Boston’s banking concentration is not limited to the legal confines of the city. Around Boston proper are over thirty suburbs, which with it form what is popularly known as “Greater Boston.” These suburban municipalities, and also other important cities like Worcester and Springfield, are, in many respects, within Boston’s “sphere of influence.” Boston’s inner banking group has interlocked, not only 33 of the 42 banks of Boston proper, as above shown, but has linked with them, by interlocking directorships, at least 42 other banks and trust companies in 35 other municipalities.
Once Lee, Higginson & Co. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. were active competitors. They are so still in some small, or purely local matters; but both are devoted co-operators with the Morgan associates in larger and interstate transactions; and the alliance with these great Boston banking houses has been cemented by mutual stockholdings and co-directorships. Financial concentration seems to have found its highest expression in Boston.
Somewhat similar relations exist between the triple alliance and Chicago’s great financial institutions—its First National Bank, the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, and the Continental & Commercial National Bank—which together control resources of $561,000,000. And similar relations would doubtless be found to exist with the leading bankers of the other important financial centers of America, as to which the Pujo Committee was prevented by lack of time from making investigation.
THE AUXILIARIES
Such are the primary, such the secondary powers which comprise the Money Trust; but these are supplemented by forces of magnitude.