Eulogy for a Company (AG Edwards) Past

Dan Martin’s “Postcard From Mound City” is the title of a feature cartoon that is published weekly by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The one for Saturday, June 2, 2007 took as its theme the week’s bomb-shell financial announcement that Wachovia will acquire AG Edwards & Sons. Even Mayor Francis Slay was surprised by the news. The region loses yet another national company to a financial takeover like it lost Trans World Airlines and McDonnell Douglas. The “cash register” building at Jefferson and Market will soon boast a new name and the pride of an old St. Louis family and its firm will gradually fade from the city’s memory. The descendents of this brigadier general who was Lincoln’s last appointee and an undersecretary of the treasury department cherish a different recollection of AGE than Dan Martin’s. The cartoonist portrays the man, now bedecked in angel wings, shocked to tears, with a lit cigar and bags of money, supported by his cloud shouting “Whatchama Whozits??!!" Like the recent spate of television commercials that first mocked the name and then attempted to link the company to an oversized egg in transit, this cartoon only demonstrates its creator’s lack of research. AG Edwards was a significant figure in the region’s financial history, granted. He also served to build the Presbyterian legacy in St. Louis that has grown to include North Presbyterian Church, Memorial Presbyterian Church, Covenant Presbyterian Church, and Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church as well as the many congregations that have emerged from each of those since the 1890s. He was instrumental in the founding of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The company prospered but not due to his affinity to bags of money or Cuban cigars. Instead, its commitment to do business by the Book even when it hurt the bottom line and its loyalty to its customers and employees created a reliable financial institution that survived the Great Depression and all the other fiscal storms of the last 100 plus years. It doesn’t look like any of the descendents will have been hurt financially by the Wachovia takeover, even though it was done without their support since they no longer control a majority share of the company’s stock. But, it is with a great sadness that the family finds its legacy fading under the gum of some corporate eraser and itself voiceless to correct the image that will perhaps persist as do the “ghost” signs on the old brick buildings from the same era as the general. AG Edwards was my children’s great-great grandfather.