The Last Titan

As it must to all men, Death came, last week, to George Fisher Baker, 91.

He had intimately affected the destinies of, and had outlived John Pierpont Morgan, James Jerome Hill, Andrew Carnegie, James Stillman and a hundred other millionaires whose names are economic history. For the past two years he had been very feeble. When the market broke in 1929 he was sick-a-bed but begged to go downtown. "This is my ninth panic," he protested. "I have made money in every one of them." Since then he has attended many a potent board meeting.

Last Thursday he went to the meeting of the $1,171,000,000 Consolidated Gas Co. of New York. It was a raw day. When he returned to his quaint old office he felt chilly. He called his car, went to his home on Madison Avenue over which falls shadows of midtown skyscrapers. (Next day the Empire State Building was opened.) Only recently had he come North from his Georgia retreat on Jekyl Island, where he and a small group of leading financiers have found rest and seclusion since 1886 and whither his most intimate friend, Edward Eugene Loomis, had tenderly taken him last January.

On Saturday the reporters, whom he never would see, assembled before the brownstone front. It was, they knew, the Death Watch.

The story troubled them. Here was the third or fourth richest man in the world, the greatest personal power in U. S. finance, and yet, unlike Ford or Rockefeller, his name alone would not carry. Mr. Baker would have to be explained, but there was scarcely a note in all the newspaper files with which to particularize the remote legend of a chop-whiskered old man of great wealth. His philanthropies were many, exceeding in recent years $12,000,000. To Harvard he, a non-college man, gave the $5,000.000 foundation for the School of Business Administration. But in all his life he gave only one real interview and that was to say: "Business men of America should reduce their talk at least two-thirds. . . . There is rarely ever a reason good enough for anybody to talk. . . . Silence is the secret of success."

The reporters waited through the long cold May afternoon while downtown U. S. Steel and other stocks sank to new lows. They saw two of Mr. Baker's three children enter the house. One was George Fisher baker Jr. The other was Mrs. William Goadby Loew. Mrs. Howard Bligh St. George was at her England home.*

Four doctors were in the sick room, including Dr. George David Stewart, in whose name Mr. Baker had created a $1,000,000 surgery endowment at New York University. An oxygen tank was ready but it was never used. Mr. Baker's pneumonia grew worse. At 6 o'clock Dr. Stewart left and gloomily told the Death Watch that Mr. Baker could not last the night. The afternoon newspapermen left. Four reporters were still damning the cold night and the lack of a shelter when Mr. Baker's secretary summoned them into the house and announced that the aged financier had died.

Beyond the estimate of newspapermen or bankers is the extent of the Baker fortune. Estimates have run as high as $500,000,000. In 1924 he and his son paid an income tax of $1,575,000. The most important Baker holdings include: 87,000 shares of United States Steel, 74,000 shares of American Telephone & Tele- graph, 204,000 shares of New York Central, 6,100 Pullman, 713,000 Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. Other "Bakerstocks" include American Can and National Biscuit. He has been friendly with the Van Sweringens and it is legend that when they first approached him he said: "The only question I want to ask you two boys is 'do you work hard and do you sleep well?'"

The cornerstone of the entire Baker fortune and power is First National Bank of New York. It was organized in 1863 with Mr. Baker taking $3,000 of its $200,000 capital and becoming teller. At the age of 37 he became president. Mr. Baker's holdings grew to 22.000 shares, with a total market valuation last week of $3,300 each. (Two years ago the market-value of these same shares was nearly $200,000,000.) Since 1925 the bank has paid 100% annually in dividends. The bank always took a leading part in the Nation's industrial affairs, and Mr. Baker was dismayed when the Government pointed out that the bank could not own stocks. But he conceived of the security affiliate, an instrument of finance soon to find wide favor. In the Pujo investigation of 1913 Mr. Baker testified that he had acquired over half the stock of Chase National which he carried for the account of First National, although there was no record to show that First National really owned the stock. "It was just a matter of your word?" asked Samuel Untermeyer. "Yes, sir. I do not know that I even expressed a word."

During its long history First National has been firm through all panics and regarded as supreme by every other bank, public and private. It has always supported the operations of the Treasury Department and still makes a point of immediately subscribing $25,000,000 for every Government offering, a fact which pleases Mr. Baker's younger friend, Andrew William Mellon. In recent years Mr. Baker had served as chairman of the bank. The active president has been Jackson Eli Reynolds, 58, whom Mr. Baker took from the position of general attorney for the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Mr. Reynolds most recently distinguished himself in his work for Bank of International Settlements (TIME, Sept. 23, 1929). Some day the bank may leave its dingy Victorian building at Broadway and Wall Street. But for at least another century it will carry with it the legend of its nonogenarian founder, which has just begun to grow. Except for Rockefeller, he was the last of the eigth Century Titans.

*Little publicized is the large Baker family. George Fisher Baker Jr. has four children: Florence (a debutante this year); Edith: George Fisher Baker 3rd; Grenville Baker. Mrs. Loew also has four children: Mrs. Edwin Main Post (who has one child, William); Mrs. Edward Livingston Burrill Jr.; Mrs. Richard Trimble; Florence Loew. Mrs. Howard Bligh St. George has three children: Evelyn Bligh St. George: George Baker St. George (who has a daughter, Priscilla); Robert Cecil St. George (who has a son, Robert). A third son, Howard Bligh St. George was killed at Ypres while leading a British cavalry charge.

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