engaged in the mere work of money-making which is better described as “money-getting,” without reference to production; one type grubs away under whatever system obtains, regarding it as fixed as the solar system; another type is sufficiently detached to see the system as an artifice which may be mended, remodeled or supplanted altogether. Paul Warburg, scion of a long line of German Jewish bankers, is of the latter type. He is not content with the fact that the cash-register fills itself with money; he wants also to know how the cash-register works, and whether it can be worked. He is thus a student of money and of the number of ways in which it can be manipulated.
Perhaps it will be best to let him tell his own story as far as he goes. When he told it to the Committee on Banking and Currency of the United States Senate in executive session, there was some dispute as to whether the proceedings should be recorded by the stenographer. It was finally agreed that notes should be made but should not be divulged. The testimony was printed “in confidence” on August 5, 1914, and nominally “made public” on August 12.
The Warburgs are one of the international families whose importance was not realized until the war, and would not have been realized then if their internationalism had not been so apparent. It was an interesting spectacle to see brothers occupying important places of counsel on either side of the great struggle.
Paul Warburg learned the rudiments of banking in his father’s bank at Hamburg, Germany, studying the over-sea trade which is the foundation of that city’s business. The banking house of Warburg in Hamburg dates from 1796.
“After that I went to England, where I stayed for two years, first in the banking and discount firm of Samuel Montague & Company, and after that I took the opportunity of staying two months in the office of a stockbroker in order to learn that part of the business.