Howard Pyle, The Burning of Jamestown, an early-twentieth-century illustration, not an eyewitness view. Public domain.
The Panic of 1907 began when New York trust companies tottered, and Morgan, not a central bank, organized the rescue.
A poor household felt the panic as lost work and as a bank door that might not pay out.
A small depositor in a threatened trust company stood in line and hoped the window would open.
Morgan gathered other bankers in his library and helped decide which firms would be saved, which is what the country then had instead of a central bank.
The Knickerbocker Trust Company suspended in October 1907 after the clearing house refused to stand behind it, in a scare that started with a failed copper speculation.
Morgan, aided by federal money the Treasury deposited in national banks, arranged loans that halted the run.
The memory of that private rescue became a main argument for a Federal Reserve.
Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr, The Panic of 1907 (2007); Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States