ABSTRACT
J.P.Morgan was a banker and financier who, dismayed by the chaos he saw around him in late nineteenth-century America, took it upon himself to regulate and consolidate a number of important industries, including the railways and the steel industry. Morgan hated the idea of competition, which he believed was wasteful and ruinous and ultimately to the detriment of the public interest. Instead, he used his financial clout to merge entire industries into giant combines, or trusts. This provoked a popular reaction as the American public, previously very pro-big business, began to believe that Morgan and the other big industrialists were a threat to democracy. The debate, which raged for several decades, did much to shape modern attitudes to corporate governance, business ethics, managerial responsibility, and market regulation and competition. The environment in which we do business today was shaped in almost equal measure by Morgan and by his opponents.
