...For almost fifty years, from 1880 to 1930, financial
capitalism approximated a feudal structure in which two great powers, centered in New
York, dominated a number of lesser powers, both in New York
and in provincial cities. No description of this structure as it
existed in the 1920's can be given in a brief compass, since it
infiltrated all aspects of American life and especially all
branches of economic life.
At the center were a
group of less than a dozen investment banks, which were, at the
height of their powers, still unincorporated private partnerships.
These included J. P. Morgan; the Rockefeller family; Kuhn, Loeb and
Company; Dillon, Read and Company; Brown Brothers and Harriman; and
others.
Each of these was linked in organizational or personal
relationships with various banks, insurance companies, railroads,
utilities, and industrial firms. The result was to form a number of
webs of economic power of which the more important centered in New
York, while other provincial groups allied with these were
to be found in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston.
J. P. Morgan worked in
close relationship to a group of banks and insurance
companies, including the First National Bank of New York,
the Guaranty Trust Company, the Bankers Trust, the New York Trust
Company, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
The whole nexus
dominated a network of business firms which included at least
one-sixth of the two hundred largest nonfinancial corporations in
American business. Among these were twelve utility
companies, five or more railroad systems, thirteen industrial
firms, and at least five of the fifty largest banks in the
country.
The combined assets of these firms were more than $30 billion.
They included American Telephone and Telegraph Company,
International Telephone and Telegraph, Consolidated Gas of New
York, the groups of electrical utilities known as Electric Bond and
Share and as the United Corporation Group (which included
Commonwealth and Southern, Public Service of New Jersey, and
Columbia Gas and Electric), the New York Central railway system,
the Van Sweringen railway system (Allegheny) of nine lines
(including Chesapeake and Ohio; Erie; Missouri Pacific; the Nickel
Plate; and Pere Marquette); the Santa Fe; the Northern system of
five great lines (Great Northern; Northern Pacific; Burlington; and
others); the Southern Railway; General Electric Company; United
States Steel; Phelps Dodge; Montgomery Ward; National Biscuit;
Kennecott Copper; American Radiator and Standard Sanitary;
Continental Oil; Reading Coal and Iron; Baldwin Locomotive; and
others...
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/11.html#35
