Masterful Lady

"There's the woman who runs me. . . . She has a great deal of sense," said the late John Pierpont Morgan, years ago, when his daughter Anne left his library after having interrupted a group of business bigwigs.

Last week in the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, Manhattan, 2,000 men and women in evening dress sat down to an expensive banquet. Each had paid $205 for the privilege--$5 for the food, $200 because Anne Morgan had an idea. There was, of course, a speakers' table, lifted not so much by carpenters as by its occupants--a half-dozen ambassadors, a sprinkling of ministers and delegates from the world's various corners, and Anne Tracy Morgan who thought nothing of summoning them. Coffee finished, they arose in diplomatic order to speak. Sir Esme Howard told of Great Britain. . . . Nobile Giacome de Martino told of Signor Mussolini. . . . What was this --a forum to determine international policy? No. Anne Morgan had another more pertinent answer. Said she:

"We are not feminists in the American Woman's Association. Women have come into the business world with a contribution of their own to offer . . . we are self-supporting . . . we are going to build a 26-story building for professional and business women . . . you [the assembled] are now our partners . . . your $200 has purchased each of you four shares in the project."

In glowing words she drew a picture of the clubhouse: 1,225 bedrooms, a miniature park enclosed, a garden terrace for tea, fireplaces flanked by soft divans, ballrooms, assembly rooms for musicales and lectures, libraries, laundries, dining-rooms, cafeteria--she completed her towering picture. The envious were free to mutter "ground-grippers."

"Finances?" she asked herself; then with soundness, thoroughness, detail (while people thought of her great father), answered the question. Thunderous applause resounded as she concluded her speech. The clubhouse was as good as built.

When Anne Morgan staged a prizefight in Madison Square Garden for the benefit of the War-wracked French peasants, it was not because she was a spinster who had sublimated her activities in "uplift" work. It was because she was a self-determined business woman and a fight was a good stunt. And today, at 54, she more than ever represents and leads independent members of her sex. A business woman, says Miss Morgan, is best characterized by "her utter disregard of business habits."