---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 17
number: 4
published: 1914-02
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: "Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, \"Character Counts,\" *Improvement Era* 17, no. 4 (February 1914): 311–312."
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1704unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1704unse
start_page: 311
end_page: 312
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1914-02)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1704unse
  publication_year: 1914
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1914, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Character Counts

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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:

<!-- page:312 -->

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.