At 11:56 on the morning of November 7, 1918, the United Press Association in New York City received a cable from its Paris agent. “Urgent. Armistice Allies Germany signed, eleven morning. Hostilities ceased.” Three minutes later the message passed the censor, and minutes after that the news hit the street. “WAR OVER,” screamed the New York Evening World in its biggest type ever. [Read more…] about The False Armistice of World War One
Wall Street
The Dark History of Brown Brothers Harriman
Documents at the New-York Historical Society and corporate records show that the founders of Brown Brothers Harriman, based in New York City, built the bank by lending millions of dollars to Southern planters and arranging for the shipment and sale of slave-grown tobacco and cotton in New England and Great Britain. [Read more…] about The Dark History of Brown Brothers Harriman
The First State of the Union Address
According to Article II, Sec. 3, of the United States Constitution, “The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United Sta6es on April 30, 1789. He delivered the first State of the Union Address to Congress on January 8, 1790. At the time, the United States capital was in the city of New York. [Read more…] about The First State of the Union Address
FDR and Wall Street: Words with Actual Action
The American government has always been corrupt, yet the levels of corruption have varied from time to time. There has always been an element of dark money and insider trading going on, though what is happening now in the 21st century is beyond anything that ever came before.
Everyone in power, or running to get some, seems to be cashing in. That one billion dollars has already been spent by corporate interests in order to influence where hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s money will be spent after this election speaks to this fact. [Read more…] about FDR and Wall Street: Words with Actual Action
Wanna Bet? Election Wagering Is Nothing New
Billionaire Peter Thiel-funded Polymarket, an online crypto-based prediction market that accepts bets on electoral outcomes (among other things) is expected to have $1 billion wagered on the presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris by election day.
That may be a record for election wagering, but betting on politics is nothing new. Wagering on election outcomes is probably as old as elections themselves, and was particularly popular in the United States until it was outlawed. [Read more…] about Wanna Bet? Election Wagering Is Nothing New
New Amsterdam: The Return of the Dutch, and the Fate of the Wall
The popular narrative of New Amsterdam (what is now Lower Manhattan) often concludes this way: In 1664, the English arrived and forever after it was New York. The English won, the Dutch lost, end of story. But once again, the history is more complicated.
Initially, the Dutch were reluctant to go to war with the English over their lost colony; however, the capture of New Netherland was part of a series of hostilities leading to the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in early 1665. The war lasted for over two years. [Read more…] about New Amsterdam: The Return of the Dutch, and the Fate of the Wall
Corporate Takeover: The English Invasion of New Amsterdam
In late August 1664 the Burgomasters and Schepens (mayors and aldermen) of New Amsterdam (what is now Lower Manhattan) were faced with “four King’s frigates from England, sent hither by his Majesty and his brother, the Duke of York, with commission to reduce not only this place, but also the whole N. Netherland under his Majesty’s authority…”
The event was not unexpected. The Dutch had long been wary of their neighbors to the North (the English had settlements in Massachusetts and Connecticut and outposts in eastern Long Island). [Read more…] about Corporate Takeover: The English Invasion of New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam’s Wall: An Etymology of NYC’s Wall Street
I have two definitions of history: one is what happened in the past; the other is the story we tell about what happened in the past. The second is always an incomplete summary of the first, an interpretation meant to make sense of the available evidence.
The further we move from a point in time, the more the story gets muddled, and like DNA, any error in the coding gets passed down to future generations. Digitized history books and old newspaper articles are now remarkably easy to access, however, often these contain speculative history or are based on a misreading of the facts, yielding the historical equivalent of “fake news.” [Read more…] about New Amsterdam’s Wall: An Etymology of NYC’s Wall Street
Good Fences: New Amsterdam’s Wall To Keep Out The English
The Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (what is now Lower Manhattan) implemented its city charter on February 2, 1653 (Candlemas Day), the traditional swearing-in day of Dutch city officials.
On this day the Records of New Amsterdam begin, and on February 10th, the Burgomasters and Schepens, roughly equivalent to a Mayor and City Council, held their first formal meeting. [Read more…] about Good Fences: New Amsterdam’s Wall To Keep Out The English
The Great Depression in New York City: A Primer
As the 1920s advanced, the economy soared. But with that dramatic expansion came irrational exuberance and unchecked speculation: stock prices reached levels that had no basis in reality; margin purchases were rampant; banks handed out loans lavishly and imprudently; and giddy product production resulted in a vast oversupply of goods.
On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, it all came crashing down. This is the story of the Great Depression in New York City. [Read more…] about The Great Depression in New York City: A Primer
Citigroup Acknowledges it ‘Indirectly’ Profited from Slavery – Maybe
Citigroup now acknowledges that its predecessor banks may have indirectly profited from slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Connections with slavery include a 19th century bank president who promoted the Cuban sugar trade, the relationship between the Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, one of Citigroup’s predecessor banks, and Alabama cotton planters, and Lehman Brothers, which merged with Citibank in 1998 and in the 1850s traded in cotton. [Read more…] about Citigroup Acknowledges it ‘Indirectly’ Profited from Slavery – Maybe
Here in Manhattan: A New Pop-History Guide
The new book Here in Manhattan: A site-by-site guide to the history of the world’s greatest city (Sutherland House Books, 2023) by Tom Begnal tells the story of Manhattan, ranging from Fort Washington to Wall Street, bridging important history and pop-culture moments. Here in Manhattan is a site-by-site guide to the wonders of the city. [Read more…] about Here in Manhattan: A New Pop-History Guide
Ben Brotherson’s Bank Scheme
Around 1800, Philip and Catharine Brotherson arrived in Blue Corners on the western edge of Charlton in Saratoga County. Over the next 40 years, their five children grew to maturity, the last being Benjamin Kissam Brotherson, born in 1819.
At the age of sixteen, Benjamin was hired as a clerk for the dry goods merchant James Winne in Albany, New York. During his time in Albany, he was known as an upstanding young man of good moral character. Three years later, in 1838, he moved to the city of New York and took a job at Union Bank, where he would work for the next twenty years. [Read more…] about Ben Brotherson’s Bank Scheme
Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People
In 1933, during Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s first year as President, the Democrats launched a number of New Deal social welfare and economic recovery efforts to combat the Great Depression.
Among the more popular and successful of these was the creation of the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), jobs programs which were modeled on similar programs in New York State. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People
The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission
Initially many thought the severe Wall Street crash of October 1929 was a temporary phenomenon and like many subsequent crashes (i.e. 1987, 2008) the stock market would recover in a few months or years.
Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case. After some upward spurts, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange continued to fall for the next three years and economic conditions throughout the country continued to worsen, so that by 1932 the market closed at 41, a drop of 89% over its 1929 high of 381. Employment in Wall Street firms plummeted, as the once heady activity evaporated and the Great Depression took hold.
The response would require a great reset between Wall Street and working Americans. [Read more…] about The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission
Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929
The break-up of Standard Oil and other monopolies during the Trust-busting Era, created somewhat greater competition, but did not significantly impact Wall Street, or its major players. For example, after the success of the Justice Department in the 1911 Supreme Court Case United States v. Standard Oil (in which the Court ruled that Standard Oil of New Jersey violated the Sherman Antitrust Act), the company was ordered broken into 34 ostensibly independent companies. *
The stock in each of these companies was distributed to Standard Oil Company shareholders (principally the Rockefeller family) and each company had separate boards of directors and separate management, but by and large they continued to operate on separate floors of the same building — 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929
Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt
As control of the American economy became increasingly centralized in trusts located on Wall Street after the Civil War, and the wealth of men like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller grew exponentially, there developed an increasing backlash against such concentrations of wealth. In the 1880s, through an investigation by a committee of the New York State Legislature, Americans became aware that Standard Oil secretly controlled a number of supposedly competing oil companies. By 1910 almost 90% of the world’s oil supply was controlled from the company’s headquarters at 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt
Wall Street History: Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan
The period after the Civil War was one of significant economic and technological expansion in the nation and one in which corporations headquartered in Lower Manhattan and Wall Street would obtain a significant hegemony over the American economy.
This was a time in which individual entrepreneurs were running private businesses located on Wall Street. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan
Wall St History: 19th Century Growth of Investment Banking
With the demise of the Philadelphia based Bank of the United States, the financial center of the country shifted to the privately owned state chartered financial firms on Wall Street.
As the nation recovered from the severe depression in the Panic of 1837, President James K. Polk’s policy of Manifest Destiny took root and significant westward settlement of Indigenous land expanded in the 1840s. Fortified by the Erie Canal and its Canal Fund, Wall Street financial institutions became strongly influenced by four factors: the invention of the telegraph; the development of railroads; the discovery of gold and other precious minerals in the West (particularly the California Gold Rush of 1849); and the arrival of significant numbers of Jewish and Irish immigrants in the city of New York. [Read more…] about Wall St History: 19th Century Growth of Investment Banking
Wall Street History: The Bank War & The Shift of Financial Power to New York
At the time construction of the Erie Canal was begun in 1817, Philadelphia (the second largest city in the United States) was the nation’s financial center. Although there were successful banks in New York, Philadelphia, one of America’s leading seaports, had been the capital during the American Revolution and of the nation (1790 to 1800), and so was considered the financial center of the country.
This is not to say there was not some rivalry between financial institutions located on Wall Street in New York and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, but the latter was the site of the first bank established in the nation in 1781, the Bank of North America, and more importantly became the site of the First Bank of the United States, which Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton had promoted. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Bank War & The Shift of Financial Power to New York