Fifty years in Wall Street
great vessel gave a lurch that broke the cable and an attempt to grapple
it was unsuccessful. In 1866, however, a cable was successfully laid. A
private citizen seldom receives such honors as was showered on Mr.
Field, in 1866, when Europe and America realized that largely through
the exertions of one man, they were joined by the Atlantic cable. He had
pushed a vast project to a successful consummation in spite of
incredulity, ridicule, indifference and strenuous opposition.
Peter the Hermit did not preach the crusade with more fervor and
enthusiasm than this priest of commerce, so to speak, advocated the
great work with which history will always link his name. If any one had,
a few centuries ago, ventured to predict that the day would come when
there would be six or seven cable telegraphs stretched along the ocean
bed between America and Europe—along dim prehistoric valleys, four miles
under water and over great sub-marine mountains—by means of which a
message could be sent nearly three thousand miles and an answer received
in thirty seconds; he would have been in danger of incarceration as a
lunatic, or even of death on the scaffold or at the stake. This daring
utilitarian age, however, has grown accustomed to startling exhibitions
of human ingenuity. Mr. Field owns considerable Western Union stock, and
is interested in a number of railroads, including the Manhattan
Elevated. He owns one-fifth of the stock of the Acadia Coal Co., is a
special partner in the grain firm of Field, Lindley & Co., and owns the
_Mail and Express_, one of the great papers of the metropolis. He has a
house in Gramercy Park and a fine mansion at Irvington on an estate of
about 500 acres. He is a large owner of real estate in that very
pleasant section, owning some 56 houses besides considerable land. He is
fully six feet in height, of light complexion, with penetrating,
bluish-gray eyes, which peer sharply into those of an interlocutor. The
nose is prominent, the brows knit with years of thought, the mouth and
jaw indicate great decision of character. He is a man of courtly manners
and exceptional abilities.
HON. STEPHEN V. WHITE.
Hon. Stephen V. White is a short, compactly built, dark-complexioned man
of 54. In manners he is courteous and unassuming; in business methods he
is quick and straightforward. He is a Director in the Western Union and
the Lackawanna road. He is a bold, dashing operator in stocks, and in
Wall Street has met with considerable success. One of his greatest
favorites is Lackawanna. He expects to see it some day go to 200. He has
several times badly squeezed the shorts in that stock, and, now that he
has practically demonstrated what they ought to have known before,
namely, that the stock can easily be cornered, the bears are apt to
fight shy of it. He has a large _clientele_, and, being a natural
leader, he has plenty of followers in his speculative campaigns. He was
born in North Carolina. He was graduated from Knox College at Galesburg,
Illinois. He studied law in the office of the Hon. John J. Kasson,
afterward United States Minister to Germany. He drifted to St. Louis,
and there became a reporter for the Missouri _Democrat_. He went to Des
Moines, practised law for nine years, and was elected a Judge. He came
to New York, and for a time practised law, but soon became a stock
broker as well. He still occasionally appears as counsel in the Federal
Courts, and sometimes in the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a
ready and forcible speaker, full of vim and fire. He was a warm personal
friend of the late Henry Ward Beecher, the grand old Chrysostom of the
nineteenth century, who has left the world brighter for his memory and
darker for his absence. In the frank, keen, practical financier and
lawyer, and the great, warm hearted preacher, glowing with fervid
idealism and generous enthusiasm and high aspirations for the human
race, there were kindred qualities that made them friends. Mr. White, in
1886, was elected to Congress from Brooklyn, where he resides. He is
scholarly in his tastes, well versed in the classics, and is especially
fond of astronomy, for the study of which he has a fine observatory in
his palatial home. He is popular in Wall Street.
AUSTIN CORBIN.
Within a year Austin Corbin has become a prominent figure in the
financial world, winning wide business celebrity by his identification
with the reorganization of the Reading Railroad. He is by nature the
reverse of an iconoclast, namely, a builder up. He would construct
rather than destroy. He would save a property if it were at all
possible, and in pulling that poor, tired, financial pilgrim Reading out
of the slough of despond, and in directing its way toward a primrose
path of prosperity, he is engaged in a congenial task. He is about 58
years of age, and was born in Newport, New Hampshire. He studied law,
and was graduated from the Harvard Law School. For a time he practised
law in his native town as a partner of Ex-Governor Metcalf, of New
Hampshire, but in 1851 he went to Davenport, Iowa. There he really
organized the first national bank under the new system, which was to
prove of such incalculable financial benefit to the nation. Mr. Corbin
made the first application under the new law, but it happened to be
faulty in some minor technicalities, and before their trivialities could
be corrected four other national banks were organized, so that his bank
became number five under the new system. He came to New York in 1865,
and established a banking-house here. He is President of the Reading,
Long Island, Indiana, Bloomington & Western, Elmira, Cortland &
Northern, and Manhattan Beach Railroads. He is a member of the Union
League, Manhattan and Saturday Night Clubs of New York, the Somerset
Club of Boston, and the Conservative Club of London. He is a man of
strict probity, genial in his manners, and deservedly held in high
esteem.
PHILIP D. ARMOUR.
Philip D. Armour was born in a little village near Watertown in the
interior of New York State, in 1832. He is powerfully built, with broad
shoulders, a large head and firm, square features and light gray eyes,
that never seem excited or disturbed. His manners are quiet, composed
and courteous. In 1849, leaving his native village, he went to
California. He crossed the plains with a six-mule team which he drove
himself. He worked for a few years in the gold fields, accumulated a
little capital, and in 1855 went to Milwaukee and engaged in the grain
and warehouse business. He prospered moderately but steadily. Then he
thought of going into the lumber business, but bought an interest in the
pork packing establishment of Layton & Plankington, the former retiring.
At this time he was worth half a million. He soon increased this
three-fold. In the war, provisions were very high, but when Gen. Grant
was closing in on the Confederacy for the final struggle that could only
end in the triumph of the North, Mr. Armour saw that prices must come
down with the Confederacy. He came at once to New York and began to sell
pork short. He began to sell at $40 a barrel. He covered at $18 and
netted, it is said, nearly two million dollars. He now enlarged his
business, established new packing houses in Chicago and Kansas City as
well as agencies all over the world. He has sold sixty million dollars’
worth of food products in a year. He has five thousand names on his pay
roll. He has cornered pork three times within recent years, and in 1880
made, it is said, three millions in punishing bears who tried to sell
the market down. A campaign against the bears in pork or meats he calls
protecting his cellars. Those cellars are well protected. No bearish Ali
Baba has the pass-word to go in and plunder them, and the number of
cinnamons and grizzlies, big and little, who have licked their paws in
rueful remembrance of the attempt are not a few. He has made millions in
successful grain speculations. He invested four millions in St. Paul
stock, buying it outright. He is now one of the recognized financial
leaders of the country, as aggressive as a Wellington at the proper time
and cautious as a Fabius when caution is the watchword of wisdom. He
lives in a plain house on Prairie Avenue in Chicago, and is himself a
man devoid of ostentation. He works from 7 A. M. till 6 P. M. His
fortune is estimated at fifteen millions of dollars.
Hon. Levi P. Morton received his business training in the dry goods
trade. Then he became a banker. He has a national reputation as a
financier. He is shrewd, genial and successful. President Garfield made
him Minister to France. He had previously done good service as a member
of Congress. He is now in his sixty-third year. He is a lineal
descendant of George Morton, one of the Pilgrim Fathers who came to this
country in 1623. Mr. Morton was born in the State of New Hampshire. At
20 he became a clerk in a country store. He had to shift for himself.
Necessity is the stimulus that men of real ability require. He stayed
five years in the obscure New Hampshire village and then went to Boston,
where he ultimately engaged in business. But New York attracted him. He
embarked in the dry goods business here and went into banking
afterwards, and soon laid the broad foundations for the successful firms
of Morton, Bliss & Co., of New York, and Morton, Rose & Co., of London.
His Congressional and diplomatic laurels followed. He filled the French
Mission with great satisfaction to the French people as well as those of
the American traveling public, as he was a free and generous
entertainer. His large fortune has been amassed since he came to Wall
Street. He has a fine villa at Newport and also one on the Hudson.
JOHN A. STEWART.
John A. Stewart is President of the United States Trust Company, one of
the largest banking and trust corporations in America. Its deposits are
over forty millions of dollars. Its great success is largely due to the
able management of President Stewart, who has in fact shown marvellous
ability in the management of large financial interests. Mr. Stewart
during the war period was urged by Secretary Chase to became
Sub-Treasurer of the United States in this city, and he finally
consented to take the position, although at a great personal sacrifice,
being actuated solely by a patriotic spirit. He is one of the financial
lights of the metropolis, and is respected for his financial acumen and
his sterling qualities as a man.
ANTHONY J. DREXEL.
Anthony J. Drexel is the head of the house of Drexel & Co. in
Philadelphia and Drexel, Morgan & Co. in New York. The house was founded
by Joseph Drexel, who emigrated to this country from Germany early in
the present century, and began business in Philadelphia in a small way
as a sort of exchange broker. When the California gold fever broke out
he made connections with parties in San Francisco and received large
amounts of gold. In these transactions he got his first great start. The
returns from the exchange were large. As his means increased he
gradually extended his business, and finally, by thrift and diligent
attention to business, he accumulated quite a snug fortune. In the end
he built up a successful banking business, in which his sons became
interested, and at his death inherited his wealth and the business. The
elder brother died a few years ago, leaving ten million dollars to his
family and to various charities. Anthony Drexel, the present head of
this signally successful firm, is 55 years of age, and is a man of