Tea Party

Any physical activity in Wall Street, no matter how trivial, is sure to make runners, clerks, bondsalesmen et al. stop and gape. Large groups often gather about a man sawing a board. Last week when truckmen began to unload 60-lb. cases, neatly wrapped in matting, before the House of Morgan, the usual crowd swelled to near-riot proportions. Though the cases were plainly labeled "BLACK TEA--Product of China. Foochow, China," reports quickly spread that J. P. Morgan & Co. had received a huge shipment of gold from the Orient. Guards when questioned muttered: "We don't know nothing. Ask him." "Him," a young English clerk, did not know much but he explained: "The bill of lading for the tea came this morning. We could not send it up to Mr. Morgan's house and we could not send it out to his Long Island Place, so we are putting it in the vault here." Some one trying to confirm the gold report learned: "It's tea all right. There are three restaurants in the building. Much food comes in here." Wall Street oldsters recalled the legend that John Pierpont Morgan the Elder, a great tea-drinker, had once sipped some particularly fine tea in a London office, had been told that the tea was privately grown on an Island owned by a Chinese. Next morning he had ordered an agent to buy the island. As long as he lived he always gave his own tea as Christmas presents, and his son has done so after him. The 7,800 lb. of tea that went into the vaults last week, oldsters agreed, was John P. Morgan's Christmas tea.

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