J.P. Morgan

J.P. Morgan was the modern banking conglomerate founded by John Pierpont Morgan, whose role in building U.S. Steel and whose later association with financial regulation place the firm within a broader struggle over monopoly, political influence, and the limits of market competition. In the book’s account, its history helps show why markets alone do not guarantee broadly shared economic opportunity.

Founding and Corporate Reach

In the 1890s, large trusts spread across nearly every sector of the U.S. economy, with some controlling more than 70 percent of their markets. Morgan, alongside Andrew Carnegie, founded U.S. Steel in 1901. It was the first corporation with a capitalized value exceeding $1 billion and, at the time, the world’s largest steel corporation. The scale of the enterprise made the connection between finance and industrial concentration visible: a banking magnate helped create a company whose size was unprecedented.

The book identifies J.P. Morgan as the founder of the modern banking conglomerate that later, through mergers over several decades, became JPMorgan Chase. It does not describe those mergers individually, but the institution’s later form underscores the lasting organizational legacy of the financial enterprise associated with Morgan.

Trusts and Concentrated Power

Morgan’s firm belonged to an era in which competition in parts of the United States gave way to monopoly and rapidly rising wealth inequality. The book sets the banking conglomerate alongside industrial trusts such as Standard Oil, which controlled 88 percent of U.S. refined-oil flows by 1890, and U.S. Steel, whose formation joined Morgan’s financial power with Carnegie’s industrial wealth. The comparison places banking not outside the trust problem but among the forces shaping a concentrated economy.

The growth of trusts provoked opposition from people harmed by monopolistic practices and from those concerned about the unchecked dominance of powerful firms. They organized first through the Populist movement and then through the Progressive movement. This response matters to the account of J.P. Morgan because it shows that concentrated corporate power encountered political resistance rather than operating in an institutional vacuum.

Regulation and the Financial Sector

Investigations and reform efforts addressed monopoly not only in manufacturing but also in finance. The Pujo Committee, led by Louisiana congressman Arsene Pujo, investigated the so-called money trust—the spread of monopoly into the financial industry. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson created the Federal Reserve Board to regulate monopolistic activities in that sector. The book presents this action as part of a wider effort to check concentrations of economic power through public institutions.

The account’s central distinction is between the existence of markets and the inclusiveness of markets. Markets can be dominated by a small number of firms that charge high prices and obstruct the entry of more efficient competitors and new technologies. J.P. Morgan’s history, alongside the investigation of the money trust and the creation of the Federal Reserve Board, therefore belongs to a larger argument: political institutions can provide a counterweight to monopoly and help preserve economic opportunity beyond the powerful firms and elites that might otherwise control it.