J. P. Morgan

1837 – 1913

John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier whose firm J.P. Morgan & Co. dominated U.S. corporate finance, organising the trusts and consolidations that became U.S. Steel in 1901, General Electric in 1892, and International Harvester in 1902. He bailed out the U.S. Treasury in the Panic of 1893 and again organised the response to the Panic of 1907 from his private library, on terms that critics including Senator Robert La Follette argued amounted to a privatised central bank operating in his interest. The 1912–1913 Pujo Committee investigation documented that he and a small circle of Wall Street allies sat on 341 directorships across 112 corporations holding more than $22 billion in resources, an aggregation of financial power that drove the eventual creation of the Federal Reserve.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM