The Harvard Endowment Fund. Harvard and the Future
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Ambassador from Wall Street: The Story of Thomas W. Lamont, J.P. Morgan's Chief Executive
(This is the first biography of the man who, as J.P. Morga...)
This is the first biography of the man who, as J.P. Morgan's CEO and the leading banker of his generation, helped establish U.S. economic policy through his broad-reaching financial, political and social connections.
Edward Lamont offers fresh insight into the turbulent period between the two world wars through this fascinating account of the life of the most influential banker of his era.
The Allied Debts: International Conciliation, No. 181, December, 1922
(The Balfour Note Of August 1, 1922, And The French Reply ...)
The Balfour Note Of August 1, 1922, And The French Reply Of September 3, 1922; The American Banker's Responsibility Today, By T. W. Lamont; Reparations And International Debts, By R. McKenna; The Repayment Of European Debts To Our Government, By H. Hoover; The Allied Debt: A Constructive Criticism Of Secretary Hoover's Views, By E. R. A. Seligman; The Interallied Debts As A Banking Problem, By B. M. Anderson, Jr.
The Importance of Administration in International Action: International Conciliation, No. 407, January, 1945
(Includes The Problem With Germany; The Permanent Court Of...)
Includes The Problem With Germany; The Permanent Court Of International Justice, Its Continuance Advocated By Forty-Four Prominent Members Of The Legal Profession.
A Brief Account of the Life at Charlottesville of Thomas William Lamont and of his Family
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
Thomas William Lamont was an American banker, international financier, and philanthropist. He was an editor of New York Tribune and the founder of Lamont, Corliss and Company.
Background
Thomas William Lamont was born in Claverack, New York, near Albany, the youngest of three children (two boys and a girl) of Rev. Thomas Lamont, a Methodist minister, and Caroline Deuel (Jayne) Lamont. His father served as a pastor in a succession of Methodist churches, and Thomas spent his first dozen years in a number of small-town parsonages in the Hudson River valley. The family's limited financial means and its firm adherence to a strict Methodism that looked upon cards and dancing as sinful made for a simple and uneventful life, but one which Lamont later recalled as serene and happy. His father, a teacher of classical languages before entering the ministry, insisted that the children read extensively.
Education
With the aid of scholarships, Lamont attended both Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, which he entered in 1888 and graduated with B. A. in 1892.
Career
An interest in journalism, begun at Exeter, led him to an editorship on the Harvard Crimson and a job as Harvard correspondent for two Boston newspapers, the income from which helped pay his college expenses. The work proved so enjoyable that Lamont decided to make journalism his career. After graduating from Harvard, he became a reporter on the New York Tribune and rose quickly to assistant night city editor. He was eager, however, "to get on in the world, specifically to marry and raise a family" (Lamont, Across World Frontiers, p. 29).
Business promised a better future, and in 1894--investing a borrowed $5, 000 in the enterprise--he accepted the position of secretary with Cushman Brothers, a New York firm that acted as an agent for manufacturers of food products seeking to introduce their goods to the metropolitan area. The Cushman firm proved shaky, and despite Lamont's best efforts, by 1898 it was in such serious financial trouble that one of its major creditors asked Lamont to reorganize and manage it. He did so, founding for the purpose (with his brother-in-law Charles Corliss) the firm of Lamont, Corliss and Company. Lamont's success in turning what had been Cushman Brothers into a profitable business won him recognition among New York bankers, including Henry P. Davison, who became a longtime friend.
Other similar rescue operations boosted Lamont's reputation still further, and in 1903 Davison invited him to join the newly organized Bankers Trust Company as secretary and treasurer. Lamont protested that he know nothing of banking, having devoted all his brief business life to borrowing money, not lending it. "Fine!" Davison replied, "that's just why we want you. A fearless borrower like you ought to make a prudent lender" (Lamont, Henry P. Davison, p. 59). Lamont remained with Bankers Trust until 1909, rising in 1905 to a vice-presidency and a directorship. In that year he accepted similar posts with the First National Bank.
He left in January 1911 to become a partner in J. P. Morgan and Company, then the most prestigious and influential private banking partnership in the country. As a Morgan partner, Lamont accomplished his most important work. He joined the firm at a time when Wall Street's leading investment banking houses were being accused by progressive critics of having organized an all-powerful "money trust. " The charge never was substantiated, and Lamont rejected it outright. His vigorous defense of the policies and practices of the firm made him one of its most articulate spokesmen. "Mr. Morgan speaks to Mr. Lamont and Mr. Lamont speaks to the people, " contemporaries observed (Brooks, p. 47).
His involvement in international loans began shortly after the outbreak of World War I, when Britain and France appointed the House of Morgan, then headed by the younger J. P. Morgan, as their representative and purchasing agent in the United States. Lamont participated in planning and selling the giant $500 million Anglo-French loan of October 1915. This and subsequent Allied loan operations gave him an intimate knowledge of both European and American money markets. When the United States entered the war in 1917, he served with other prominent bankers on the government's Liberty Loan committees, established to help the Treasury Department sell its bonds.
In November 1917, at the request of President Wilson, Lamont went to London and Paris to serve as "confidential unofficial advisor" on financial and economic matters to Col. Edward M. House in negotiations to coordinate the American war effort with that of Britain and France. This experience, together with Lamont's intimate knowledge of wartime finance and his friendship with many British and French leaders, in and out of government, led in 1919 to his appointment, along with Norman H. Davis, as a representative of the United States Treasury on the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. There Lamont worked on the complex and controversial problem of determining the amount of Germany's reparations, unsuccessfully urging a moderate and fixed reparations figure.
He was a strong supporter of the League of Nations, and, although a life-long Republican, in 1920 he endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate, James M. Cox. Lamont returned in June 1919 to the United States and to his rolltop desk at Morgan and Company. Still the nation's leading private investment banking house, the firm between 1919 and 1933 offered the public some $6 billion in securities, approximately one-third of which were foreign government and corporate issues. No one played a more important role in negotiating these offerings than Lamont.
In 1920, in Japan, he represented the American banking group on a newly reconstituted international consortium established to assist China with development loans. In 1921 he headed a commission to arrange a settlement of Mexico's external debt; in 1923 he helped negotiate a $100 million recovery loan for Austria.
Lamont attracted further attention during the stock market crash of 1929. Late in October, after the stock exchanges had suffered several shocks, he organized a banking consortium to stabilize the market, but it proved of little help as millions of shares were dumped at steadily falling prices. Nor were his optimistic predictions of an early recovery any more accurate than those of other financiers and public officials. As the depression deepened, congressional committees began investigating the practices of bankers during the boom years. Although they uncovered numerous instances of fiduciary negligence, irresponsibility, and favoritism, Lamont in his testimony demonstrated that the Morgan firm had avoided such abuses. Pressure for reform after the crash led to a series of banking and securities laws, including the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of June 1933, which required the separation of commercial and investment banking. Forced to choose between its two primary functions, Morgan and Company opted to remain a bank of deposit and discontinued underwriting securities. Lamont took an active part in reaching this decision.
In 1940 when J. P. Morgan and Company became incorporated as a commercial bank and trust company, Lamont became chairman of the executive committee. On the death of J. P. Morgan in 1943 he was elected chairman of the board of the firm. During the difficult years of depression and readjustment, Lamont remained active in international finance. He helped establish the Bank for International Settlements (1931), and he was a delegate to the World Economic Conference that met in London in June 1933. Although a critic of New Deal fiscal policies, he favored Secretary of State Cordell Hull's liberal trade program of the 1930's and in 1940 he helped organize the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. In addition to his responsibilities as a Morgan partner, he held a number of corporate directorships.
He also had many outside interests, most of them concerned with art, literature, and education. He bought the New York Evening Post in 1918, installed Edwin F. Gay as editor, and sought to build it into an American counterpart of the Manchester Guardian, but had to sell out four years later, after losses estimated at more than $1 million. In 1924 he helped establish and finance the Saturday Review of Literature, which he continued to support until 1938. He was an officer or trustee of numerous institutions, among them the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the American School of Classical Studies (Athens), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Academy of Political Science. He also served as president of the board of trustees of the Phillips Exeter Academy (1935 - 1940).
He died of a heart ailment at his winter home in Boca Grande, Florida, at the age of seventy-seven. He was buried at Brookside Cemetery in Englewood, New Jersey. In his will Lamont left nearly $10 million to various educational, cultural, and religious institutions, with the largest bequests going to Harvard ($5 million), Exeter ($2 million), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art ($1 million).
Lamont, in the words of his associate Thomas S. Gates, had "unshakable poise under pressure, the ability to produce a prodigious amount of work with seeming ease, gentle winning charm, with an unquestionable zest for life and love of people" (Year Book, p. 268).
Connections
On October 31, 1895, Lamont married Florence Haskell Corliss of Englewood, New Jersey. They had four children: Thomas Stilwell, Corliss, Austin, and Eleanor.