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.
[Illustration:
_Philip D Armour_ ]
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.
[Illustration:
_L. P. Morton_ ]
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.
[Illustration:
_John A Stewart_ ]
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 excellent business capacity. He is one of the successful business men of the United States.
THE JEROME BROTHERS.
Addison Jerome, who died some years ago, was a gigantic operator in his day, and displayed great ability in the conduct of speculative campaigns, but he went beyond his depth and disaster followed. Like many others in Wall Street, he gained his business education in the dry goods trade. He met with one of his greatest reverses in his attempt to corner Lake Shore. Others followed, one after another, and the end was financial shipwreck.
[Illustration:
ANTHONY J. DREXEL. ]
[Illustration:
_yours truly Leonard W Jerome_ ]
At this time his brother, Leonard W. Jerome, was one of the foremost men of Wall Street and was a partner of Wm. R. Travers, the firm name being Travers & Jerome. Leonard Jerome is splendidly built and nearly six feet in height. His ancestors were Huguenots. He was born in Pompey, Onondaga county, New York. His grandfather was a Presbyterian clergyman. At 14 Leonard was sent to Princeton College and was graduated with credit. He then spent three years reading law in Albany, and at 22 was admitted to the bar. He practiced law with his uncle, Judge Jerome, of Rochester. Afterward with his brother Lawrence he established a newspaper, called the _Rochester Native American_, and he made a good editor. President Filmore appointed him Consul at Trieste. He came to Wall Street in 1854. His first operation was in putting up all he could spare, about two thousand dollars, as margin on five hundred shares of Cleveland and Toledo stock, one of the old-time speculative favorites. He bought it on a sure point from the treasurer of the road. He bought. The treasurer sold. Result: The stock fell, and Jerome lost all his spare funds. He was not discouraged. He studied Wall Street tactics, and in the end he made the treasurer pay dearly for his former success in spearing a lamb. He invested $500 in buying calls and made $5,000 within thirty days. He became a partner of William R. Travers. They were very successful on the short side of the market. He was to meet with some reverses, however. In 1862 the agent of the State of Indiana, in a manner that would have deceived the very elect, through an unauthorized issue of Indiana 5 per cent. bonds, swindled him out of $600,000 by the hypothecation of the bonds. The State repudiated the acts of its agent, and as an individual is not allowed to sue a State, Mr. Jerome was robbed of the money. Still another reverse was met in Pacific Mail. When the capital stock was increased to $20,000,000 he took 50,000 shares at 200. The price advanced soon thereafter to 243, and he sold a part of his stock, but kept a large block of it on account of his faith in its value. At the next quarterly meeting of the Board of Directors, however, it was decided by a majority of one, five directors being present, to reduce the dividend from five to three per cent. The street was thunderstruck at the audacity of this move; the market broke, and in two hours Mr. Jerome’s stock depreciated $800,000. Still he made large gains in Pacific Mail as well as big losses. He left Wall Street years ago with an ample fortune. He went there with next to nothing, and in spite of reverses, came out a substantial victor in the financial tourney. In the war he was always enthusiastic in his devotion to the cause of the North, and subscribed with princely liberality to aid patriotic movements. When the first great Union meeting was held at the Academy of Music he paid all the expenses. He was Treasurer of the Union Defense Committee, and he likewise paid all of its incidental expenses. He was the most liberal in his contributions and the most devoted in his allegiance to the Government in its darkest and gloomiest hours. He was the founder of the fund for the benefit of the families of those who were killed or wounded in the New York riots of 1863, growing out of the draft. His checks for $10,000 and more to aid the Union arms were frequent; he contributed $35,000 toward the construction of the “Meteor,” a war vessel built to destroy the famous “Alabama” of the Confederacy. During the war Mr. Jerome purchased and held for some years the largest interest in the _New York Times_, then edited by the great war editor, Henry J. Raymond, an old friend of Mr. Jerome’s. Like Mr. Travers, his early partner, Mr. Jerome has done much to encourage all out-of-door sports, especially on the race course. He established the Jerome Park Jockey Club, and became half owner in a famous speed horse which cost $40,000. No one has done more to improve the breed of blooded horses in this country than Mr. Jerome. He has also been prominent in yachting. He first owned the “Undine”; then, with Commodore McVickar, he bought the “Restless,” and still later, with Commodore James Gordon Bennett, the “Dauntless.” He paid $125,000 for the steam yacht “Clara Clarita,” which proved a failure, and since then he has not been so enthusiastic a yachtsman as formerly. He made $45,000 on the great ocean yacht race of 1866. He had much to do with introducing the taste for four-in-hands in this country. He has been a liberal patron of American art in all its branches. He paid for the musical education of a number of well-known singers, whose voices were trained in the best Italian schools. His social position has always been high, but it has been still further promoted by the marriages of his beautiful daughters. The elder, Clara, is married to Mr. Morton Frewen, a member of an old English family which long represented their shire in Parliament. Another, Leoni, married Mr. John Leslie of the Guards, and son and heir of Sir John Leslie; while Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill, the notable but erratic statesman. Leonard W. Jerome, whose history I have followed somewhat minutely, is one of the best-hearted men that Wall Street ever knew. The more he made the more he gave. He was liberal to a fault. He was never happy but when making others happy. He was a Sir Philip Sidney of chivalry and peerless generosity—a man in whom the warmest and most ingratiating traits of human nature were as natural as the winning sunniness of his disposition and the courage which once made him one of the great gladiators in the arena of Wall Street. Both he and his brother Lawrence are old members of the Union Club. Lawrence was formerly a stock broker. He had his ups and downs, and withdrew from Wall Street several years ago. He sold his seat in the Stock Exchange and placed the proceeds, about $30,000, in an annuity which insures him about $4,000 a year for the remainder of his life. This, with his other income, places him in easy circumstances and preserves his naturally cheerful disposition, rendering him one of the most companionable men in the city. He is about five feet ten inches in height, stout and of light complexion. Since the death of his old friend, Wm. R. Travers, to whom he was as Damon to Pythias, he stands pre-eminent among the wits of New York. He is the prince of metropolitan wags and wits. His friends are legion. The great, genial, warm hearted, boyish Larry Jerome, as his friends love to call him, is literally a man without an enemy, and long may he live to brighten society with his happy exuberance of spirits, his scintillating humor and his brilliant wit.
ADDISON CAMMACK.
Addison Cammack is about sixty years of age and was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He was reared in comfortable but humble circumstances. Early in life he began his business career as a clerk in the house of J. P. Whitney & Co., then the largest ship brokers in New Orleans. He showed decided business talent, and ultimately became a partner in the firm. In the early part of the Civil War he was located in Havana, but in 1863 he went to London and and engaged in business and speculation there. He returned to this country in two years, and in 1866 embarked in the wholesale liquor business in New York with J. W. George, the firm being J. W. George & Co. In about two years the firm was dissolved and Mr. Cammack became a member of the Stock Exchange, having previously formed a co-partnership with the late Chas. J. Osborn, under the name of Osborn & Cammack. This co-partnership, after some years of great prosperity, was dissolved, and since then Mr. Cammack has been an operator on his own account. In this capacity he has become widely known. He is a shrewd operator, and quickly changes his mind if he thinks he has been wrong. He jumps from one side of the market to the other with the greatest celerity when occasion demands it, but in the main he seems most at home on the bear side. In bear operations he has met with some reverses, while in this direction he has also made millions. He seems to place great faith in Benner’s book of “Financial Prophecies.” At times he operates on a very large scale, and he has been known to cover fifty thousand shares of stock in a single day. He is tall, well built, and has strong features, with keen, gray eyes. In manners he is very democratic and candid, and occasionally somewhat bluff; but he is a man of generous impulses, very charitable, and has plenty of friends, both for his financial acumen and for his qualities as a man who never deserts his friends, and who has not a few of the characteristics of mediæval chivalry joined to the shrewd practicality of a great stock operator of this practical epoch.
[Illustration:
_Very Respectfully Addison Cammack_ ]
RUSSELL SAGE.
Russell Sage is one of the best known of Wall Street celebrities. He was born seventy years ago in Oneida county, of this State. As a boy, he was employed in a country general store, beginning life in this fashion at 14. His business aptitude early manifested itself, and at 20 he bought out his employer in Troy, to which he had in the meantime removed. He became later on a member of the Troy Board of Aldermen, served seven years, and was then elected Treasurer. Still later he was elected to Congress, serving from 1853 to 1857. He started the project of purchasing Mount Vernon and making it a national domain, and took great pride in the success which attended his efforts in this direction. While in Congress he became connected with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and later Vice-President of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, also for a time its acting president. He is now a director in the Gould telegraph and railroad systems, is interested in a number of trust companies and is also said to own a large amount of stock in the Importers’ and Traders’ Bank. He is the king of puts and calls. He has usually been successful in writing privileges, but in the summer of 1884, when the market broke so badly as to produce a panic, Mr. Sage met with a decided reverse. He had sold a large number of puts, and the loss was several million dollars. He is known as, in one sense, the largest capitalist of Wall Street, inasmuch as he keeps the largest cash balance. It runs far up in the millions, giving him quick resources with which to carry out any project that may seem desirable. He is quiet and simple in his habits, making no display. He lives on Fifth Avenue, and also has a place at Babylon, Long Island. He is worth about twenty millions. He is tall, light complexioned, with keen, gray eyes, and in Wall Street might be taken for a country gentleman seeing the sights.
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
Chauncey M. Depew owes his rise to native abilities and the friendship of the Vanderbilt family, which he has thoroughly merited. He made the acquaintance of Wm. H. Vanderbilt about the year 1866 and became the attorney of the New York and Harlem Railroad. On the union of the New York Central and Harlem roads, in 1869, he was appointed attorney of the consolidated company, and in 1875 he was made general counsel. A few years previous he had been elected director of the New York Central road, and subsequently became a director in the Chicago and Northwestern, Michigan Central, St. Paul and Omaha, the Lake Shore and the Nickel Plate. In 1882 he was elected second vice-president of the New York Central, and in 1885 succeeded Mr. Rutter as president of that great railroad. He was born in Peekskill in 1834, and comes of an old French Huguenot family. He still owns the homestead purchased two hundred years ago by his ancestors. His mother is a descendant of the brother of Roger Sherman, of revolutionary fame. Mr. Depew was graduated from Yale College in 1856, and three years later was admitted to the bar. In 1862 he was elected to the New York Assembly and acted as Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means and part of the time as Speaker. In 1863, the year after Governor Seymour’s election, Mr. Depew was a candidate for Secretary of State on the Republican ticket, overcame the Democratic ascendancy, and was elected by about thirty thousand votes. He declined re-election and was appointed Minister to Japan by Secretary Seward. He held the post several years, and resigned it to resume business. His commission as Collector of the Port of New York was once made out by President Johnson, but in consequence of Senator E. D. Morgan’s refusal to sustain Mr. Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights bill the President never sent the nomination to the Senate, but tore it up in a rage. In 1872 Mr. Depew was a candidate for Lieutenant-Governor of New York on the Liberal-Republican ticket, and was defeated. Two years later the Legislature elected him Regent of the State University. He served one year as one of the Commissioners to build the new Capitol at Albany. In the memorable contest for the United States Senatorship in 1881, Mr. Depew for eighty-two days received the votes of three-fourths of the Republican members, retiring then to ensure the election of Warner Miller. Mr. Depew is President of the Union League and a member of many other clubs and societies, and is very popular wherever he is known. He is one of the wittiest and readiest after-dinner speakers in this country, and when occasion requires, rises to the height of a born orator. His tastes seem to be those of a statesman and a scholar rather than those of a financier in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but his conservative and able administration of his office as President of one of the greatest trunk lines in this country, reveals a thorough apprehension of railroad problems and a natural capacity for whatever duties may be imposed upon him. His great versatility is exemplified by the fact that he has succeeded in law, politics and railroad management.
[Illustration:
_Russell Sage_ ]
JAMES M. BROWN.
James M. Brown, the banker, was born in New York city, and is about 65 years of age. He is ex-President of the Chamber of Commerce, and is held in general esteem and respect. The house of Brown Bros. & Co., in which he is now the senior member, has an interesting history. Early in the present century Alexander Brown came from Belfast, Ireland, to this country, and settled in Baltimore, where he engaged in the dry goods business under the firm name of Alexander Brown & Sons. Subsequently the firm comprised five sons of Alexander Brown. The business of the dry goods firm prospered, and branch houses were established in Philadelphia, New York and Liverpool, a son going to each of these cities to represent the parent house in Baltimore. In New York and Philadelphia the style of the firm was Brown Brothers & Co., as the father had died in the meantime. In Liverpool they associated with them Mr. Shipley, and the firm there was Brown, Shipley & Co. Another house was established in London later on under the same title as the Liverpool firm. All the houses were still engaged in the dry goods trade. Here in New York, in which we are more particularly interested, the firm made advances on cotton, and received linens from abroad, and also orders to buy cotton for Liverpool. Gradually the house began to make larger advances to planters and others engaged in the cotton trade, and finally the banking business became so large as to swallow up the dry goods trade and the house thereupon dropped merchandise and became bankers. Later on a branch house was established in Boston, and at times it has had branch houses in New Orleans, Mobile, Galveston, Savannah and Charleston conducted under the name of the parent firm. At present it has houses in London, Liverpool, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans. All of the original Brown brothers are dead. James M. Brown is a near relative of James Brown, whose picture appears, and who was the original head of the house in New York. James M. Brown did not enter the house in his youth. He was for years the senior member of the dry goods house of Brown, Seaver & Dunbar. On the dissolution of this firm James M. Brown became a partner in the house of which, by reason of his years and large experience, he may be considered the head. The other partners here are Howard Potter, John Crosby Brown, Charles D. Dickey, Waldron Post Brown, a son of James M. Brown, and W. F. Halsey. The New York partners are interested in the branch houses in this country and abroad. James M. Brown was a member of the famous Committee of Seventy which contributed to the downfall of the Tweed Ring in this city. He is of the medium height and florid complexion, well preserved, genial in manners, and is a man of high character.