No. 1 Wire House

On Thursday, May 9, 1901, a young lumber merchant from Maine named Edward Allen Pierce went to work in Wall Street as a brokers' clerk at A. A. Housman & Co. That day was historic: by noon Wall Street had been thrown into a panic by the Northern Pacific corner. Broker Pierce learned to work twelve hours a day, still does. Elected a partner in 1909, he served his firm faithfully but unspectacularly for 18 years. Then, on Jan. 1, 1927, he announced the formation of E. A. Pierce & Co. to take over the business of Housman & Co. and six brokerage houses it had gobbled up. Rapidly the new firm began a career unparalleled in Wall Street.

Broker Pierce had developed a genius for Organization. In four years he acquired in part or in whole some twelve brokerage houses, biggest of which was Merrill, Lynch & Co. Pierce's network of wires spread fanwise across the country, reaching into Canada. Soon the company was universally recognized as the largest wire house on the New York Stock Exchange. When Germany was on the brink of financial ruin in 1931, brokers chuckled: "Nothing to worry about; E. A. Pierce will take them over." All during Depression the firm gathered brokerage houses into its system, until Wall Street lost track of mergers, found it easier to count active partners of which there were 14 in 1928, 21 last month when E. A. Pierce absorbed the brokerage business of Philadelphia's Cassatt & Co. (TIME, Jan. 14). Last week the firm added three more partners and a handsome cotton brokerage business in the South and Midwest when it absorbed John F. Clark & Co. of New Orleans, Chicago and New York. That brought E. A. Pierce's total of branch offices up to 69.

Broker Pierce is a hardworking, handsome, kindly man whose life and love is his company. His genius for absorbing other people's businesses gives his partners plenty to do. The four or five who mill around the New York Stock Exchange floor could never transact all their customers' business on a busy day. Four more are locked in a cashier's cage all day signing checks and certificates. Others buy and sell commodities. Curb shares. Those who do not have offices congregate in a great partners' room filled with rolltop desks. But even the oldest employe cannot remember all the partners meeting at once.

Broker Pierce is the central, animating force of E. A. Pierce & Co., but it is a woman who holds the system together. Brown haired, feminine, with a sturdy but pleasing personality, Miss Ethel F. Mercereau is probably the most famed woman in Wall Street. She is a Pierce partner. She is also a martinet. She forbids smoking anywhere in the office from 9 to 3 o'clock. She allows no employe to make personal telephone calls except when absolutely necessary, or to write personal letters on the firm's stationery. No E. A. Pierce clerk may appear before a customer in his shirt sleeves. She has ordered that no matter how brilliant a man's mind may be, he shall not be employed unless he is physically fit. All applicants are examined by physicians; a clerk who neglects his health is fired. Partner Mercereau's office adjoins Mr. Pierce's. She often answers his calls, has an agreement with him that neither shall ride in an airplane.

Though E. A. Pierce is responsible for a whopping share of total Stock Exchange business, Founder Pierce does not sit on that august and exclusive body, the Governing Committee. Last week in a report to Congress the Securities & Exchange Commission recommended eleven major reforms in the internal management of the Exchange, hitting particularly the Governing Board's enormous arbitrary powers, its tendency toward "self-perpetuation" and its narrow representation. Among the SEC's suggestions, which may lead to its first real tussle with the die-hard Governors: Make nonmember partners of Exchange firms eligible for election to the Board and non-Governor members eligible for the standing committees.

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