New York - The Novel

under way. They would probably get through the afternoon, but after that? He had no idea. He watched the line. It was moving slowly but inexorably, like a river. Not even Pierpont Morgan could stop a river.
    That evening at home, he smiled cheerfully through dinner with his family. Yes, there had been a little panic on Wall Street, he confessed to the children. They’d see it in the papers, and hear about it, but it would soon pass.
    “The fundamentals of the market are good,” he assured them all. “Indeed, this is probably an excellent time to buy.”

    The next day, people were camping outside the trust offices by dawn, hoping to get their money out before the rest. Meanwhile, the trust partners were looking for cash. The moment they opened for business, they went to the brokers, calling in all their loans. When he walked into his brokerage house, his partners there told him: “We’ll be lucky to get through the day. By tomorrow we’ll be gone.”
    William went outside. There was nothing more to be done. He gazed sadly up at the sky. It was hard, and terrible. He turned, to walk to Bowling Green again, wanting to be alone.
    But he had only gone a short way when one of the clerks from the trust caught up with him. The man was looking excited.
    “Come quickly,” he cried. “Oh, sir, rescue is at hand.”

    President Theodore Roosevelt had reason to be suspicious of New York City. A decade ago, he’d labored to reform its corrupt police. He’d also witnessed the mighty industrial combinations that J. P. Morgan was building up—and he didn’t like what he saw. Too much economic power was in too few hands, he believed. Elected governor of New York State, then chosen as vice president, the assassination of President McKinley had unexpectedly brought him, at the age of only forty-two, to the White House, where he had continued to speak against the might of Wall Street. For Pierpont Morgan himself, however, Roosevelt had a high regard.
    In the early hours of that Wednesday, therefore, a remarkable thing had occurred. The government of the United States put the huge sum oftwenty-five million dollars into the hands of Pierpont Morgan, with only one request:
    “Do whatever you think best. But save us.”
    And now Jupiter, greatest of all the gods, began to fling his thunderbolts.

    When William Master looked back on those days, it was like remembering a great battle: periods of waiting; moments of sudden excitement and confusion; and a few haunting images that would never leave his mind again. Using the government money, and raising even greater private sums by the sheer force of his personality, old Pierpont Morgan went to work. On that Wednesday, he began saving trusts. The next day he saved the brokerage houses on the New York Stock Exchange. On Friday, when Europe started withdrawing funds, and credit became so tight that Wall Street came to a halt, Morgan strode in person up to the Clearing House and had it issue its own scrip currency, so that money could flow. Yet perhaps the truest measure of his authority was seen that evening, when he summoned the clergy of New York to his house and told them: “You’ll be preaching on Sunday. Here’s what you have to say.”
    It took two weeks for Morgan to rescue the financial system. Along the way, when New York City declared it was also going broke, he rescued that too. In his final act, he called all the biggest bankers and trust men of Wall Street to meet him in his princely library, locked the doors, and refused to let them out until they did what was needed.
    But the abiding image that remained in the mind of William Master came from Wall Street itself. It was on that first Friday. He was walking westward as he came to the street’s main intersection. On his left, on the corner, number 23, the House of Morgan. Across from it, the splendid facade of the New York Stock Exchange. On his right, Federal Hall and, a short way up Nassau Street, the Clearing House. Ahead, only a hundred yards or so, was Broadway and Trinity Church. Here was the very center of American finance. This week, at least, it was the cockpit of the world.
    And just at that moment the doors of number 23 opened, and out strode Morgan. The street was crowded. Millionaires and managers, clerks and messenger boys, they were all there milling about between the Stock Exchange and Federal Hall. There were brokers, whom Morganconsidered too vulgar to mix with, but who had cheered his name to the