Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-01-07

who twelve months ago had regarded
 him as the greatest genius of the age. A man of high standing in Wall street
 when asked as to Mr. Morgan's present status downtown said:
 pieces for $4."
 That, of course, was an extravagant
 way of putting 1t, but it exhibits the general temper of the downtown dis trict. Why such mighty revolution in the public standing of man?
 Sifted down, the naked reason is that
 within the past year countless men and
 women have lost their fortunes in Nor
 gan enterprises. Not only private in vestors, the outside public, but great
 institutions, trust companies, banks, insurance companies, their presidents, directors and other officers, have seen great sums of their money shrink and
 fade away into shadows.
 These losses would doubtless have been taken with more equanimity but for the exposures in the investigation of the United States Shipbuilding com pany scandal, which have created some
 thing more than a suspicion through out the financial district that MT. Nor
 gan's firm may have employed the
 same methods in the United States
 Steel corporation and the International Mercantile Marine Ghe Atlantic steam
 ship trust) that were uncovered by the
 shipyards investigation. And in this
 connection 1t should be said that some
 hold the belief that the shipyards in
 vestfgation is only part of huge sub-
 terranean engine devised and construct
 ed in the inner office of John D. Rocke-
 feller to pull down MT. Morgan from
 his dazzling pinnacle and grind his rep
 utation into dust. Three great blows were struck at MT. Morgan during the year just closed. They were telling blows, as they show ed that llis hiEhly eulogized judgment ID launching new enterprises was at least as faulty as other mems Some people do not content themselves with saying that Mir. Morgan merely coIl- mitted errors of judgment in creating such topheavy enterprises as the Steel corpora ton and the Mercantile Marine, asserting that he was actuated solely by the motive to gather into his own strong boxes every available dollar held by the public.
 In any event he had created two vast ly capitalized corporations, into which large investors and the public both
 here and in Europe placed their money, relying chiefly upon his Judgment
 They bought Steel preferred around 90 and Steel common between 70 and 5O They saw the former go to 30 and the
 latter to 10. They bought Mercantile
 Marine preferred around 60 and the common around 20. They saw the former go to 101s and the latter to S. The Mercantile Marine bonds, $5O,0oO,- GOO of the $75,000,000 issue, were taken
 by MT. Morgan's financial friends here ! and abroad at 90. These bonds have a nominal value now of 75. At times, l when efforts have been made to sell i them, the best bid that could be got | was 80.
 A smaller matter, but one that injur- ed MT. Morgan in the opinion of many | New York capitalists, was the Sheldon | syndicate he had organized in the ship
 building company fasco. This syndi- cate put up about $4,OO0,000 to take l over shipbuilding company bonds at | 70. These have a nominal value now { of about IA, but no large amount of ] them can be marketed at that price | There is no market at all for large | quantities. The subscribers to this | syndicate are large banking firms and individual capitalists, such as E. H.
 Hartman, George Gould, Perry Bel
 mont, Stuyvesant Fish and others, who
 are not in the habit of losing hundreds of thousands of their own money. Brit ish and European investors lost little or
 nothing in the shipbuilding company,
 but they did lose heavily in the Steel corporation and the Mercantile Marine
 company. These forei rn losses account
 in measure for the feeling of hostility for MT. Morgan abroad
 Another matter which has irritated
 the losers in the Morgan ventures is
 that neither MT. Morgan himself TOT
 his firm has lost any money. He is probably richer by millions of dollars
 today than he was a year ago, as far as money goes, no matter how much he
 has lost ln reputation.