Left : Brown Brothers office at 59 Wall Street , circa 1865 . Right : Brown Brothers Harriman office at 140 Broadway .
Ajay Suresh drastic action was necessary . Though nearly a generation separated him from those young bucks on the train , Thatcher , a product of the same schools and the same upbringing , was essentially an older version of them . The cohort of younger Yale grads saw the opportunity , but it was Thatcher and his older cousin James who understood the need . So did Averell Harriman , who was flush with the millions provided by his father ’ s fortune . He had money , but his business was struggling as well . Brown Brothers had the history and the standing . And so , following that genial conversation over cards and drinks in a first-class railcar , it was agreed that the two firms would merge to save both , with the fortune of Harriman attached to the reputation of Brown Brothers .
For Wall Street , that innocuous December New York Times headline wasn ’ t so innocuous . It signaled to the financial world that two of the major players of Wall Street would , at least for the moment , be fine . In a time of rampant bank closures and widespread panic , the announcement of the formation of Brown Brothers Harriman was a respite , a message that said , “ It will be all right ; there is shelter in the storm .”
The Great Depression would get considerably worse before it got better , but Brown Brothers Harriman remained standing and became a pillar of what would soon be called the American Establishment . Its partners would play a central
role in the creation of what Time ’ s founding editor and fellow Yale alum Henry Luce dubbed “ the American century ,” a mid-20th century imperium that saw a marriage of American money and American power that spanned the globe . It didn ’ t last a century , but at its apex , the American century was staffed by Brown Brothers . Prescott Bush served as a US senator for Connecticut and progenitor of two Presidents . Lovett became Assistant Secretary of War , Assistant Secretary of State and finally Secretary of Defense during the height of the Korean War . Averell Harriman would have a long career as a diplomat and statesman , serving as Franklin Roosevelt ’ s envoy to Stalin , Secretary of Commerce under Truman and then governor of New York and finally as the most senior diplomat in the Kennedy and Johnson State Department , though not , to his unspoken chagrin , as Secretary of State .
These men were , as Dean Acheson ( who to his everlasting pride was Secretary of State ) would later remark , present at the creation . They defined the Cold War political and economic system that governed the world after World War II , a system that remains largely , if shakily , in place . Directly or indirectly , this cohort created every major institution that shapes the international system today , from the World Trade Organization to NATO to the United Nations to the World
Bank . They established the primacy of the almighty dollar . And they built the apparatus of the American national security state , including the Defense Department , the National Security Council and the CIA .
The influence of the firm , however , is even deeper than that , spanning nearly the entire history of the United States . The firm started , as most ventures do , innocuously enough , founded at the turn of the 19th century by an immigrant with modest dreams , an Irish refugee fleeing the sectarian violence of his homeland . He set up a linen importing business in Baltimore , which morphed into a merchant bank , and as it grew and evolved under his sons , Brown Brothers helped turn the United States into a country where money had an outsized role . The American economic system was messy , chaotic and often hugely destructive even as it unlocked unprecedented potential .
The House of Brown , straddling the Atlantic with branches in Liverpool , Baltimore , Philadelphia and New York , was at the center of the alchemy , managed by a family of upright , God-loving bankers , fathers and sons and then grandsons , steeped in rectitude and service , at times dull , always — more or less — honorable . In a world where money was plentiful , and promiscuously so , it helped to have stolid bankers at the choke point , regulating the flow , steering through crises , keeping the excesses of greed and panic at bay .
16 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Summer 2021 | www . MoAF . org