1907 -- Sidney Weinberg was a 16-year-old boy from Brooklyn who never finished high school, dropping out after the eighth grade at the age of 13. One of eleven children born into the family of a struggling bootlegger, Weinberg was scarred by his upbringing in the most literal of ways -- his back was marked by the evidence of several knife fights he'd gotten into before he was even a teenager. After leaving school, he worked at a variety of odd jobs, including peeling oysters and selling newspapers to ferry-goers arriving from Manhattan. By 1907, he was working as a porter's assistant in Lower Manhattan, where he drew a paycheck of $3 per week from the investment firm Goldman, Sachs and Company.
1956 -- There were almost too many milestones to count in Sidney Weinberg's career at Goldman Sachs. After being handed the reins of the firm in 1930 as the nation tumbled into the Great Depression, Weinberg's leadership helped to restore confidence in the stock market while leading the company into the top tier of the nation's investment banking hierarchy. Throughout the Depression and into World War II, Weinberg had played an important advisory role to the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, offering insights into securities reform policies as well as helping to review defense contracts with industries vital to the war effort. Over these years, Weinberg served as a director of literally dozens of companies -- he sometimes lost track of how many -- while establishing a reputation as one of the most honest and ethical men in American business. Nicknamed "Mr. Wall Street," Weinberg was perhaps best known as the man who orchestrated the Ford Motor Company's first public stock offering in 1956. Involving more than $650 million worth of stock, the Ford deal proved at the time to be the largest offering of its kind in American history. For his efforts, Weinberg earned a fee of $1 million. Though he was certainly a very wealthy man -- one of the great rags-to-riches stories of the century -- Weinberg nevertheless lived relatively modestly. Indeed, until his death in 1969, he and his wife still lived in the home they had purchased in 1923.
Though Stanley Weinberg lacked much formal education, he always seemed drawn to the world of business. (He was also fortunate to live in an era before higher education was a prerequisite for a career in finance.) Before starting out as a janitor at Goldman, Sachs and Company, he had worked as a summer runner for a few smaller brokerage houses in New York City -- before being fired when his employers learned he was also working for their competitors. Using his own meager income, he had also taken a few night courses at Browne's Business College, and he showed evidence of higher career aspirations. He landed the job at Goldman-Sachs after seeking out the tallest building in the financial district. Starting at the top floor and working his way down, he asked for jobs on every floor until he reached the second floor, where he finally found one of the lowest-paying jobs in the building. Weinberg slowly worked his way into a job as an office boy, but his co-workers knew him as a youthful prankster, and it took more than a decade before he truly became serious about his career. He took a leave from the firm to serve as a cook in World War I, but he returned in 1919 and took a job as a commercial paper trader, where he proved himself to be one of the most skilled men in the company. Within a few years he had earned greater responsibilities and was placing bonds for Sears Roebuck, Proctor and Gamble and other top Goldman clients. By 1925, he was able to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange -- at a price of $140,000 -- and two years later was promoted to partner in the firm.