[THS] Wall Street Bombed (unfortunately not recently)

[Peter Webster]

From:"Delanceyplace.com" <daily at delanceyplace.com>
Subject:delanceyplace.com 2/16/10 - bombing wall street

In today's excerpt - a bombing on September 16, 1920 in the financial district of New
York City killed 38 and seriously injured 143. The primary victims were employees of
J.P. Morgan Bank, adding to the fears of the firms head, Jack Morgan, son of the
legendary J.P. Morgan. The crime was never solved, though most suspicions
surrounded the Italian anarchists prominent during that era:

"In 1920, just a few seconds after the Trinity Church bell tolled noon on a pleasant
Thursday in September, a massive shrapnel bomb shook the corner of Wall and
Broad Streets in New York. The blast set fire to awnings twelve stories above,
sprayed hundreds of slugs into the facade of the Morgan building, and killed thirty
employees instantly. The cloud of greenish smoke that rose from the explosion
darkened the area for several minutes. When the dust cleared, George Whitney, one
of the six Morgan partners, walked outside and found that a fragment of window
sash weight had pinned a woman's head and hat against the bank's scarred north
facade. He reported, 'I'll always remember that. It hit her so hard that it just took her
head off and it stuck right on the wall.'

"At the Stock Exchange, sixty paces around the corner, brokers rushed to the center
of the trading floor to avoid falling glass, and trading was suspended within one
minute, as William H. Remick, president of the Exchange, mounted the rostrum and
rang the gong. Trading on the Curb Market also halted immediately; the downtown
area became a mob scene. The boys with the telephones attached to their heads
weren't just swinging down from windows - now they were jumping. Brokers
scattered, and federal troops rushed from Governors Island to Wall Street.

"When the bomb hit, Jack Morgan was away vacationing at his Scottish shooting
lodge. Jack already had been paranoid, even before this attack on his bank's
headquarters. Just before the war, a mysterious German man had attempted to
assassinate him, and he had almost succeeded. Although Jack had recovered from
the gunshot wounds, he still suffered from the emotional blow. He was obsessed with
his personal safety and gripped by fear that he had become a terrorist target. He
had hired a group of former Marines as bodyguards, and scampered into hiding
whenever he heard reports of an escape from a prison or mental asylum.

"Now, after the shrapnel bomb, Jack descended into full-blown panic. When justice
Department authorities investigated the blast and pursued dozens of suspects, but
could not pin the crime on anyone, Jack concluded that he must have been the
target. If he hadn't been off hunting in Scotland, he would have been killed. Who
was after him? Would they ever stop?

"He posted thirty private detectives to watch his brownstone on Madison Avenue. He
also began to view competition from other banks as more than merely business
rivalry. He spun elaborate conspiracy theories involving the Bolsheviks and German-
Jewish financiers. Jack and his friends were on one side of Wall Street; on the other
side were the enemy bankers - Kuhn Loeb, Lehman, and Goldman Sachs - many of
whom were Jewish. Jack Morgan neither trusted nor liked Jews. When Harvard
president A. Lawrence Lowell sought to fill a board vacancy, Jack, who was an
overseer of Harvard and a devoted alumnus, warned that 'the nominee should by no
means be a Jew ... the Jew is always a Jew first and an American second.'

"Unlike Jack, investors ultimately shrugged off the bomb. The new Federal Reserve
Bank reduced interest rates and added money to the financial system after the
attack. The new Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, brought confidence with a
proposal for lower taxes. Investors came to see that neither war nor terrorists could
defeat American optimism."

Frank Partnoy, The Match King, Public Affairs, Copyright 2009 by Frank Partnoy, pp.
38-39.