Fellows of the Royal Society were concerned with how to ensure the accuracy of their images. This chapter investigates the ways in which the effects of accuracy derived from training in how to produce and consume visual materials, particularly drawings and engravings. By making explicit the ways in which artist's manuals and practices informed the construction of early modern visual knowledge of nature, I also aim to show the new ways that authors exerted control over the production of the images associated with their research, which was viewed as an ideal toward which scholars in the seventeenth century strove. The modes of accuracy the Fellows developed as a result of a prolonged engagement with artistic practices and habits of mind grew from several forms of control, including the training and skill required to exert physical control over image production, the intellectual control involved in deploying and refining an emergent visual vocabulary for the circulation of natural knowledge, and the shared controls involved in judging other scholars’ visual work as further contributions to a common body of knowledge.

In his book on the history of engraving, Sculptura: or the History, and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper, John Evelyn held up Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687) as the model of a scholar who created his own images.

In the first issue of the newly organized Philosophical Transactions, its editor, Henry Oldenburg, promised in the Introduction to provide his readers “knowledge of what this Kingdom, or other parts of the World, do, from time to time, afford.” He clarified his purpose on the title page for the first volume as the full title of the work was: “Philosophical Transactions: Giving some accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many Considerable parts of the world.” This journal then was to be not just an English effort, but an international one. Oldenburg was at pains to emphasize in his dedicatory letter to the Royal Society that this was not an official publication of the Royal Society, but rather his own private project:

His “Rude Collections” then were the product of his own reading and correspondence with many like-minded individuals scattered across Europe and beyond. Despite Oldenburg's protestations and the evidence Adrian Johns has found for Oldenburg's financial investment in the Philosophical Transactions, the pan-European community, nonetheless, perceived the journal as being part of the Royal Society's work.

The conclusion brings together the arguments and themes explored in the book, suggesting that appreciating capitalism’s triumph in World War II and its subsequent postwar progress, owes much to overcoming the challenges of the 1930s, a decade in which J.P. Morgan & Co. was at the heart of how American financial capitalism changed. The Morgan bank survived by discarding its partnership model and incorporating – a step that was emblematic of the choices forced on banks and businesses in the crisis decade of the 1930s.

The Introduction lays out the principal arguments of the book, namely that the history of J.P. Morgan & Co. in the 1930s informs the reader about how the leading American financial institution coped with and participated in, the challenges of a crisis decade, while simultaneously making a case for a broader understanding of capitalism’s survival.

This chapter introduces J.P. Morgan & Co. and its partners, surveying the history of the bank from its founding. Having done so, the chapter analyzes the businesses J.P. Morgan & Co. conducted under the leadership of Jack Morgan between 1913 and 1929. It argues that the firm was a conservative banking house, selective in its lending, catering to wealthy investors, a roster of major corporations, and foreign governments. Unlike many competitors, the bank issued only bonds before 1929, never floating a stock issue. On the eve of 1929 the bank was flourishing, conservative in its outlook, profitable in its business. The internal organization of the bank is discussed as a bridge to the partners, who ran the bank. Particular attention is paid to the experience, outlook, and views of the senior partners – Jack Morgan, Thomas W. Lamont, Russell C. Leffingwell, and George Whitney. Brief biographies of each illuminate their role in the bank, their world view – politically, economically, diplomatically – arguing that the partnership functioned as a collective helmed by Jack Morgan.

This chapter examines J.P. Morgan & Co., the Hoover administration, and the progress of the Depression in the United States between 1930 and 1933. It challenges the idea that banks were bystanders as the trauma of the Great Depression unfolded. Morgan activity took several forms. The first was acting selectively to aid private institutions in trouble in 1930–31. This policy ended with the last quarter of 1931 when heavy losses weakened the Morgan bank. While 1930–33 was devastating for the bank’s operations, two periods stand out as especially harmful: the last quarter of 1931 and the first quarter of 1933. The Morgan partners pushed the Hoover administration to adopt forceful measures to respond to deflation. Leffingwell and Parker Gilbert believed that deflation was imperilling capitalism’s existence. Attempts to shift Hoover were unsuccessful, in part because of the latter’s suspicion of the Morgan bank, in part because of the incoherence of the Morgan policy prescription. By the opening months of 1933 the Morgan partners had come to accept that suspension of the gold standard was necessary to save capitalism. Yet, the chapter suggests, by Roosevelt’s inauguration neither Hoover nor Roosevelt were listening to the partners.

The year 1931 is the focus of this chapter. One scholarly interpretation argues that the crises of 1931 spurred a deep recession into something more profound – the Great Depression. Examination of J.P. Morgan & Co. furnishes strength to this view. The Morgan bank, with a new partner, S. Parker Gilbert, the former Agent-General for Reparations, was an important actor as sequential crises manifested in the spring and summer of 1931. The chapter argues that the Morgan partners made a determined effort to keep the wartime victors together to meet these challenges. France was critical in the Morgan assessment. The partners strove to ensure that the Hoover administration enlisted French help to resolve international economic problems. At the same time, the ruction associated with Britain leaving gold (September 1931) generated tension among the Morgan partners. Contrary to what has been argued, these frictions did not change the internal dynamic of the partnership – Jack Morgan remained in control. Nevertheless, the chapter argues that the 1931 crises weakened the international order massively, in the process inflicting severe damage on J.P. Morgan & Co.

Histories of the interaction between business and the New Deal have emphasized a movement from concord, to doubt, to full-blown animosity by 1935–36. The advent of the American Liberty League is often seen as emblematic. For J.P. Morgan & Co. the New Deal was fracturing – in its banking business, in its politics, and among its partners. While the Pecora hearings dominated American media in May-June 1933, Glass–Steagall was the fulcrum on which the Morgan bank and the New Deal pivoted. Glass–Steagall dictated that J.P. Morgan & Co. must make a choice between commercial and investment banking. From the late summer of 1933 Morgan efforts were bent to securing its revision. Unable to secure modification of Glass–Steagall, the Morgan partners split on their appreciation of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Jack Morgan became a strident critic, while Leffingwell argued that the New Deal had saved capitalism. Simultaneously, the partners, reeling, became ever more cautious as bankers, embracing a conservatism that reflected their hope that the provisions of Glass–Steagall would not be implemented. When this failed, they created Morgan Stanley as an independent investment bank as a temporary adaptation.