http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,740853,00.htmlMonday, Dec. 22, 1930
Brown-Harriman
Merged last week were two of the greatest names in Wall Street: Brown and Harriman.
Of the 16 partners in the new firm of Brown Bros., Harriman & Co., eleven are Yale graduates. While in college they led cheers, edited papers, rowed, played hockey, managed musical clubs and were otherwise popular and prominent: Since college days, by far the most spectacular has been William Averell Harriman, able, active son of the late great Edward Henry Harriman-who with $400,000,000 at his command controlled 60,000 miles of railroad, built up Union Pacific, fought the memorable battle with James Jerome Hill over Northern Pacific.
In 1919 William Averell Harriman and his brother, Edward Roland Noel Harriman, formed W. A. Harriman & Co. Work, say friends, burned out the senior Harriman. Unlike his father, W. A. Harriman is a strenuous athlete, famed chiefly as a poloist. In 1920 he set out to make the U. S. great upon the sea, formed an alliance with Hamburg-American Line. Thwarted in the fulfillment of this, he has endeavored to place the name of Harriman in the air as his father did upon the land, and last year his firm together with Lehman Bros, and others backed Aviation Corp. His other interests are many, include important rail-road directorates. The firm was one of the first to enter Europe after the War, made many a loan in Germany. It has been active in Polish financing, and financed Silesian zinc mines with the Anaconda group.
Far different has been the history of Brown Bros. & Co., as antiquely respectable among financial houses as Brown's Hotel of London is among hostelries. It was formed in 1825 by Alexander Brown, previously a linen merchant, and in 1833 devoted itself exclusively to finance. For 75 years the firm has been friendly with all Scandinavian countries. In England it is well known through its associate, Brown, Shipley & Co., in which Montagu Norman was a partner before he became head of the Bank of England. In Brown Bros, originated the Traveler's Letter of Credit. From the day when the first great foreign loan was placed in the U. S. in the form of a $500,000,000 Anglo-French issue, Brown Bros, have been the principal for all French loans. In Brown Bros. Wall Street office the son of many a prominent foreign banker learns U. S. methods.
One Brown Bros, partner, Ellery Sedgwick James, was a classmate of Harriman Partners Edward Roland Noel Harriman, Prescott Sheldon Bush and Knight Wooley. And active, well-groomed Brown Bros. Partner Robert Abercrombie Lovett is the son of Judge Robert Scott Lovett, Jongtime personal attorney and close friend of the late Edward Henry Harriman and now chairman of his Union Pacific. Undoubtedly these connections first caused the firms to gravitate toward each other.
Kevin Philips'
American Dynasty, highlights these events about Harriman's entry into the international oil industry with Precott Bush and Neil Mallon of Dresser Industries:
End of Hapsburg Empire caused European nations to seek control of Mid-East Oil. Russia lost her share of the Middle East pie because of revolution. 250-251
Walker SR served as director of Petroleum Bond and Share, was involved in with Harriman's 1922 Russian oil investment company, the major developer on Baku oil field. Baku was close to modern-day Iraq so this is the time the
Bush family pursuit of the region's oil began. 251
Harriman purchased Dresser Manufacturing, an oil service company which later became Dresser Industries. Harriman's managing partner Prescott Bush rigorously supervised Yale classmate Neil Mallon, installed as Dresser's president. 152
And, then consider this about the history of Brown Bros.:
http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:wioad9iGyi8J:shnv.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html+Brown+Bros+slavery+Confederates&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&ie=UTF-8Another recent book entitled “Complicity - How the North Promoted, Prolonged
and Profited from Slavery. This book was compiled by three journalist from
The Hartford Courant. Among the startling information in this volume is the
fact that a ship based in New York City, sailing under the Union flag for at
least part of its voyage, was still smuggling slaves to Cuba in 1862. That
was well after the “war to end slavery” was well underway.
They also document the roll the slave trade played in developing the wealth
of New England. They referenced the Brown family of Providence Rhode Island
and the conflict between the slaving brother and the abolitionist brother.
They repeated the well known fact that slave money contributed to the
founding of Brown University.
The connection between Providence and the slave trade is clearly portrayed
in the book “Sons of Providence - The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade and
the American Revolution. Written by New England native Charles Rappleye,
the book describes the growth of the slave trade and the infamous “Middle
Passage” during which Northern based ships ran a triangular trade route from
their home ports carrying rum and other commodities to Africa, then a load
of slaves to the Caribbean and back to their home port with a cargo
including molasses to be used to make more rum.