An Unlikely Trust: Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Improbable Partnership that Remade American Business

A hostile commander-in-chief and a titan of American finance make a far-reaching peace in this colorful study of government-business relations in the Progressive Era. Helferich (Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin) revisits the early-20th-century ferment of American capitalism, when the rise of giant corporate trusts that monopolized whole industries sparked explosive growth, populist outrage, and labor unrest. He explores these tensions in the figures of President Theodore Roosevelt, the boisterous Republican reformer who attacked trusts, and J.P. Morgan, the financier who built such trusts as the leviathan U.S. Steel in order (he claimed) to prevent ruinous competition and stabilize the economy. Despite their rhetorical antagonism, Helferich argues, the two tacitly cooperated on economic issues, settling a catastrophic coal-mining strike, snuffing out the Panic of 1907, and forging a modern regulatory system that let Morgan’s trusts flourish benignly. The onetime trust-buster Roosevelt eventually came under fire from political opponents who saw him as a Morgan puppet. Roosevelt delivers the thunder here, but the canny and understated Morgan becomes a fascinating protagonist as he conjures up money and strong-arms bankers to save Wall Street from destruction. Helferich’s narrative has a lucid, light touch on the period’s economics and foregrounds the human element in white-knuckle crises and negotiations. Photos. (Jan.)