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.

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