JP Morgan Dies in Rome: House of Morgan Partners Blame Pujo Committee Testimony Stress

John Pierpont Morgan, the seventy-five-year-old financier who had dominated American banking for decades, died at the Grand Hotel in Rome. House of Morgan partners blamed his death on the stress of testifying before the Pujo Committee in December 1912, though other health factors were involved. Morgan’s doctor declared he had died of “a general nervous and physical breakdown,” with The New York Times headline declaring “J. PIERPONT MORGAN DEAD IN ROME; FINANCIER WORN OUT BY OVERWORK.” Just three months earlier, Morgan had endured grueling testimony before the House Banking Committee’s investigation into the “Money Trust”—a concentrated group of Wall Street bankers exerting powerful control over the nation’s finances through 341 interlocking directorships controlling over $22 billion in resources. Morgan’s daughter Louisa worried over the stress, while his son Jack supplied associates with optimistic reports claiming his father was in “splendid form,” using the code-name “Flitch.” His trip to the Capitol for the Pujo appearance transpired aboard a private train with Louisa, several business partners, and fifteen lawyers in the retinue.

During his testimony, the elderly Morgan was called to answer for Wall Street’s alleged sins as the “boss” of American finance capitalism. Committee counsel Samuel Untermyer subjected Morgan to hours of questioning about the concentration of banking power. Morgan complained about the government’s desire to examine his financial affairs, insisting that character and trust—not money or collateral—formed the basis of credit. The investigation documented how JP Morgan & Co., along with five other banking houses, controlled a vast network unified by interlocking directorships in 112 corporations. The committee’s final 1913 report declared that existing banking and credit practices resulted in “a vast and growing concentration of control of money and credit in the hands of a comparatively few men.” Morgan died convinced the nation had turned against him despite his many “good deeds,” including personally preventing economic collapse during the Panic of 1907 by raising funds to prop up struggling institutions.

Morgan’s death and the Pujo Committee’s findings directly influenced passage of the Federal Reserve Act (1913), Federal Trade Commission Act (1914), and Clayton Antitrust Act (1914). Louis Brandeis popularized the committee’s findings in his book “Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It.” However, Morgan’s death did not end the House of Morgan’s power—it simply passed to his son Jack and the institutional network Morgan had built. The Federal Reserve Act itself represented a compromise between those favoring government control and those favoring private bank control, with private banks controlling twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks overseen by a board of presidential appointees. This hybrid structure ensured that Wall Street influence over monetary policy would persist institutionally even as individual bankers like Morgan passed from the scene, establishing a pattern where financial power would become embedded in seemingly public institutions rather than wielded openly by individual titans.