Investing for Middle America: John Elliott Tappan and the Origins of American Express Financial Services [Hardcover]

In 1892, John Elliott Tappan, a twenty-four year old Minneapolis lawyer, was worried how people saved their money. Out of these concerns, Investors Syndicate was born, one of the first of a new type of financial institution designed to meet the savings needs of the average person. Here is the story of this financial pioneer, whose innovation has today grown into one of the nation's largest financial services companies, American Express Financial Advisors. The book draws on Tappan's diaries, business correspondence, and various family oral histories. Tappan's life, work and ideas chronicle the changes in spending and savings, work and leisure, the culture of politics and money, that have given rise to our modern notions of consumer finance.Preface Acknowledgements Prologue From Frontier to Finance The Money Question A Foundation of Trust A Turning Point Adversity and Survival The Agency System War and Betrayal Into the Sunset Epilogue Notes on Sources

This book should be read by all those who aspire to become financial entrepreneurs and leaders in our financial community. John Elliott Tappan built an extraordinary financial institution (IDS). He did so by placing first the interests of his clients, and by having a long term view and a strong desire to democratize the savings and investment process. In the hurly-burly of today s financial markets, these attributes are often neglected, to the detriment of all. - Henry Kaufman, Henry Kaufman and Co., Inc.

Biography, the history of an important institution, and insights into the social, cultural, and political history of the United States at the turn of the last century are all here in this book, and they are intertwined in a way that makes it compelling reading. It is rare for a book to succeed on so many levels. John Tappan was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary idea who made a remarkable contribution to the consumer financial services industry. But in another sense, he was an ordinl£ž