A year later the “Evening Post” made a further examination, considering not merely the fellows and the overseers, but the nine directors of the Harvard Alumni Association, the nine members of the Association’s nominating committee, twenty candidates for overseers who had just been called, and six who had just been called as candidates for directors of the Association. That made a body of eighty Harvard graduates, forty of them Boston men, and twenty-nine of these forty being financial men, or attorneys for the State Street houses. All but six were connected with the three interlocked financial institutions; twenty were connected with Lee, Higginson & Company or its institutions—nine with the Old Colony Trust Company, the great Lee-Higginson bank, five with Lee, Higginson & Company itself, four directors in another Lee-Higginson bank, six directors in a Lee-Higginson savings bank, six in another Lee-Higginson savings bank, four in a Lee-Higginson insurance company, and six attorneys for these. “State Street,” you see, is like Virginia; the old families have been intermarrying for so long that everybody is related to everybody else.
A Harvard graduate wrote to the New York “Evening Post,” “Harvard has assets to be invested of about thirty-four million dollars. Is that the reason why practically five-sixths of the Boston business representation (of Harvard) is affiliated with investment banking concerns, or is it because they wish to use Harvard as a knighthood for their friends?” The “Evening Post” went on politely to say that it did not believe this was the case; the financial domination of Harvard had resulted by accident! But this bit of humor did not save the “Evening Post” from the wrath of the interlocking directorate. The paper offended also by opposing America’s entry into the war—and so the valuable advertising business of Lee, Higginson & Co. was withdrawn, and shortly afterwards the owner of the paper was forced to sell out to Mr. Lamont, a partner of the House of Morgan. This story is in “The Brass Check,” page 248. To complete it we should note the part played by Harvard in the swallowing. It was a Harvard overseer who bought the “Evening Post”; another overseer is now president and trustee of the “Evening Post” company, and a third overseer is also a trustee of the “Evening Post” company!