"All Paths Unite!"

George Fisher Baker was born in Troy, N. Y. in 1840. His line of shrewd, blue-eyed, hard-bitten Yankees went back seven generations to Boston and 1635. When George Fisher Baker was seven years old a German clerk made this entry in the Frankfort-On-Main birth register: "Schiff, Moses, Israelitish citizen, whose wife Clara, nee Niederhofheim, gave birth on Sunday morning, Jan. 10, at 5 o'clock, to a legitimate son--Jacob Henry." The Schiffs were merchants in a city of great Jewish banking houses. Under the same roof but a few doors down from the Schiffs on what was then known as Jew Street was the ancestral home of the Rothschilds (see p. 20). The Frankfort air was heavy with money. When Jacob Henry Schiff arrived in Manhattan the year the Civil War ended he instinctively turned to brokerage and banking for a livelihood. George Fisher Baker got his inspiration from his Uncle John who spent his time lolling on a piazza. Uncle John, it seemed, lived on "interest money." And George F. Baker became the richest, most powerful and most taciturn commercial banker in U. S. history. No other large financial institution in the U. S. could show a record for consistent money-making to match that of the fabulous Baker bank -- Manhattan's First National. In financial stature George F. Baker with his sideburns and fedora towered beside his great & good friend John Pierpont Morgan, the Elder. Jacob Henry Schiff rose to the undisputed leadership of U. S. Jewry. Almost single-handed he built up the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. from a small concern founded in Lafayette, Ind. by two retired commission merchants, to a point where its only rival in power & prestige was the House of Morgan. Philosophical old Jacob Schiff had a favorite saying: "On the mountain top all paths unite!" Last week the-House of Schiff and the House of Baker entered into their first contractual alliance. Mr. & Mrs. George Fisher Baker Jr. announced the engagement of their daughter Edith, 20, to John Mortimer Schiff. 29. only son of the only son of Jacob Henry. The two long paths that met on the mountain top of this third-generation betrothal had never crossed before. Rather, the one from Frankfort and the one from Troy had run parallel for nearly three-quarters of a century. Jacob Schiff was too urbane, and George F. Baker was too smart, ever to become embroiled in the raucous battles of the market place. Occasionally they had backed opposing forces but always with the fine disinterestedness of a French munitions maker. More often than not they acted in harmony to keep the peace. The present head of the House of Schiff was a Kuhn, Loeb partner when he inherited his father's 13% interest. This interest is smaller than that of his uncle, Felix Warburg (18%), or of Otto Kahn (14%). But in capital contributed he stands first with $6.500,000. John Schiff also inherits the bigger share of his father's fortune, estimated at the time of his death (1931) to be $100,000.000. John Schiffs grandfather, old Jacob Henry, left an estate in 1920 of $34,000.000 which was divided between John's father Mortimer and his aunt. Mrs. Warburg. Young John Schiff is quiet, affable, able. After he graduated from Yale in 1925 he went to Oxford for a year, later serving apprenticeships with Bankers Trust Co. and Missouri Pacific R. R. Dignified and conscientious, he has one of the biggest and swankest estates on the North Shore of Long Island. He plays polo, raises prizewinning flowers and vegetables.

The Baker fortune has been spread thinner than the Schiffs but there was more of it to begin with. Old George F. had one son, two daughters. Edith Baker is one of eleven grandchildren. When George F. died in 1931, having outlived all contemporary 19th Century titans except John Davison Rockefeller, he was estimated to be the third or fourth richest man in the U. S. Estimates of the wealth piled up by the simple process of buying good stocks and sitting down on them ran from, $100,000.000 to $500,000,000. His 22,000 shares of First National Bank even now have a market value of $36,000,000, and the annual dividend of $100 per share provides an income of $2.200,000. No one knows the full extent of the other Baker holdings but at various times the Bakers have been listed as holders of 74,000 shares of American Telephone, 204,000 New York Central, 87,000 U. S. Steel, 713,000 Delaware, Lackawanna & Western. Their interests in National Biscuit and American Can are known to be large.

One of the only son's four children, Granddaughter Edith Baker should fare at least as well as any of the other eleven heirs presumptive. She is blonde, hazel-eyed, trim, popular. In her socialite world she is regarded as a very pleasant person who would rather sit and watch games than play them. Her friends call her "TeeTee."

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