Character Counts

DISCOVERIES ON THE COLORADO. 311 We may well suppose that their notions of art were influenced by their contact with the great forces of nature. Imaginative and dreamy they must have been, for they looked at witching twilights, hazeless moontides, and through broad red dawns at the everpresent mirage. They must have read strange stories in the lambent stars, and quivered at the angry voice of thunder, reading the potency of superior powers into every phenomenon. As they sat in their cliff palaces, in the starlight, no doubt they listened for hours with hungry interest to stories of the powers ruling the world, and to the old myths passed on to them by their fathers as sacred legacies. A STONE MORTAR Chiseled by the cliff dwellers out of solid rock with stone implements. Character Counts J. Pierpont Morgan, the great financier of the United States, who died in Rome, March 31, last, and whose body was later taken to the United States for burial, was a very reticent man. He largely controlled the finances of the United States through his banking house and associated houses. Only few of his words and expressions have ever been left on record to show his mind and character. It is not improbable that during the late examination by the Pujo Committee at Washington, he said more than he had ever said publicly before. Whatever may be said of his business methods, it is certain that this colloquy between him and the examining attorney creates an impression that any man might be happy to leave to the world. His insistence that character stands first with men of money is certainly wholesome, even if not always seemingly true. It expresses the business idea held by the great man who stood at the head of the business world in our country. The answers of Mr. Morgan to the examiner's questions are printed in italics herewith; they are wholesome words worthy of preservation and study:

312 IMTRi )VKMENT ERA / knozu lots of men, business men, too, who can borrow any amount, whose credit is unquestioned. Is that not because it is believed that they have the money back <if them? No, sir; it is because people believe in the man. And it is regardless of whether he has any financial backing at all, is it? // is very often. And he might not be worth anything? He might not have anything. J have known a man to come into my office and I have given him a check for a million dollars when I knew he had not a cent in the world. There are not many of them? Yes, a good many. Commercial credits are based upon the possession of money or property? Money or property or character. Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property? No, sir; the first thing is character. Before money or property? Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it. So that a man with character, without anything at all behind it, can get all the credit he wants, and a man with the property cannot get it? That is very often the case. But is that the rule of business? That is the rule of business, sir. If that is the rule of business, Mr. Morgan, why do the banks demand— the first thing they ask — a statement of what the man has before they extend him credit? That is a question which — that is what they go into; but the first thing they say is, I want to see your record. Yes; and if his record is a blank the next thing is how much he has got? People do not care then. For instance, if he has got government bonds, or railroad bonds, and goes in to get credit, he gets it, and on the security of those bonds, does he not? Yes. He does not get it on his face or his character, does he? Yes, he gets it on his character. I see; then he might as well take the bonds home, had he not? A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom. That is the rule all over the world? / think that is the fundamental basis of business.