The Lords of Creation Quotes

“Though there was much sheer rascality in the Wall Street of the nineteen-twenties, much sheer greed roaming at large, and a widespread betrayal of the fiduciary principle, it may be that none of these things did as much damage to the country, in the sum total, as the sheer irresponsibility of men who, possessing vast powers, played the game of profit and loss without regard for the general public interest.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“As you approach almost any of our American cities by air, you see this city first as a large irregular brownish discoloration upon the landscape, overhung by a pall of smoke. But presently you notice at the center of the discoloration a protuberance: a jagged cluster of whitish pinnacles”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“In this sense it was the financiers, the promoters, the corporation lawyers, who were the true radicals of the time: it was they—though they would have been the last to admit it—who were taking the initiative in revolutionizing the American economy.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“I am not speaking of incompetent hands,” said he. “We are speaking of this concentration which has come about and the power it brings with it getting into the hands of very ambitious men, perhaps not overscrupulous. You see a peril in that, do you not?” “Yes,” said Baker. “So that the safety, if you think there is safety in the situation, really lies in the personnel of the men?” “Very much.” “Do you think that is a comfortable situation for a great country to be in?” Very slowly, Baker replied, “Not entirely.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“The financial methods which he sponsored did much—as we have seen—to widen the gulf between rich and poor; to levy, as it were, a heavy Wall Street tax upon the production of goods, a tax sometimes too heavy to be borne. Whether the gulf might not have been still wider and the tax heavier if he had not lived, whether the concentration of power and of wealth was not inevitable anyhow, whether indeed it did not bring with it advantages—in commercial development—which outweighed its disadvantages, will always be matters of sharp disagreement. Yet even those who look bitterly upon the privileges of concentrated capital which Morgan did so much to extend, cannot fairly deny that he possessed in high degree that quality to which he so often referred in the Pujo inquiry: character. Among those who knew him as a man and not simply as the generator and symbol of enormous power, he was trusted. If such power had to exist, the country was fortunate to have him wield it, and not a less scrupulous man.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“To ship their crops to distant markets they had to rely upon the railroads, many of which were scandalously managed for the profit of Eastern owners and manipulators and set their freight rates arbitrarily high. Hence there arose in the West a widespread and confused agitation against bankers, the gold basis of the currency, industrial monopolists, and above all the railroads: an agitation which in the eighteen-eighties had been chiefly responsible for the passage of such regulatory laws as the Interstate Commerce Act.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“The Morse technic was simple: borrow money and buy the controlling shares in a bank; then put up these shares as collateral against another loan of money, with which you buy another bank, and so on. As soon as you control the bank it becomes quite simple to have such loans to yourself approved—and other loans, too, with which you may promote other companies and play the market.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“The center of gravity of American industrial control was moving, and the direction of its motion was immensely significant. It was moving toward Wall Street. The reins which guided the great industries of the country were gradually being taken into the hands of bankers and financiers who could finance these immense holding-company operations and distribute stock by the millions of shares.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent