#142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan

**David Senra** (0:00)
These industrialists accumulated their wealth in ways most Americans could understand. They dug up something, they discovered something, they built something. But the financiers backing these industrialists, as Americans were just learning, found their riches in the flow of money itself.
Morgan was the most influential of these businessmen. He wasn't the richest, by most counts John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were. But that didn't matter. He was commanding in ways none could match. Wherever he sat, he became the head of the table. He was comfortable in his dominion, though never with his fame.
He had an aristocrat's disdain for public sentiment and the conviction that his actions were to the country's advantage. No explanations necessary.
Roosevelt thought big business was not only inevitable, but essential. He also believed it had to be accountable to the public, and Roosevelt considered himself to be the public.
Each presumed he could use his authority to determine the nation's course.
Each expected deference from the other along the way.
Morgan and Roosevelt both knew privilege and loss, though they would have balked if anyone had pointed out their similarities. The president aimed to guarantee that as American prosperity took hold, the laws applied to the country's elite and its poor alike. He wanted to assert the primacy of government over business. The financier thought that was needless, even dangerous. The country's strength accrued from capital, trade, economic efficiency. These were the provinces of businessmen and Morgan their unofficial ruler. He required order and stability, along with political predictability to assure America's growth and ascent to global power.
To Morgan, the giant railroad and steel companies he was constructing would allow the country to compete in the world market and its citizens to benefit. The pace and scale of these operations shouldn't be cause for worry or resentment, and certainly not regulation.
I'm afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don't know what he'll do, Morgan said.
He's afraid of me because he does know what I'll do, Roosevelt said.
Roosevelt and Morgan were bound for conflict. Roosevelt was a new kind of president. He believed American capitalism needed a guiding hand. So did Morgan. Each assumed it should be his own.
So that's an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is The Hour of Fate, Theodore Roosevelt, JP. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism. And it was written by Susan Berfield. So before I jump into the book, I wanna read this one paragraph description that is found on the inside flap. And it gives you an overview of what the author's focus is. It said, a bullet from an anarchist gun put an end to the business-friendly presidency of William McKinley. A new chief executive bounded into the office, Theodore Roosevelt. He was convinced that as big business got bigger, the government had to check the influence of the wealthiest or the country would inch ever closer to collapse. By March 1902, battle lines were drawn. The government sued Northern Securities for antitrust violations. This is this huge trust, this railroad trust that Morgan put together. But as the case ramped up, the coal miners union went on strike and the anthracite pits that fueled Morgan's trains and heated the homes of Roosevelt citizens went silent. And so this next sentence is gonna, is what makes this book so unique. With millions of dollars on the line, winter bearing down and revolution in the air, it was a crisis that neither man could solve. And so that's why the book is called The Hour of Fate, because while they're in this huge battle over antitrust violations, they also have to cooperate with one another to make sure that the coal mines are brought back online. And I would say the benefit of reading books like this is we get insight. Not only do we see, I think you will learn a lot about somebody by who their enemies are.
And we also get to see how several historical figures interacted with one another. This is not very different. I've read a few books for the podcast that are similar in that vein. I would say number 97, Go Like Hell, talks about the war between Enzo Ferrari, Carol Shelby and Henry Ford II. Then back on Founders number 83, I've read the book Empires of Light, which is about the competition and their interaction between Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse. And then back on Founders number 73, the book Meet You in Hell, which is about the war between Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. And I would consider The Hour of Fate very similar to those three other books. So before we get into the actual interaction between the two main characters in the book, the author dedicates an entire chapter to each one, just giving us highlights of their basic history, their basic biography and some personality traits. So I'm gonna pick up, I'm gonna start with Morgan first and I'll get into Teddy. This is something I talked about heavily that I found most interesting by reading The House of Morgan, which is the profound influence that J.P.'s father Junius had on J.P.'s life. So it says, Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the right path and steer his career. And even when his father was overbearing, Morgan never mounted a challenge. It's very interesting, because I think his father is the one person that he would defer to. And we're going to see a lot, even the way he talks to presidents. You can clearly see from the interactions he has with Theodore Roosevelt and other people in the government that he's not used to having anybody challenge him. The creator of the biggest companies the world had ever known was himself, very much the creation of paternal influence. The young Morgan, once established, proved instinctively suited to the times in which he lived. That's another example of this reoccurring theme that you and I talk about over and over again, that there's a certain few historical figures that were in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. Morgan definitely was fit all those criteria. It was an era of raucous, unfettered competition, chaotic capitalism that he would try to order. More about his personality, he always wanted to be the leader. Taking charge would become a lifetime impulse, one though that Pierpont would have to curb around his father for years.