Junius's son, John Pierpont, attended the English High School in Boston but, during much of his youth, was enrolled in European schools and became engulfed in British tradition. He had been born in the United States, however, and that made him ideally suited to carry on the Anglo-American role played so deftly by Peabody and Junius. It was inevitable that the boy would be trained in international finance and groomed to step into his father's shoes. The first move was to find employment for him in 1857 at the New York investment firm of Duncan, Sherman & Company. Seven years later, Junius acquired a competitor New York firm and set his son up as a partner in Dabney, Morgan & Company, which became the New York branch of the London firm. In 1871, with the addition of a third partner, Anthony Drexel from Philadelphia, the firm became Drexel, Morgan & Company. In 1895, following the death of Drexel, there was a final change of name to J.P. Morgan & Company. A branch in Paris became known as Morgan, Harjes & Company.
AMERICANIZING THE NEW YORK BRANCH
After the unexpected death of Junius in a carriage accident a few years later, it was decided by Pierpont to reshape the image of the London firm to be a more British operation. This would allow the New York branch to represent the American side with less suspicion of being essentially the same firm. By that time, his son, J.P.
Morgan, Jr.—known as Jack by his friends—had already been brought into the firm as a partner, and he was to play an important role in the creation of that image. Biographer John Forbes tells us: J.P. Morgan, Jr., became a partner in the London house of J.S.
Morgan & Co. on January 1,1898, and a fortnight later, with his wife Jessie and their three children,... he left New York and took up residence in England for the next eight years.
Morgan was sent to London to do two specific things. The first was to learn at first hand how the British carried on a banking business under a central banking system dominated by the Bank of England Morgan, Sr., anticipated the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in the United States and wanted someone who would
eventually have authority in the Morgan firms to know how such a system worked. The second was quietly to look about the City and select British partners to convert the elder Morgan's privately owned J.S. Morgan & Co. into a British concern.1
1. John Douglas Forbes,
THE LONDON CONNECTION
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This eventually was accomplished by the addition of EdwardGrenfell, a long-time director of the Bank of England, as the newsenior partner of what became Morgan, Grenfell & Company. Butnone of this window dressing altered the reality that J.P. Morgan &Co. in New York remained more British in orientation than Ameri-1
can. A casual reading of the events of this period would lead to theconclusion that Peabody and Morgan were fierce competitors of theRothschilds. It is true they often bid against each other for the samebusiness, but it is also true that almost every biographer has toldhow the American newcomers to London were in awe of the greatpower of the Rothschilds and how they purposely cultivated theirfriendship, a friendship that eventually became so intimate that theAmericans were received as the personal house guests of theRothschilds. The Morgan firm often worked closely with the Houseof Rothschild on large joint ventures, but that was—and still is—
common practice among large investment houses. In light of subsequent events, however, it is appropriate to consider the possibilitythat an arrangement had been worked out in which the
