Other People's Money

Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It is a collection of essays written by Louis Brandeis published as a book in 1914. The book attacked the use of investment funds to promote the consolidation of various industries under the control of a small number of corporations, which Brandeis alleged were working in concert to prevent competition. Brandeis harshly criticized investment bankers who controlled large amounts of money deposited in their banks by middle-class people. The heads of these banks, Brandeis pointed out, routinely sat on the boards of railroad companies and large industrial manufacturers of various products, and routinely directed the resources of their banks to promote the interests of their own companies. These companies, in turn, sought to maintain control of their industries by crushing small businesses and stamping out innovators who developed better products to compete against them. Brandeis supported his contentions with a discussion of the actual dollar amounts -- in millions of dollars -- controlled by specific banks, industries, and industrialists such as J. P. Morgan, noting that these interests had recently acquired a far larger proportion of American wealth than corporate entities had ever had before. He extensively cited testimony from a Congressional investigation performed by the Pujo Committee, named after Louisiana Representative Arsène Pujo, into self-serving and monopolistic business dealing. The book received great publicity at the time, and was widely lauded by legal academics. Attention to the book was amplified by Brandeis' nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1916.

By : Louis D. Brandeis (1856 - 1941)

01 - Our Financial Oligarchy 02 - How The Combiners Combine 03 - Interlocking Directorates 04 - Serve One Master Only! 05 - What Publicity Can Do 06 - Where The Banker Is Superfluous 07 - Big Men and Little Businesses 08 - A Curse OF Bigness 09 - The Failure Of Banker Management 10 - The Inefficiency of the Oligarchy

In 1912, Woodrow Wilson campaigned for President using many Progressive ideas about strengthening the economy: banking reform, tariff reduction and the elimination of monopolies and trusts. The consolidation of these ideas became known as the New Freedom.

After Wilson's election, Louis Brandeis (who was responsible for many of Wilson's ideas in the first place) wrote a series of articles for Harper's Weekly which outlined why the New Freedom was necessary and how best to implement it. In 1914, the articles were collected in book form and published under the title Other People's Money--and How the Bankers Use It.

Brandeis' central thesis was that the large banking houses were colluding with businessmen to create trusts in America's major industries. Brandeis felt that not only did trusts stifle competition, but also they became so large that they became unable to operate efficiently.

Brandeis backed up his arguments with facts--copious facts gleaned from his battles against J. P. Morgan and Charles Mellen in the New Haven Railroad merger battle and from the Pujo Committee--a House committee report that investigated the abuses of the "Money Trust."

Wilson was able to push through a number of laws regarding the regulation of business and trusts, but in many ways, due to mergers and stock manipulation, conditions in the business world today remain the same. Many of the details in Other People's Money may be dated, but its central ideas remain relevant--so much so that it is still in print almost 90 years after it was first published.