Wall Street to Main Street
Charles Merrill and Middle-Class Investors

A 1999 biography of Charles Merrill, the founder of the world's largest brokerage and investment firm.

Edwin J. Perkins (Author)

9780521630290, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 April 1999

306 pages, 8 b/w illus. 3 tables
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.57 kg

'This work makes an important contribution to the history of financial services.' Journal of Financial History Review

Wall Street to Main Street, first published in 1999, focuses on the spectacularly successful career of financier Charles Merrill (1885–1956), the founder of Merrill Lynch & Co., the world's largest brokerage and investment firm. Merrill was the most innovative entrepreneur in the United States financial services sector in the twentieth century and the most important figure in promoting common stocks as a prudent long-term investment vehicle for members of the American middle class. With more than 100 branch offices across the nation, his firm solicited millions of middle-class households and became famous for bringing Wall Street to Main Street in the post-World War II era. Today, American investors hold, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds, a greater percentage of common stocks in their financial portfolios than do the citizens of any other country. Based on archival sources, this book is the first biography published about the career of this major Wall Street figure.

Introduction
1. The return to Wall Street
2. Growing up in Florida
3. A Northern education
4. The lure of New York
5. Off to a flying start
6. The booming twenties
7. The Safeway decade
8. Reform on Wall Street
9. Third career: new strategies on Wall Street
10. Testing new strategies: the war years
11. Sharing power with Win Smith
12. The postwar years, 1945–50
13. Last years at the helm, 1951–56
14. Merrill's legacy
Epilogue: Merrill Lynch in the 1990s
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]