Thomas Lamont | |
|---|---|
 Lamont circa 1918 | |
| Born | Thomas William Lamont Jr. (1870-09-30)September 30, 1870 Claverack, New York, U.S. |
| Died | February 2, 1948(1948-02-02) (aged 77) Boca Grande, Florida, U.S. |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
| Spouse | Florence Haskell Corliss |
| Children | 2, includingCorliss |
Thomas William Lamont Jr. (September 30, 1870 – February 2, 1948) was an Americanbanker.
Lamont was born inClaverack, New York. His parents were Thomas Lamont, a Methodist minister, and Caroline Deuel Jayne. Since his father was a minister, they moved aroundUpstate New York a lot and they were not very wealthy.[1] He graduated fromPhillips Exeter Academy in 1888, where he was editor of the school newspaper,The Exonian, as well as the school yearbook and literary magazine. He then attendedHarvard College.[1]
At Harvard, he became first freshman editor ofThe Harvard Crimson,[2] which helped him pay off some of his tuition. He graduatedcum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1892. He met his wife, Florence Haskell Corliss, at the 1890 Harvard commencement. He started working under the city editor for theNew York Tribune two days after he graduated from Harvard in 1892.[3] He married Florence on October 31, 1895 in Englewood, New Jersey.
He also worked for theAlbany Evening Journal,Boston Advertiser,Boston Herald, andNew York Tribune, which paid only $25, while he was at Harvard.
At theTribune, he received many promotions, including night editor and helping the financial editor, which gave him his first taste of the financial world. He left journalism because of the low pay and went into business.[1]
He began working in business for Cushman Bros., which later became Lamont, Corliss, and Company, and turned it into a successful importing and marketing firm. It was an advertising agency that worked for food corporations. The company was in a bad financial status, but Lamont fixed it, and the company changed its name to Lamont, Corliss, and Company. He was partners with his brother-in-law, Corliss. His banking caught the attention of banker Henry P. Davison, who asked Thomas to join the newBankers Trust. He started as secretary and treasurer and then moved up to being Vice President and then was promoted to director. He rose to the vice presidency of the First National Bank.[1]
He was a member of theJekyll Island Club onJekyll Island, Georgia.
In 1918, he purchased theNew York Evening Post, of which his brother, Hammond, had been managing editor a decade earlier, fromOswald Garrison Villard. After failing to make a profit, he sold the paper in January, 1922 to a syndicate that was headed by the paper's editor,Edwin F. Gay.
On January 1, 1911, he became a partner ofJ.P. Morgan & Co., following Davison to the company.[3]
The company had also started an improvised system so that the Allies could buy supplies from them. In 1917, he joined the Liberty Loan Committee, which helped the treasury sell war bonds to Americans. He also served unofficially as an advisor to a mission to the Allies, led byEdward M. House, as requested by PresidentWoodrow Wilson.[4]
Lamont not only advised the other countries but also went to them. Right before he was going to go to Europe, the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. He and the head of the American Red Cross,William B. Thompson, along with the approval of the British prime minister, Lloyd George, tried to convince America to aid the Bolsheviks so that Russia would stay in the war. However, they were unsuccessful.
Both he andNorman H. Davis were appointed as representatives of the Treasury Department to theParis Peace Conference and had to determine what Germany had to pay in reparations. He participated in the committees that drew up the 1924Dawes Plan and the 1929Young Plan to reduce the amount paid by Germany.
In the interwar period, he was a spokesman for J.P. Morgan because J.P. Morgan Jr. was retiring. He handled the press and defended the firm during hearings like those ofArsene Pujo that investigated powerful Wall Street bankers.[1]
He was one of the most important agents for the Morgan investments abroad. A member of theCouncil of Foreign Relations, he was an unofficial advisor to the Wilson,Herbert Hoover, andFranklin Roosevelt administrations.[3] Hoover contacted Lamont about his proposal for a debt repayment moratorium in the 1931 financial crisis. This also has important implications for later events such as his 1932 election campaign.[5] Lamont was elected to both theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1932.[6][7]
Lamont later undertook a semiofficial mission to Japan in 1920 to protect American financial issues in Asia. However, he did not aggressively challenge Japanese efforts to build a sphere of influence inManchuria;[8] indeed, he supported Japan's non-militaristic politics until late into the 1930s.
Ron Chernow won theNational Book Award for his bookThe House of Morgan in which he claimed that Lamont had authored the infamous Japanese response to deceive the world about theMukden incident, which was used as a pretext for Japan's invasion of Manchuria. That defied the expressed position of US government and the League of Nations that Japan, not China, was the aggressor.
Lamont was the chairman of the International Committee of Bankers on Mexico for which he successfully negotiated theDe la Huerta-Lamont Treaty. He continued to chair the committee into the 1940s by a series of renegotiations of Mexico's foreign debt.
In 1926, Lamont, self-described as "something like a missionary" forItalian fascism,[9] secured a $100 million loan forBenito Mussolini.[9] Despite his early support, Lamont believed theSecond Italo-Abyssinian War begun in 1935 was outrageous.[3]
On September 20, 1940, the fascist police shocked Lamont by arresting Giovanni Fummi,J.P. Morgan & Co.'s leading representative in Italy.[3] Lamont worked to secure Fummi's release. Fummi was released on October 1 and went toSwitzerland.
OnBlack Thursday in 1929, Lamont was acting head of J.P. Morgan & Co.Five days prior to the Crash, PresidentHerbert Hoover had contacted Lamont with concerns about the rampantmarket manipulation by Wall Street insiders, and the systemic risk it presented to the stock market. Lamont reassured the President that there was no cause for concern, and no need for government intervention, saying "The future appears brilliant!"[11]
The market crashed the following Thursday. In an attempt to stop the panic, Lamont organized Wall Street firms to inject confidence back into thestock market through massive purchases ofblue chip stocks. The effort failed, and stocks ultimately lost a quarter of their value that week. After the crash unfolded, the Senate Banking Committee found that J.P. Morgan (headed by Lamont), had maintained a "preferential stock list", to allow for liquidation of stocks during the crash at prices premium to actual market value. Politicians, includingCalvin Coolidge, and family members of prominent bankers, were on the list.[13]
Following the reorganization of J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1943, Lamont was electedchairman of the board of directors, after Morgan Jr. died, becoming the first non Morgan afterGeorge Peabody to chair the bank.
Lamont became a generous benefactor of Harvard and Exeter once he had amassed a fortune, notably by funding the building ofLamont Library. At the end ofWorld War II, Lamont made a very substantial donation toward restoringCanterbury Cathedral inEngland. His widow, Florence Haskell Corliss donated Torrey Cliff, their weekend residence overlooking theHudson River inPalisades, New York, toColumbia University. It is now the site of theLamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.
Upon Florence's death, a bequest established theLamont Poetry Prize.
Lamont died inBoca Grande, Florida, in 1948.
In 1895, Lamont married Florence Haskell Corliss.[14] Born Englewood, NJ in 1873, Florence graduated fromSmith College in 1893 and received an M.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University. Thomas and Florence had 4 children. Their sonCorliss was a philosophy professor atColumbia University and an avowedsocialist. Another son, Thomas Stilwell Lamont, was later vice-chairman ofMorgan Guaranty Trust and a fellow of theHarvard Corporation.[15]
One of his grandsons,Lansing Lamont, was a reporter withTime from 1961 to 1974. He published several books,[16] includingYou Must Remember This: A Reporter’s Odyssey from Camelot to Glasnost about his experiences covering the important events of the time, including the assassination ofRobert F. Kennedy. Another grandson, Thomas William Lamont II, served in the submarine service on theUSS Snook (SS-279) and died when the submarine sank in April 1945.
One of his great-grandsons,Ned Lamont, was elected governor of Connecticut in 2018.
Lamont is a major character inNomi Prins' novelBlack Tuesday (2011) and in Kit Holland'sSoul Slip Peak (2013).
Media related toThomas William Lamont, Jr. at Wikimedia Commons| Business positions | ||
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| Preceded by | Chairman ofJ.P. Morgan & Co. March 13, 1943 – February 2, 1948 | Succeeded by |
