BANKER

To the Bank Born.

J. P. Morgan headed J. P. Morgan and Company, the most important force in American finance in the quarter century before World War I, a time when the American economy grew to be the largest and most powerful in the world. Morgan was born into a wealthy banking family in Hartford, Connecticut. His father instilled in him from childhood principles of integrity and trained him early in the business of international banking as it was practiced at the highest levels. Morgan graduated from the university at Göttingen, Germany, in 1857 and immediately went to work on Wall Street. In 1862 he opened his own firm, which eventually became the Morgan Bank. Morgan took over his father's firm when his father died in 1890, and renamed it J. P. Morgan and Company.

U.S. Steel.

In 1901 Morgan was instrumental in establishing the United States Steel Corporation. Morgan underwrote a successful...