INVESTING IN MIDDLE AMERICA: John Elliott Tappan and the Origins of American Express Financial Advisors

In 1975, Mary Tyler Moore tossed her hat up in front of the Investors' Diversified Services building—the tallest in Minneapolis then and today—and made television history. Founded by a Minneapolis lawyer, John Elliott Tappan, as Investors' Syndicate in 1894, the company grew to a network of almost 7,000 independent financial salespeople before being acquired by American Express in 1984. Tappan's company now does business as American Express Financial Advisers. This book tells the IDS story in a frankly worshipful way (coauthor Peters is one of Tappan's great-granddaughters). Tappan applied the smalltown and rural door-to-door sales techniques of life insurance to agricultural banking and eventually branched out into other investment products, including insurance. With products tailored to the needs of small Midwestern investors and borrowers, the company competed successfully with larger and less personal East Coast institutions. Unlike many other investment companies, IDS survived the Depression with reputation and finances intact. It grew swiftly during World War II as its salespeople spread throughout the armed services and provided a home for savings in those cash-rich, goods-poor days. As these former servicemen retired in the 1980s, IDS reinvented itself first as a mutual fund company, then as a financial planning company. The authors credit Tappan with extraordinary vision and economic sophistication, but there is little hard evidence that he was more than a shrewd and persistent financial salesperson with an important but not defining role in the growth of IDS. (Sept.)

Forecast:This book may do well among American Express employees, especially if there is a corporate buy; others will probably skip it.