Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, the American financier, died in Rome
last Monday after a short illness at the age of seventy-six. On two separate occasions when the national credit was seriously threatened—at the time of the gold scare in 1895 and again in 1907—Mr. Morgan's prompt initiative stayed a panic. His policy as a railway reorganizer and Combine builder laid him open to criticism, but his personal integrity was never assailed. Mr. Morgan was famous as an art collector, but no millionaire was more public-spirited or more self-effacing in the disposal of his treasures or the bestowal of his charity. He had a fastidious dislike of obtruding his personality, and as a writer in the Daily Chronicle correctly observes, "Not a single self-erected monument tells of his generosity ; nor is his name connected with a single gift." He had in truth the kind of character which used to be associated with the phrase, " a typical British merchant." Mr. Morgan was not typically American in his ways.
Previous page
