res, Math, Money and Banking, p. 123).
John Merwin (p. 275) has stated that John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie had more money, but J.P. Morgan controlled the most wealth. Morgan created a team of investment banking partners who worked hard and were rewarded with large salaries. At one time or another, "Morgan financed wars, refinanced foreign national debts, rescued the U.S. treasury from a gold shortage and even financed an America's Cup winner" (Merwin, p. 275).
In explaining Morgan, Merwin (p. 275) claimed that he had a passion for order and a dislike for chaos. Morgan felt that it was silly and wasteful for dozens of small and inefficient companies to compete with each other in order to get business. Because he believed this, he felt that the most effective way of doing business and making profits was to create a few giant corporations. These big corporations would avoid price wars and produce more efficiently. As a result, J.P. Morgan used the power, wealth, and influence he acquired in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to help bring about the corporate trust (Merwin, p. 275).
In describing Morgan's business strategy, Merwin (p. 275) says that "Morgan didn't invent the idea of horizontal consolidations - Rockefeller had put together his oil cartel by 1876 - he merely applied it with a vengeance." Some of the companies that Morgan financed were AT&T, General Electric, International Harvester, Pullman, Western Union, and Westinghouse. These big companies either dominated their industry or became a very important factor in it.
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