Sublime

Anthony Drexel, of the long-established Philadelphia banking family, changing the firm to Drexel, Morgan & Co., with the older man again named first.

(As his predecessor John Pierpont Morgan had said about a banker’s reputation at the Pujo hearings in front of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912, “[It] is his most valuable possession; it is the result of years of faith and honorable dealing and, while it may be quickly lost, once lost cannot be restored for a long time, if ever.”)

After twenty-five years, he was still poor—the Governor’s salary in 1928 was only $10,000, less than that of his cabinet officers—and he was tired of that, too; he wanted security in his old age and something to leave his sons.