Did the events of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression change Merrill's views? Quite the contrary. The Crash proved that people should have listened to him instead of to those charlatans who encouraged investors to borrow so heavily and to speculate so wildly. And if Americans had soured on the market by the end of the 1930s--and how could they not as the Dow Jones average lost 60% of its value and people came to see how rotten the game had been--Merrill eventually came to the conclusion that someone would have to rekindle the country's faith in the market. He turned to the only man he thought capable of the task: himself. In retrospect, Merrill Lynch was really Charlie Merrill's bully pulpit, the platform from which he could preach the virtues of the stock market and show the country that the small investor could get a fair shake on Wall Street. "Demystification had been the key to [my father's] great success," James Merrill later wrote in his memoir. "No more mumbo-jumbo from Harvard men in paneled rooms; let the stock market's workings henceforth be intelligible even to the small investor." To that end, the firm published an endless stream of reports, magazines, pamphlets--11 million pieces in 1955 alone--with titles like How to Invest.

Under Merrill the firm gave seminars across the country, with child care provided so that both husband and wife could attend. It set up tents in county fairs. It ran a brokerage on wheels. Once, it even gave away stock in a contest sponsored by Wheaties.

By Merrill's death, in 1956, the firm had some 400,000 clients and had become the largest brokerage in the country, a distinction it holds to this day. But Merrill died a sorely disappointed man. Wall Street had not rushed to follow his example, as he had hoped, and the majority of the country, still scarred by the memory of the Depression, was not ready to plunge back into stocks. He was simply too far ahead of his time.

There are many other people--mutual-fund pioneer Ned Johnson at Fidelity Investments and discount broker Charles Schwab, to name two--who over the course of the next 40 years helped push Wall Street and Main Street closer together. Yet for all their innovations, they remain at bottom Merrill's heirs. Their modern investing mantra is the same basic message he preached so many years ago-- that people should invest for the long haul; that they should have a clear understanding of the companies they are buying; that despite the hair- raising ups and downs, stocks have historically outperformed every other form of investment. Today the stock market no longer belongs to insiders. It belongs to all of us. We all now partake in its gains, just as we share in its losses--and who among us would argue that it should be any other way? Good Time Charlie Merrill's lonely voice has become America's common wisdom.

-- Joseph Nocera is an editor at large at Fortune and author of A Piece of the Action

Charles Merrill

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