The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar (Enterprise) [Hardcover]

H. W. Brands (Author)

Book Description

Series: Enterprise | Publication Date: October 16, 2006

A best-selling historian's gripping account of the powerful men who controlled America's financial destiny.

From the first days of the United States, a battle raged over money. On one side were the democrats, who wanted cheap money and feared the concentration of financial interests in the hands of a few. On the other were the capitalists who sought the soundness of a national bank—and the profits that came with it.

In telling this exciting story, H. W. Brands focuses on five "Money Men": Alexander Hamilton, who championed a national bank; Nicholas Biddle, whose run-in with Andrew Jackson led to the bank's demise; Jay Cooke, who financed the Union in the Civil War; Jay Gould, who tried to corner the gold market; and J. P. Morgan, whose position was so commanding that he bailed out the U.S. Treasury.

The Money Men is a riveting narrative, a revealing history of the men who fought over the lifeblood of American commerce and power.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brands appraises five key players in American financial history: Alexander Hamilton, who advocated federal assumption of state Revolutionary War debt through the establishment of a national bank; Nicholas Biddle, who presided over the Bank of the United States when it failed under pressure from Andrew Jackson; Jay Cooke, who financed the Union through retail bonds during the Civil War; Jay Gould, who precipitated the Black Friday collapse of gold prices in 1869; and J.P. Morgan, who stabilized the financial panic of 1907. Each man, Brands explains, represented capitalism intertwined but in conflict with democracy. Capitalism promoted free trade and strong financial institutions, while democracy called for protectionism and financial institutions that helped customers instead of making insiders rich. This inherent tension, the author writes, was resolved by the 1913 compromise that created the Federal Reserve System. The author's generalizations, however insightful, make rigid organizing principles, given that different political and economic forces shaped each era. Focusing on one capitalist per episode also distorts the stories, as does lurching from crisis to crisis while glossing over the important consensus developments that occurred in between. Brands (Andrew Jackson) delivers a competent but schematic general history. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Brands, historian and author, identifies five Americans who played critical roles in America's formation of a monetary system and hence the history of this country from 1776 until the eve of World War I. Alexander Hamilton, highly influential in the young republic, advocated a national financial institution, a national bank. Nicholas Biddle and his opposition to Andrew Jackson led to the demise of the national bank. Jay Cooke, outstanding bond salesman, kept the Union solvent during the Civil War. Jay Gould tried to corner the gold market, which highlighted the dangers in that dependence, and J. P. Morgan was the savior of the U.S. government and then the target of its antitrust suit. The ongoing "stormy seas of finance" pitted democrats (those who wanted the people to control the money supply to establish equality) against capitalists (those who argued that such equality would destabilize the economy). These factions, which overlapped, finally reached a cease-fire in the creation of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 239 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton; First Edition edition (October 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061841
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061840
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #392,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

H.W. Brands taught at Texas A&M University for sixteen years before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. His books include Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Traitor to His Class and The First American were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 5 poor biographies, October 28, 2007

By 

Dalban (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

I was expecting to read a brief history of the US monetary system and, in particular, the contribution thereof by each of Brand's five "money men". Instead I got a series of disjoint, narrow biographies on five guys who helped shape American banking.

To be sure, the book has its moments, for example, there is an interesting discussion about the way in which funds for the civil war were raised through war bonds -- but it is apparently left as an exercise to the reader to consider how this approached changed the US economy in any broader sense (other than that it helped the North win the war). There is no over-arching description of how each man contributed to the current system or how their work impacted the monetary system over time. Part of the problem - a few specific exceptions aside - is that Brand does not paint any broad strokes that would give the reader an idea about what the economic, monetary and political climate were like during the lives of each of the men. I was left wanting for more thorough discussion concerning the monetary and economic issues of the era.

Perhaps there is a book that describes the continuous evolution of American banking, money and capital markets, but this one isn't it.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brands Doesn't Disappoint, December 31, 2006

By 

Steve Iaco (northern new jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

I am a big fan of Bill Brands' work. He's one academic historian who can make complex subjects understandable to Average Joes like me. Unlike the previous reviewer, I don't have much background on the Money Question, which, as Brands explains, so deeply divided the nation for the first dozen or so decades of its existence. So this book was a learning experience for me.

In "The Money Men," Brands elucidates five pivotal stories in America's economic development:

*Hamilton's efforts to establish a national bank and his program to finance the developing country's growth through national debt
*The Jackson-Biddle "War" in which Pres. Jackson prevailed in killing off the Second Bank of the United States
*Jay Cooke's role in financing the Civil War
*The failed attempt of railroad barons Jay Gould and James Fisk to corner the gold market
*J.P. Morgan's role as the nation's de facto central banker.

Of these, I was particularly drawn to the story about Cooke's innovations in selling Union war bonds to the general public. Major bankers, especially New York bankers, had shown only tepid appetite for such bonds amid Union battlefield setbacks. Indeed, except for Lincoln, Cooke may have been the man most responsible for keeping the Union army in the field.

I was also surprised to learn -- as apparently were his contemporaries --of the relatively modest size of Morgan's estate: $68 million. By comparison, Andrew Carnegie amassed a $225 million fortune.

Brands wraps up with the resolution to the Money Question -- the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. The Fed system was a compromise that combined elements of Hamiltonian capitalism and Jeffersonian democracy. With a couple of glaring exceptions (late 20s/early 30s and 1970s) the Fed system has served the nation's economy well across nine decades now.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to Brands very high standards, December 19, 2006

By 

Shawn S. Sullivan (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

The Money Men by H.W. Brands is a good, albeit quite brief, review of our nation's historical struggle between the forces of capitalism and democracy. Clearly the two, while a recipe for economic success, opportunity and global power, have collided both philosophically and politically over some two hundred thirty years.

Brands, a highly regarded historian at the University of Texas, and the author of such definitive books and "Andrew Jackson" and "The Age of Gold" seems to have radically tailored his prose for this entry into The Enterprise Series. As it is my first read of these books I cannot be sure if the editors at Norton are seeking to spoon feed a reader audience where little existing knowledge of the specific topics is assumed. It seems as if that is the goal and it is a shame as Brands has so much more to offer. His writing is crisp in The Money Men and the history of a developing economic, financial and monetary system is well done, but from a cursory and overview perspective. Those looking for more should do just that, keep looking.