Financial History Issue 130 (Summer 2019) | Page 36

WHERE ARE
THEY NOW?
Paine, Webber,
Jackson & Curtis
By Susie J. Pak
The son of a clergyman, William
Alfred Paine was born in Massachusetts
in 1855. His father, Reverend Albert Paine,
a Massachusetts native, was a clergyman
who served as a chaplain in the Civil War.
Paine was educated in public schools in
Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Illinois as
his family moved to the West and the
Midwest. They eventually returned to the
East Coast, and when Paine was about 18
years old, he started working as a clerk in
the Blackstone National Bank of Boston
in 1873.
Paine & Webber (f. 1880, Boston)
In 1880, William A. Paine founded the
firm of Paine & Webber in Boston with
partner Wallace G. Webber. A Massachu-
setts native, Wallace Gleason Webber was
educated in public schools in Bedford and
a commercial college in Boston. His father,
Marcus B. Webber, was a Massachusetts
native and a grocer by trade. Like Paine,
Wallace Webber had also worked as a
clerk at the Blackstone National Bank. He
started at the bank in 1874 as a messenger.
Photograph of the offices of
Paine, Webber & Co., circa 1920.
Paine, Webber & Co. (f. 1881, Boston)
When Charles H. Paine, William’s older
brother, joined the firm in 1881, the firm
changed its name to Paine, Webber &
Company. Wallace G. Webber became a
member of the Boston Stock Exchange
that year. In 1890, Charles H. Paine pur-
chased a seat on the New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE). The firm was badly
hit by the Panic of 1893, but it survived
because it had made a fortunate invest-
ment in the copper industry. In 1898,
William Paine also founded the Copper
Range Company, in which he remained
president until his death in 1929. In 1894,
Wallace G. Webber retired from the firm,
but his name continued to be used in the
partnership. Charles H. Paine retired in
1906, and his seat was transferred to Wil-
liam A. Paine in 1905. William A. Paine
remained the head of the firm until 1929
when he suddenly died. His seat on the
NYSE was then transferred to Herbert I.
Foster, who joined the firm in 1898 and
became a partner in 1902.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
the firm expanded by opening offices, first
in the Midwest, and as it grew, admit-
ted partners and joined more exchanges,
also starting in the Midwest. It opened
an office in Houghton, Michigan, a cop-
per mining town, in 1899. It opened a
34    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Summer 2019  | www.MoAF.org
Minneapolis office and a Duluth, Min-
nesota office in 1902, a Detroit office in
1909, a Chicago office and a Worcester,
Massachusetts office in 1915, a New York
office, a Minneapolis office, and a Spring-
field, Massachusetts office in 1916, a St.
Paul, Minnesota office in 1917, a Phila-
delphia office, a New Haven office, and
an Albany office in 1918, a Grand Rapids
office in 1919, a Providence office and a
Syracuse office in 1922, a Concord, New
Hampshire office in 1927, a Cleveland
office and a Flint, Michigan office in 1928.
Leonard D. Draper became a partner in
1907. Edward J. Furlong and M.J. O’Brien
became partners in 1916. The firm joined
the Chicago Board of Trade in 1909 and
the Chicago Stock Exchange in 1916. Wil-
liam A. Paine’s son, Francis Ward Paine,
a 1910 Yale University and 1911 University
of Wisconsin graduate, joined the firm in
1919. His other son, Stephen Paine, a 1920
Harvard graduate, became a partner in
1928. By 1930, the firm had 1,300 employ-
ees, 14 partners and 25 offices.
During the Great Depression, the firm suf-
fered the decline in the brokerage industry
and reduced its offices to 19. Even more
seriously, the firm was also caught up in
a securities fraud scandal in the late 1930s
that led to the conviction of Stephen Paine
for mail fraud in January 1939. Paine had
allowed three associates—who were not