Financial History Issue 124 (Winter 2018) | Page 16
A check for $642,600,000, believed to be the
largest ever written for investment purposes to
date, was handed over to the Ford Foundation by
Blyth and Co., senior member of the underwriters
group, which handled the sale of Ford stock to
the public, 1956.
by the Gold Rush and traveled to Califor-
nia on horseback in 1849. In 1857, he estab-
lished a grocery business in Sacramento
with Lewis Gerstle, a fellow Bavarian
immigrant, who later became his brother-
in-law. After the Great Flood of California
devastated the city in 1862, Sloss and Gers-
tle moved to San Francisco to open a stock
brokerage firm, and in 1868, the partners
expanded their interests after Secretary of
State William Seward purchased the terri-
tory of Alaska from Russia.
Sloss and Gerstle were aided by Gustave
Niebaum, a Finnish immigrant from the
Russian empire, who was consul of Russia
to the United States and had worked for the
Russian-American Company, a chartered
Russian firm that had “exclusive trading
control over Alaska and Russian America
since the late 18th century.” With other
partners, they created the Alaska Com-
mercial Company and set up a network
of trading posts in the territory. Later they
obtained a proprietary lease for the seal
fur trade from Congress. After the lease
expired in 1890, the company expanded
into “a variety of enterprises including
salmon canneries, a tannery, mines, trans-
portation, utilities and especially land rec-
lamation and speculation in California.”
From the time of their arrival in Califor-
nia, Sloss and his partners combined eco-
nomic activity with social development.
They became part of a close knit, influen-
tial network of “San Francisco’s ‘first Jew-
ish families,’ sometimes referred to as ‘The
Gilded Circle.’” After Sloss’s death in 1902,
Louis Sloss & Co. continued as a family
holding company. It was revived in 1909
as an investment bank, an event that was
precipitated by the economic development
of Sacramento Valley.
The newly-incorporated Louis Sloss &
Co., Inc. “went to work chiefly selling first
mortgage bonds in the Natomas Consoli-
dated… a gold-dredging company…,” in
which the Sloss family were principals.
Having entered into the relatively unfa-
miliar territory of bond financing, how-
ever, the family decided to bring in new
men from outside the family to manage
the firm. On the recommendation of the
president of the Bank of California, Frank
B. Anderson, the family hired Charles R.
Blyth and Eugene R. Hallett.
The son of a bank cashier, Blyth was a
native of Ohio and a graduate of Amherst
College. He began working as a dealer in
commercial paper for the Chicago branch
of Boston firm George H. Burr & Co. and
moved to San Francisco with the firm in
1907. He started with Louis Sloss & Co.
in 1909. Blyth was joined by Hallett, who
came from the San Francisco branch of
N.W. Halsey & Co, a New York bond
house founded by Noah W. Halsey at the
turn of the century. In due course, the firm
hired four men to sell bonds underwrit-
ten by the firm: Dean G. Witter, a native
of Wisconsin who was raised in north-
ern California, and John D. Hartigan, a
Nebraska native, joined the firm in 1910.
Two years later, George C. Leib, a Ken-
tucky native, and Roy L. Shurtleff, a Cali-
fornia native, were hired. Though from
different parts of the United States, Witter,
14 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Winter 2018 | www.MoAF.org
Hallett, Shurtleff and Hartigan were all
graduates of the University of California.
Despite hopeful beginnings, the early
days of the 20th century were challenging
for the firm. According to the company
history, the Panic of 1907, the Congres-
sional Money Trust investigation and the
passage of the Federal Reserve Act created
new scrutiny and regulation for the bank-
ing industry, leading the Sloss family to
reconsider their business. Further details
provided by Roy Shurtleff’s oral history
in 1982 indicate that the family encoun-
tered dire economic difficulties as land
development in the Natomas and West
Sacramento declined.
In 1914, the Sloss family made the deci-
sion to leave investment banking, concen-
trating their family holdings in their core
businesses. Blyth, Witter, Leib, Hartigan
and Shurtleff decided to strike out on their
own and form Blyth, Witter & Co., special-
izing in corporate and municipal bonds.
Blyth, Witter & Co. (1914)
Despite the break with the Sloss firm, the
new partners were fortunate in that they
could build on Sloss’s commercial net-
work, which the San Francisco Chronicle
called “one of the best sales organizations
ever built on this coast.” Their first large
account was for a contact Charles Blyth
made while at Louis Sloss & Co.: the Mt.
Whitney Power & Electric Company of
California. This later led to a “long and
valued relationship with the Bank of Cali-
fornia.” These ties helped the young firm