. Drexel to form Drexel, Morgan and Co. This firm would be reorganized and titles J.P. Morgan and Co. in 1895, a company that would act as the launching pad for J.P. Morgan to acquire his enormous success and influences as a domestic and international financier:
The firm became one of the most powerful banking houses in the world. In 1873 the US treasury allowed his firm to secure part of a government loan, thereby breaking a monopoly held by the unscrupulous Jay Cooke, and although Morgan definitely worked to advance his own fortune, he established a reputation as a positive force for the nation’s financial and industrial base. He helped stabilize the railroads, for instance, and in 1895 he stanched the gold drain from the US treasury reserves. In 1901 he bought out Andrew Carnegie’s and others’ companies to form the US Steel Corporation. By this time he was the best known, richest, and most influential financier America had ever seen, and inevitably he was attacked by many, but he emerged from a 1912 Congressional investigation with his reputation largely intact. He gave away large sums to a variety of institutions. A knowledgeable collector of art, he was a major benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His large library and superb collection of books, manuscripts, and drawings were left to the Morgan Library in New York City.
By all accounts Morgan was a powerful, forceful, wealthy man capable of having his way at all costs. He would often fight presidential administrations and come out the victor. Time and again he would take on battles and win them whether over labor, monopolies, or charges of conducting business through dubious methods. It is not hard to imagine why Morgan’s financial health was considered vital for national and industrial health in America, despite his tactics and personal characteristics (most of them echoes of the personal characteristics of other industrial and financial titans...