Relationship Banker: Eugene W. Stetson, Wall Street, and American Business, 1916-1959 (review)

the alabama review 234 and written. Along with the photographs comes comprehensive information about each image. Among my favorite items, I especially relished reading John Vlach’s multiple contributions. At the expense of overlooking other subjects, I also gained new insights about Foodways, Hip-Hop, Mardi Gras Celebrations, and Stepping. On this note, I surmise the text offers broad appeal. Alabamians will find several references in passing and, specifically, will want to read Alabama Pottery by Joey Brackner of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. Folklife is a long awaited addition to The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Jerrilyn McGregory Florida State University Relationship Banker: Eugene W. Stetson, Wall Street, and American Business, 1916–1959. By James L. Hunt. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009. 386 pp. $30.00. ISBN 978-0-865-54915-9. This study places Eugene W. Stetson so well in his banking world that it is also a brief discourse on New York banking history from the late nineteenth century to Stetson’s death in 1959. Well known in southern financial and corporate circles, Stetson is given credit for the success of many southern companies because of his dedication to southern economic development through his position at Guaranty Trust Company of New York. The South’s industrial growth was hobbled by a lack of capital. Stetson not only had a love for the South, he had the know-how, the influence , and the access to capital to encourage its growth. Perhaps Stetson’s finest moments were securing southern control of the Coca-Cola Company and his work with the Alabama, Georgia, Gulf Coast Florida, and Mississippi power companies when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, acting under the New Deal’s Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935) dismantled their New York-dominated holding company, Commonwealth & Southern, and demanded the southern operating companies be spun off. In the post–World War II years, Stetson guided southern electric leaders and used his influence to secure southern control of the Southern Company, which became an independent holding company with headquarters in Atlanta in 1949. Stetson was born in Hawkinsville, Georgia, in 1881, and grew up in Macon, the son of a farmer, merchant, and former Confederate officer. He attended Mercer College, dropped out in 1901, and went into banking in Macon. He rose quickly because of his hard work, attention to July 2011 235 detail, and sound judgment, but especially because of his personality and his ability to take care of his customers. He was a handsome man with charisma who made friends easily and earned the devotion of clients. As he became active in national banking associations and attended New York meetings, he quickly drew the attention of financial leaders and in 1916 was offered a vice-presidency at Guaranty Trust of New York. At this time London was relinquishing its financial status to New York because of the pressures of World War I, J. P. Morgan was trying to dominate American financial dealings, and the economic boom of the 1920s was on the horizon. James L. Hunt, a Mercer law professor who carefully mined the available sources on Stetson and Guaranty Trust, contends that Stetson epitomizes the “relationship banker” who looks after his customers’ needs and stays in close touch with them. Hunt contends that Stetson’s leadership —being elected a director in 1928, president in 1941, and chairman of the board in 1944—was largely responsible for some of Guaranty Trust’s major successes until his death in 1959. Hunt considers Stetson’s involvement with the sale of the Coca-Cola Company to the Woodruffs, the restructuring of the debt of the Illinois Central Railroad, and the 1959 merger of Guaranty Trust and J. P. Morgan Company into Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York to be Stetson’s more significant accomplishments . Alabamians, on the other hand, will be more interested in Stetson’s association with Thomas W. Martin, president of Alabama Power, and Eugene A. Yates, president of the Southern Company, in the struggle to separate the southern electric operating companies from northern control. Martin believed that the South could not develop its full economic potential until it controlled its own power generation and...