agencies for the production and
distribution of wealth—the land, mines, railroads, steamboats, telegraph
and telephone lines, mills, factories, and modern machinery.
 “This is the main program,” says Morris Hillquit, and it “admits of
no limitation, extension, or variation.” The Socialist program means,
then, the abolition of private property in land and in investments, the
abolition of rent, profits, of the wage system, and of competition.
Some Socialists advocate confiscation by taxing at full value—for of
course Socialism aims at full control of the powers of government;
some, like the Industrial Workers of the World, would have the
wage-earners take forcible possession of the factories and operate
them for their own account; others would make a pretense of
payment, while still others preach direct seizure. All agree that the
land and the instruments of production and exchange must be taken
out of the hands of private owners and transferred to the State, and
assent to that foundation doctrine makes every Socialist a
revolutionist. Obviously, it is a revolution that could succeed only
through violence and bloodshed, but the real Socialists do not shrink
from that extreme. “The safety and the hope of the country,” said
Victor Berger, the Socialist member of the last Congress, “will finally
lie in one direction only—that of violent and bloody revolution.” He
advises Socialists to read and think, and also “have a good rifle.” But
the literature of Socialism supplies proof upon proof that the capture
of the Government and of property is to be effected by violence.
Hence the Socialist’s hatred of the Army, of the Navy, and of the
National Guard; hence his detestation of all manifestations of the
sentiment of patriotism.
Indeed, one of the noblest expressions of that sentiment which
our literature affords may serve as a complete demonstration of the
conflict between the doctrines of Socialism and some of the
convictions that have struck their roots deepest in our common life.
The familiar lines of Fitz-Greene Halleck’s “Marco Bozzaris” admirably
serve the purpose:

“Strike, for your altars and your fires;

Strike, for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!”
 Our “altars” are the symbol of our religion. “No God, no master,”
is the cry of the Socialists, and it was only after a prolonged debate
that a repudiation of religion was kept out of the Socialist platform of
1908. Our “fires” are our homes and hearthstones. Socialism would
destroy the home. The revolting doctrine of promiscuity was
applauded, and applauded by young women of the faith, at a recent
meeting of Socialists. “The green graves of your sires”—those words
should remind us that the earliest form of title to land was the right
to inclose the graves of parents and kindred. Socialism permits no
private ownership of land. “God, and your native land”—Socialism
denies the Creator and puts the red flag above the Stars and Stripes.
Could the grim meaning of this hideous creed be brought more
directly home to the minds and hearts of American youth than by
the evidence that it is a cold-blooded negation of the fine and lofty
patriotism of Halleck’s adjuration?
Yet American youth by thousands are to-day under Socialistic
teaching and conviction. In December, 1912, the Fourth Annual
Convention of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society was held in New
York. It was reported that there were fifty-nine “chapters” of the
society in as many colleges and universities, including all the leading
institutions of the country, and eleven graduate chapters. There
were between 900 and 1000 members of the undergraduate
chapters, and 700 graduate members. The list of “enthusiastic
disciples of Karl Marx” among college faculties includes the names of
many professors of national repute. Socialism is at work, too, in the
schools, and it has schools of its own, and in this city its “Sunday-
schools.” The doctrines are put before children and youth not as
doctrines of destruction and confiscation, and of revolution by
violence and bloodshed, but as principles of ethics, of social justice,
and the common good, all leading up to the beautiful dream of the
brotherhood of man. College students are asked to consider the
working of some privately managed undertaking, and then by
plausible illustrations it is pointed out to them that the State could
perform the service much better, and thus the ground principle of
Socialism gets a lodgment in minds insufficiently informed to detect
the falsity of the teaching. In the children’s schools is used “The
Socialist Primer,” in which by text and pictures hatred of the rich and
well-to-do is implanted, and the workingman is presented as the
helpless victim of greed and cruel oppression. The facts of Socialism,
the truth about Socialism, are open to ascertainment by every
college and university trustee, by every president, by every giver of
funds whose benefactions are employed in part to support the
teaching of this devil’s creed that is to supplant our old-time
reverence for the altar, the hearth-fire, the family, the graves of
kindred, and the flag. There is no vital difference between Socialists.
The revolutionaries of the Haywood and Debs type and the
evolutionary Socialists of the college faculties have virtually a
common faith, and tend inevitably to the acceptance of one method
for its attainment.
Is this teaching of revolution and confiscation to go on? A sound
course of instruction devoted to the exposure of the fallacies, the
falsehoods, and the destructive purposes of Socialism in every
college where it has gained a foothold, would make the student
immune to its poisonous delusions. Truth is the natural shield
against error, yet only here and there has its protection been
extended over the endangered youth of our colleges. The teaching
of false history and false science would not be tolerated anywhere.
Is it less important that young men should be safeguarded against
false teaching in matters that go to the very groundwork of their
morality and their citizenship? The trustees, presidents, and faculties
of the country’s seats of learning have a duty to perform that they
cannot longer neglect without inviting the sternest censure of public
opinion.
 THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUN

I N “The Flower of Old Japan,” a poem “for children between six

and sixty,” Mr. Alfred Noyes represents his child seekers for the
mirror of wisdom as encountering, among other personified
phenomena of the adult intelligence, a curiously-inclined people
known as the Ghastroi, of whom he says:

“Their dens are always ankle-deep

With twisted knives, and in their sleep
They often cut themselves; they say
That if you wish to live in peace
The surest way is not to cease
Collecting knives; and never a day
Can pass, unless they buy a few;
And as their enemies buy them too,
They all avert the impending fray,
And starve their children and their wives
To buy the necessary knives.”

The children are quite at a loss to know what to make of such a

strange way of life.
Many children of a larger growth have wondered at the
phenomenon of the actual world of which Mr. Noyes’s fancy is an
allegory. But in the cultivation of the fear of war it has been left for
the present year to reveal an aspect of sordidness the like of which
has never before been known.
The world was startled, and all Germans were overwhelmed with
mortification and shame, when in April the facts were made known
concerning the way in which a market for military supplies had been
created at Berlin. One great manufacturer of guns had been guilty of
giving bribes within the very walls of the War Office. Another large
company dealing in arms and ammunition had sent money to France
in order to hire writers of anti-German articles, so that warlike
feeling might appear to be stirred up, and the German Government
be induced to place large orders for rifles and cartridges. All this
went far beyond the ordinary manipulation of a “war scare.” With
that we are familiar. It has frequently been seen in the United
States. More than twenty years ago, when there was foolish talk
about a war with Chile, a New Jersey steel-maker was heard to say,
after the flurry was over, “Well, anyhow, it was a good enough war
to secure me an order for $600,000 worth of ship’s plates.”
Such tactics by armor-makers and powder-manufacturers have
often been exposed, but they fall short of the fiendishness of these
German plottings. It is bad enough to work up an artificial
excitement in your own land, to form leagues for a bigger army and
navy, to point to various alleged foreign “perils,” to ply committees of
Congress with fantastic military arguments, and to do it all, and
finance it all, solely in order to get some fat government contracts.
But to do what the German firm did is to pass beyond the
mischievous and dishonorable into the diabolical. Deliberately and by
means of money sent abroad to seek to rouse a hostile spirit and
provoke a war for the purpose of making the weapon business good
—this is to be willing to coin money out of the misery of two nations.
It is to take the position that the blood of the killed and wounded
and the tears of widows and orphans may be ignored if only they
are “good for trade.” We have heard much of the mad competition in
armament being a reduction of militarism to the absurd. These
German revelations are a veritable reductio ad horribilem—all the
more shocking because the German Emperor is to-day one of the
greatest forces for peace.
Yet, when all is said, is not this thing, which the moral sense of
civilized men pronounces shocking, only a development, one may
say a logical development, of practices which have long been known
and tolerated? There would seem to be only a difference in degree
of turpitude between bribing one’s way to an order for cannon and
paying out money, directly or indirectly, to secure general legislation
which means money in a private citizen’s purse. This latter process
has been not merely winked at in this country; it has been thought
the regular and reputable thing to do. It has almost been honored.
At least those who have profited by it have been honored. For years
it was the vicious custom of corporations to group under “legal
expenses” sums paid out to influence the legislature or Congress. Of
one man prominent in his party, long in public life, and influential
there, it was said that his motto, in politics as in business, was, “If
you want anything, go and buy it.”
Such things were once far too common. They are frowned upon
now, and we may believe that they are passing. It is necessary only
to refer to what was done year after year in the matter of the
protective tariff. The relation between campaign contributions and
desired rates in the tariff bill was so close that it was hardly an
exaggeration to say that the manufacturer put his coin in the party-
treasury slot and drew out the customs duty he wanted. It seems
certain that this habit of the “good old times” is disappearing before
the spirit of the better new time. Yet evil is persistent. It is protean
and recurrent. With all the gains that have been made, it is still true
that the pecuniary view of legislation is too often met with. We laugh
at “going in for the old flag and an appropriation,” but there are
ways of corruption subtler than the blatant patriotic. In connection
with too many bills and projects of law the questions are yet asked,
“What is there in it for me?” “Who is putting up the money for this?”
Cases of outright legislative bribery are rare. In the few that do
come to light or are suspected, proof of guilt is exceedingly difficult
—how difficult, recent events at Albany have shown. But it is not the
coarse methods of the purchaser or huckster in legislation that we
need to guard against so much as the more insidious forms of
swaying public legislation to private advantage. Too often, in
connection with projects of law, a distinct “interest” appears. And
frequently it is a moneyed interest. Movements that are artfully
given the appearance of being spontaneous or voluntary are
discovered to be secretly financed for secret purposes. The press is
sometimes approached as well as legislatures and Congress. Sinister
ends are craftily disguised. The very elect are occasionally deceived.
What is the remedy? It must be mainly moral. Against these anti-
social practices the full power of social condemnation must be
massed. The senses of men need to be sharpened until they can
deny the truth of the cynical saying, “Gold does not smell.” Some
gold does. And as against a private “interest” in legislation, there
must be asserted, as the one standard, a broad State or National
interest. Lacking that, no bill should be exempt from the severest
scrutiny to expose a possibly selfish backing. That general principle
established, and the further truth being insisted upon that no man
shall be permitted before a legislative or congressional committee to
be a judge in his own cause, the motive and the mischief of money-
prompted legislation would be greatly diminished.
 ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER
THE FUNCTION OF HIGH STANDARDS IN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

A T first thought, it seems like mockery to recommend to a world

of social unrest and of shifting ideals, a world that for the most
part is struggling for three meals a day, the efficacy of music,
letters, and art to ameliorate its condition. “Emerson in words of one
syllable for infant minds” will not reach below a certain intellectual
stratum. Beethoven for the people seems a contradiction of terms.
There are times when, despite the crowds at the museums,
Michelangelo and the Greek marbles seem to have as little influence
upon the stream of humanity as rocks upon the current of a river
that flows past them. The cry for the elevation of the race, which is
the dominant note—the Vox Humana—of our time, the hope that we
may all move up together, is a logical development of the Christian
idea and the most creditable aspect of the new century. The whole
world is reaching for sun and air. The ambition of the wage-earner is
a counterpart of nature, as Lowell reads it into his “June”:

“Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.”

With the impetuosity and the lack of discipline of our day, this
aspiration often overreaches itself. The highly stimulated desire for
advancement is thwarted by unwillingness to take the plodding and
the stony road. The treasures of the humble are forgotten. The quick
fire burns up the substance and leaves but ashes. Meanwhile, it is
something if, with Landor, we have
 “warmed both hands against the fire of life.”

But, with all this impatience to “get culture,” and this rush to take
beauty and intellectual resources to those who have them not, as
food to the famine-stricken, we are in danger of forgetting the chief
value of the best in literature and the arts: that it awakens the
imagination and gives poise to life. Now, imagination and poise are
two traits that differentiate man from the brute, and the superior
man from the inferior. The best thinking is done by men of
imagination; the best action is accomplished by men of poise; for, by
poise is meant the faculty of holding one’s course courageously to
the compass among contrary winds and waves. The value of high
literary, artistic, and musical standards is not that they make poise
and imagination universal, but that they affect the world secondarily,
through the leaders in whom these qualities are developed. Who
shall compute the worth to humanity of one great thinker, one great
novelist, one great poet, one great painter, one great sculptor, one
great composer? In debating societies, great material advances
through invention and discovery are weighed in the balance with
great achievements in arts and letters; but account is seldom taken
of the intellectual forces that created the inventors and the
discoverers.
It is because America is in need of great men that she stands
most in need of these forces. The twentieth century appears to be a
century of challenge to all the centuries that have gone before, with
the accelerated momentum of them all. Now, more than ever, must
we have men of imagination and men of poise, and every agency
that gives promise of developing these traits deserves
encouragement and support. The uplifting of the people to a high
average of happiness is thus closely though indirectly related to the
advance of literature and the arts.
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