The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-08-04
MORGAN REQUEST SECOND LARGEST
 EVER RECEIVED Head of Banking Firm Left Over S50,OOO,OOO by
 His Father
MANY CURIOUS ITEMS
 IN APPRAISAL REPORT
Elder Morgan Held Several Millions of Worthless Securities, Part of Which Represented Assistance
 Rendered Friends
By HOLLAND

New York, August S-(Special. .)-As the principal heir of the estate of J. Pier pont Morgan, his successor as head of the house, J. P. Morgan receives the | largest bequest made to any one now liv- ing and with a single exception, possibly, the large bequest made at any time. J. P. Morgan by the terms of the will re- ceives $53,000,0O0 When Commodore Van.
 derbilt died his son, William H. Wander
 bilt, received the greater part of the Van derbilt estate, approximately $90,OO0 900.
 This, after the death of William H. Van- derbilt, was divided equally between his sons Cornelius and William K. Wander bilt. Therefore the Vanderbilts of the quest as much by about $S,0OO,OO0 as MT. Morgan receives from the estate of his father.
 There may have been larger individual bequests than this, although not any rep resenting accumuations by bankers. The presumption in the financial district is that it was partly the wish to enable his heir to be thoroughly fortified so that he could maintain the prestige and strength of the Morgan house which persuaded the father to leave the bulk of his estate to the son.
 There are many features of the detailed
 inventory of the Morgan estate which since the day of publicati ton have been much discussed in financial and business circles. Attention has been called to the fact that the aggregate value of the
 estate was a little in excess of $7S,00O, GOO, while $69,500,000 was the portion of the estate upon which New York state will receive an inheritance tax. So many of the men who have accumulated large fortunes since the civil war days left estates which are appraised from SIC, ,000, 900 to $S0,000000, or little more, that it seems as though an undiscovered but in- fluential rule controlled the accumula-
 tions of MT. Morgan. Russell Sage's es-
 tate was appraised at about $75,00O, GOO.
 Jay Gould's estate was in the neighbor-
 hood of $75000,000.
 The difference between Mr. Morgan and others who accumulated fortune of this
 size was that in the later years of his
 life he seemed to be not particularly con-
 cerned about accumulation. His son, J.
 P. Morgan may know how much. his
 father gave away Whatever the amount
 was it was sufficient presumably had
 he kept the money to have considerably
 increased his estate.
 MORGAN'S INVESTMENTS Leading private and international banker as he was and great as was his
 influence with banks, MT. Morgan ap-
 pears not to have been as heavy an in-
 vestor in bank stocks as was commonly
 supposed to be the case The investments
 he did make were remarkably successful.
 as for instance, he owned 2300 shares of
 the Bankers Trust company stock which
 at his death was worth $1,S10,O00. He was
 also an investor in the Central Trust company, although under the manage
 ment of the late Frederick Olcott, it was
 sometimes thought that this trust institu- ton and the house of J. F. Morgan were occasionally in antagonism. He was the owner of stock in the largest of the Chi cago banks, in one Philadelphia bank
 and in three national banks one of them
 being in Philadelphia and two in New
 York, as well as in the largest of the trust institutions.
 There were many curious items in the
 appraisal report What was MT. Morgan