The April 14, 1924, edition of Time said of Baker:
True, he is twice as rich as the original J.P. Morgan, having a fortune estimated at 200 millions. True, at the age of 84 when he has retired from many directorates, he dominates half a dozen railroads, several banks, scores of industrial concerns.
Baker was "closely associated with" Morgan, the late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. robber-baron, monopolist, and Wall Street banker "in his manifold enterprises", according to Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais's 1955 book, Labor's Untold Story. The book notes that "Morgan and associates organized super-trusts in steel (U.S. Steel), shipping (International Mercantile Marine), and agricultural machinery (International Harvester);" and it also "had its hands in other fields—the railroads (where...some 30,000 miles of railway were controlled), anthracite coal (where from two-thirds to three-quarters of the entire shipment was in Morgan hands)." Other Morgan monopolies included electrical machinery (General Electric), communications (AT&T, Western Union), traction companies (IRT in New York, Hudson & Manhattan), and insurance (Equitable Life).
In 1934, Time called him "the richest, most powerful and most taciturn commercial banker in U. S. history", while an article in Newsweek described him as one of the most imposing figures in banking history.
In the November 1994 issue of Worth magazine, James Grant, editor of the financial newsletter Grant's Interest Rate Observer, calls Baker a hidebound turn-of-the-century banker who always got his loans repaid.
Baker was famously silent in public, never commenting on events or giving interviews, until 1922, at age 82, when he gave his first newspaper interview. Thereafter, he spoke occasionally at luncheons and gatherings.
