We, the People

To Wall Streeters, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, the world's biggest brokerage house, has long been known as "We, the People," "The Thundering Herd," "Bureau of Missing Persons." A supermarket of finance with 104 partners in no cities, Merrill Lynch handles everything from commodities to 10% of all trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Founder Charles Edward Merrill always took the gags as a compliment. Over the years, his driving ambition was to convince the small investor that he should buy a stake in the U.S. economy. Said Merrill: "America's industrial machine is owned at the grass roots, where it should be, and not in some mythical Wall Street."

Prophet & Savior. Charlie Merrill did not start out to bring Main Street to Wall Street. The son of a Florida country doctor, he spent two years at Amherst College, quit to work for Eastman, Dillon & Co. Later he set up his own firm, then teamed up with Edmund C. Lynch. As an underwriter and investment banker, Merrill Lynch helped set up such big chain-store operations as S.S. Kresge, Grand Union and Safeway Stores. As brokers, Merrill Lynch & Co. also built up a sizable business during the roaring '20s.

If other brokers thought the good times would last forever, Charlie Merrill saw the 1929 crash coming, urged customers to put their financial houses in order. When the crash came, some of Merrill Lynch's customers went broke, but others, who had taken Charlie Merrill's advice, saved an estimated $6,000,000. Merrill's firm was rock solid. Yet Merrill was so depressed by the sorry state of the industry that he transferred much of his capital and customers to E. A. Pierce, one of the biggest wire houses, for nearly ten years restricted himself to piling up a fortune (once estimated at well over $5,000,000) in investment banking.

People often thought Charlie Merrill spent his wealth as fast as he made it. He cut a wide swath through international cafe society, loved good food and champagne. He owned three luxurious homes (in Palm Beach, Fla., Southampton, L.I., and Barbados), and embarked on an equal number of marriages.

Confidence & Growth. In 1938 Charlie Merrill went back to the brokerage business. Combining first with Pierce, later with Brokers Charles Erasmus Fenner and Alpheus Crosby Beane, he set out to help rebuild U.S. confidence in stocks by offering investors the most conservative advice, cutting out service fees. In 1949 alone, Merrill Lynch's brokers gave lectures to 30,000 women in 65 cities, spent some $400,000 on advertising.

In 1944 Merrill suffered a heart attack, which gradually slowed him to a point where he went into semiretirement. Though he was a rich man with a 20% interest in his firm (which he left in trust to colleges, churches and hospitals), he never retired entirely. Last week, at 70, Charlie Merrill died in his sleep at his Southampton home. Recently he gave one of his last bits of advice to Main Street: "I think every American would do well to invest one-twelfth of his investable funds monthly in stocks over the next five years."

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