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The Last of the Titans
Listen to this story(Note: Producer Matthew Algeo's narrative is in lower case, while all quotes from interview subjects are in upper case
Albert Hamilton Gordon was born in Scituate, Massachusetts in 1901 -- the same year President McKinley was assassinated. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1925 -- and moved to New York City to take a job at Goldman Sachs. He shared an apartment with four or five friends.
AND WE WERE HAVING A VERY VERY GOOD TIME.
Why wouldn't they?
After all, it was the Roaring Twenties: a time of speakeasies, flappers, Babe Ruth -- and a new kind of music called jazz:
SOUND OF 1920s JAZZ MUSIC.
It was also a time of enormous economic growth. Between 1922 and 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose an astounding 400 percent.
AND LIFE WAS ON THE UPBEAT.
Until October 29th, 1929, anyway. That's the day the stock market crashed. Al Gordon says he saw it coming and cashed out a few months beforehand. In 1931, he and two partners bought a floundering investment banking firm: Kidder, Peabody. Gordon says it was a steal:
I MEAN I TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THE CRASH. I MEAN, THIS IS A TWO-WAY STREET!
Wall Street's changed a lot since Al Gordon landed there in 1925 -- especially in the way investors get information.
SOUND OF STOCK TICKER.
Before the Internet and cable TV, stock prices were transmitted by tickers, which printed the numbers on long strips of paper. But Chris Catanese of the Museum of American Financial History says the tickers sometimes fell behind:
STOCK TICKERS COULD ONLY HANDLE A CERTAIN NUMBER OF CHARACTERS PER MINUTE AND THE CLERKS INPUTTING THE NUMBERS COULD ONLY WORK SO FAST, SO THE NUMBERS COMING OUT OF THE STOCK TICKERS WERE SOMETIMES HOURS BEHIND THE ACTUAL NUMBERS TRADING ON THE FLOOR.
Wall Street's changed in many other ways. Today's financial markets are much more regulated than they were in 1929. And the exchange is a lot less WASPy. But Al Gordon says the biggest difference is that workers on Wall Street dressed much better back then:
WE WORE STIFF COLLARS. WE WORE HATS. WE TOOK OURSELVES SERIOUSLY.
Gordon guided Kidder, Peabody for more than 50 years, shaping the firm in his own sturdy image. On business trips to Los Angeles, he would carry his own bags -- from the airport to downtown, walking all 18 miles. At 82, he ran the London Marathon -- and finished in a little more than six hours.
MY LONGEVITY I ATTRIBUTE TO, NUMBER ONE, EXCESSIVE EXERCISE!
At 103, Al Gordon has slowed down -- a little. He still keeps an office in midtown Manhattan. But now he only goes in three or four days a week. I'm Matthew Algeo for Marketplace.
 Al Gordon, 103, at his desk in New York City. (Photo: Matthew Algeo) |
