Frenzied Finance Part 34

"Lawson, at last we are to know how well your work has been done. The time of talk ends to-night and after that we'll have facts to go upon.

What do you place the subscription at?"

"I'll stake my prospective profits that when the books close there will be from forty to fifty millions subscribed and that when your 'Standard Oil' experts have a.n.a.lyzed the subscriptions they will tell you that three-quarters of all have come from the country--from my campaign--and not over a quarter from the 'Standard Oil's' following and Wall Street,"

I answered. "Then you and Mr. Rockefeller will admit I was right when I told you that the public will respond to open and fair treatment when it is deaf and blind to stock trickery and manipulation."

"I do hope you are right," returned Mr. Rogers, in a quiet, earnest, I-pray-it-may-really-be-so tone, "but if it is from six to ten millions we will all take off our hats to you."

This defined the expectation of the man who above all others knew most of what had been done to mature and perfect the venture. I realized that none of the parties to the enterprise antic.i.p.ated an extraordinary success, and though I felt more confident than the others, I was far from cognizant of the actual feeling abroad among the people. Monday morning I got an inkling of what was coming. My office in Boston was the centre of a dense ma.s.s of people from morning until night, and round the National City Bank in New York crowds were gathered watching the throng fight its way through the doors. Inside, a long line of men and women headed for the subscription desk stood laden with checks and currency, patiently awaiting their turn, and every mail brought sacks of orders.

The big banking and brokerage offices in the financial districts of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York were packed with customers asking to be shown the way to secure as much as possible of this easy money, while the wires buzzed with messages and bids from the far West and from Europe. The excitement knew no bounds. In my rooms at the Waldorf I sat beside the telephone getting rapid reports from my lieutenants. From 26 Broadway I learned of the progress of events at the bank, and was impressed with the fact that the prevailing excitement and the strain were beginning to affect even the nickel-steel equilibrium of Mr. Rogers himself. Indeed, he made no attempt to disguise his uneasiness, and told me that William Rockefeller was in much the same condition. It was the first venture of size these two strong wheelmen of "Standard Oil" had undertaken without the co-operation of John D. Rockefeller, and it appeared that he was considerably worked up over the public hubbub, and so opposed to the whole Amalgamated affair that nothing short of a great success could justify his subordinates' temerity. However one looked at the situation, it was evident that Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller were playing for the stake of their lives, though how great the stake was no one at that time guessed. Since then they have steadily forged ahead, both in riches and in influence, until to-day they have actually supplanted John D. Rockefeller in the kingship of finance. At that day, though his had always been the master-mind of "Standard Oil,"

I don't believe Mr. Rogers was worth, all told, over twelve to fifteen millions, while to-day he is probably a hundred and fifty times a millionnaire.

It must be remembered that there was good cause for trepidation over this venture, for though the stock markets buzzed with "Coppers" it was all guesswork as to how far the public would go with us. The question was, What would they do now that our stock was within their reach? It was a tremendous proposition we had put forth, for remember this was before the period of the great trustifications, and ten to twenty millions figured as the limit of large flotations. Even these were of well-known properties and invariably were offered below par. To come into the open, offering at $100 a share a brand-new stock capitalized at $75,000,000, was breaking the record, and we might well wonder what was before us.

So far as man could do I had safeguarded the public and my own reputation, and believed that the a.s.surances I had secured eliminated all opportunities of fleecing investors. Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller had each pledged me his solemn word, under no circ.u.mstances to sell to subscribers over five million dollars of the stock, and to place at my disposal the five millions cash received, to use in the open market for the purpose of protecting the stock so that it should never decline below par. That this promise should be kept was of the utmost consequence. While "Standard Oil" held the large majority of the Amalgamated stock and the public but a small minority, there was no danger of the latter being slaughtered, whereas if the public was loaded up with stock at $100 per share, it would be profitable for Rogers, Rockefeller, and Stillman to practise the method I was fast beginning to see was their favorite device for acc.u.mulating wealth--selling stock and then dropping its price and taking it away from its holders at twenty-five to fifty per cent. below what they had purchased it at. If my plan of guarding against this possibility were adhered to, I knew that there would be such a demand for the shares in the open market after the allotment that when the second section of seventy-five or one hundred millions came to be offered, it would be even more eagerly sought than the first. So with the third and other sections contemplated, until in time the whole stock would be distributed among the investors of the world, and a.s.suming that part of our enormous profits would always be used to keep up its market price, there could be no possible decline. Thus Amalgamated, like "Standard Oil" or a Government bond, must always be worth more than par, first because there would be value to justify it, and second because its holders would have absolute confidence that the security could always be sold for as much or more than they had paid for it.

So far, I had carefully refrained from discussing with Mr. Rogers how we should go about securing our part of the subscription. I had not forgotten it. Indeed, I had it well in mind and was ready to enter upon the matter when it came up. An iron-bound contract held the Amalgamated Company and the National City Bank over the signatures of a Rogers, a Rockefeller, and a Stillman to allow the public to subscribe for $75,000,000 of stock, and the terms were that every subscription must be in the bank at noon, May 4th, and that each subscription must be accompanied by a certified check of $5 for every share applied for. _As we had agreed that the public should be sold but five millions of the stock, that meant that we proposed to retain seventy millions of it ourselves, but to obtain this allotment legally, we must comply with the conditions of the advertis.e.m.e.nt exactly as outsiders had. So it was necessary that we have a bid in before noon on Thursday for our seventy millions, accompanied by a check for_ $3,500,000, _which would secure us our quota provided the public subscription was no more than five millions._ If the public subscription ran over five millions, then the bank must throw out all additional subscriptions over that amount, for the advertised contract specifically declared that all accepted subscriptions would be allowed pro rata. By my suppression of the usual condition that the Bank reserve the right to reject any part of any subscription, it was absolutely precluded from the common method of dealing with such an emergency and so could not reject _parts_ of subscriptions. There was a way out--without practising fraud. If at noon on Thursday the public had subscribed ten or fifteen millions then the insiders must put in bids of $140,000,000 to $210,000,000, in which event the entire subscription would be divided by allotting each subscriber one share for every two or three subscribed.

I presumed then that some such method would be followed. It surprised me at the time that Mr. Rogers should have given so little attention to so vital a part of our programme, for he is in the habit of thoughtfully thumbing over just such details to avoid slip-ups, but the idea that our subscription would run into unwieldy amounts never occurred to him, and he let things go, trusting to luck and "Standard Oil's" motto "To h.e.l.l with the people anyway," to adjust the matter at the last moment. To-day Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, and James Stillman would each give five millions from his private fortune if this seemingly unimportant detail had then been provided for. Its neglect is the b.l.o.o.d.y finger-print on the knife-handle of the murderer, it is the burglar's footprint in the snow. In this case it furnishes the evidence of the crime of Amalgamated.

CHAPTER XXV

DOLLAR HYDROPHOBIA

Our first fears of failure were soon succeeded by apprehensions of a different nature. By Tuesday noon it was evident that the flotation would far exceed the low expectations of Rogers and Rockefeller, and I knew that if the people's interest continued to develop at the rate the subscriptions indicated, the totals would be far ahead of my own most sanguine antic.i.p.ations. Every hour the excitement intensified. The crowds on the street and in the brokers' offices; the rush of investors to the City Bank--all demonstrated a feverish condition of the public mind, a state of unrest that fills the conservative banker with dread lest something happen to precipitate a disorder and a panic. The acute sensitiveness of a body of investors to extraneous influence, however slight, is familiar to any one who has had to do with market manipulation. In a theatre or church one strenuous spirit can quell a tumult with some ringing a.s.surance, but long before the leader of a financial movement has got word to his following, wide-spread over the country, it has taken alarm, the rout has begun, and the field is strewn with corpses. A great financial excitement, like a rocket, should soar triumphantly into the air, leaving behind it a comet-like trail of glory, climaxing in a shower of gold; diverted from its course, it runs a mad, brief, tragic career along the earth, spreading ruin and disaster in its path.

There comes a time when all great enterprises must emerge from the nursery and be exposed to the sunlight and the breezes of every day. We were crossing the ominous tract which divides the trenches of preparation from the sheltering fortress of attainment, and the hosts of failure were rallied to dispute our pa.s.sage.

At this juncture any accident to our venture might affect the whole American business fabric, and no one realized the danger of the situation better than Mr. Rogers and myself. During the anxious days that were pa.s.sing we canva.s.sed the dire possibilities that the situation contained, just as children tell each other ghost stories when left alone in the darkness of the night. The great catastrophes of finance, we remembered, had all been born of the unexpected--of unforeseen contingencies--far beyond the range of human foresight. Who knew but that the hours were pregnant with some terrible potentiality--the a.s.sa.s.sination of a king or president, a Chicago or Boston fire, an epidemic of cholera, a belligerent message from the President, such as Cleveland's Venezuela ultimatum, a great bank defalcation, the suicide of an important operator, the death of an eminent capitalist--a breath of one of these world cyclones would crumble our structure into the dust and take along with it the neighboring edifices on both sides of the street. There were also the hidden possibilities of betrayal, of treachery, for we knew that scores of Wall Street's most ingenious minds were bent on unravelling and exposing the secret threads of our enterprise.

On Wednesday morning soon after ten o'clock Mr. Rogers, on his way downtown, came to the Waldorf. He was plainly excited.

"Lawson," he said, "this is something unheard of, unprecedented. The bank is being buried under subscriptions. Stillman says he is adding scores of clerks, but that he cannot possibly keep pace with the subscriptions. Mr. Rockefeller is very nervous, and I must confess to feeling a bit of 'rattle' myself. It now looks as though the total would run into fabulous figures. The Lewisohns are being swamped with orders from Europe. They alone will probably put in more than ten millions.

Wall Street has lost its head entirely, and our people at 26 Broadway are coming in asking advice and doubling and trebling their subscriptions. If we don't keep our heads something bad may happen, for it looks now as though the cash the subscription is tying up would make a money-pinch. This affair must not be allowed to run away with us. What do your reports from Boston and the country show?"

"The same as yours. The people have simply gone wild. Calls come in ceaselessly to me from Wall Street men. The hotel is so full of brokers from out of town that they are placing cots in the big rooms. I went down into the office just now to talk to them and was nearly mobbed.

Already they are talking of a premium of $40 to $60 per share, but if we keep to the line we have laid down, I don't think we need fear bad consequences."

We discussed other aspects of the affair, the intense interest developed in Europe, and the effect of the excitement on the price of the metal.

As he started to go down to his office, Mr. Rogers said, as though by way of an after-thought:

"Lawson, if the people are so hungry, why should we not take some advantage of it?"

The suggestion, with all it implied, stunned me for a second.

"What do you mean, Mr. Rogers? Take advantage--how?"

"Would it not be well to let the subscribers have more than the amount we agreed? Why not take more of this money than five millions?"

This was out of a clear sky, for there had not been the slightest suggestion of a change of programme and I had rested in the certainty that our plan insured the safety of all who had gone in on my say-so. I choked down my excitement.

"Good G.o.d, Mr. Rogers, are you mad?" I exclaimed. "Don't let us depart a hair from what we all in our cool moments decided was best. We are in the field now. It would be sure ruin to try any new schemes at this moment."

"You are rattled yourself, Lawson. There's no need for excitement. I merely offered the suggestion. Everything is going well," he rea.s.sured me, but the picture his words conjured before my mind disturbed me all day. That he would dare do what he had suggested I did not credit, for the a.s.surances I had were too solemn to allow me to believe such treachery could be meditated. Nevertheless I brooded over the matter, and late in the afternoon ran down to 26 Broadway, ostensibly to hear the latest news from the bank, but really to try if I could not look into Mr. Rogers' head and see if the imps I had sighted early in the day were still there.

Mr. Rogers was over with Stillman at the bank. In half an hour he came in, and the excitement he labored under was plainly evident in his face.

"Lawson," he said, "no one has ever seen anything like this before.

Stillman is bewildered. He says it looks as though by to-morrow there will be a mob around the bank doors, and if between now and then anything unusual should happen, there'll be the devil to pay sure. I tell you I'm so tired out that I'm going home now to rest up."

Together we went uptown on the Elevated, and when I left him at Thirty-third Street to cross over to my hotel, somehow the dark forebodings of the morning had been lulled by his frank geniality and carried away by his enthusiastic rejoicings in the success of our enterprise. The picture of that soft spring evening hangs in my memory's gallery--the declining sun seen through a long perspective of gilded brick and brownstone facades, the heavy rumble of trains, the clamor of newsboys crying last editions, the packed cable-cars slowly threading their way amid the hurrying crowds of clerks and shop girls streaming homeward, the cabs swinging in and out of the throng, through whose windows I caught glimpses of jewels on bare shoulders, light silks, and sweeping plumes--the b.u.t.terflies of fashion or folly hurrying out on their evening trysts. Broadway, with its hundreds of sights and sounds, was before me in the hour of its transformation, the street lamps breaking into incandescence, and the huge electric signs beginning to glare above the theatre entrances. By the time I reached the Waldorf, that high abode of Yankee royalty, the kinks and curlicues were so far ironed from my nerves and brain that I had little doubt of my ability to take a fall out of Fate in whatever sort of collar-and-elbow tussle she might designate. In this mood I swung into the huge hotel through the carriage entrance on Thirty-fourth Street, eager to forget myself amid the rapt concourse of dollar worshippers, preening themselves against the plush, onyx, and gildings of the Astor caravansary. I seemed to see in the mirrors, on the walls, on the b.u.t.tons of the lackeys' livery, in the patterns of the rugs, inscribed on the tessellated floors and painted on the lofty ceilings, dazzling and glittering, the universal crest of the twisted S with its two upright bars.

_Dollars, dollars, dollars._

Through the office I pushed, my path disputed by the hosts of Croesus in ambush for market information. Colonels and generals of the almighty-dollar army were on either flank of me, and the air was thick with the echo and the rumor of millions. At last I found myself in the high and splendid room, with its tall windows elaborately curtained with velvet, its floor s.p.a.ce studded with small tables, where after four o'clock any afternoon, the year round, you will find the active Wall Street contingent busily discussing the day's doings and plotting good or evil for the morrow. There they all were, that eventful evening, in parties of seven or eight cl.u.s.tered at the little tables, and as I entered a vigorous hail caught my ear and again I found myself surrounded.

"Sit down a minute, Lawson," said ex-Congressman Jefferson M.

Levy--"Jeff Levy" in Wall Street--"and tell us about Amalgamated. I suppose there's not a chance to get what one wants unless one subscribes for five or ten times more than one needs, but if you say that's straight, I'll put in another subscription for ----."

In the group were sitting "Harry" Weil, who time and again has tied tin cans to Wall Street's tail; big, bluff, honest "Billy" Oliver, whose "I'll take ten thousand more" is as familiar to Stock Exchange members as the sound of the gong; and little "Jakey" Field, most audacious and resourceful of floor operators, graduated but a few years ago from the ranks of Wall Street's errand boys--"Jakey" Field, who is able single-handed to turn a "bear" market in a rout by "bidding 'em up all round the room five thousand at a crack"--which means he dares buy one hundred thousand shares off the reel in a demoralized market when every one is selling, thus standing to make or lose a million or two on his judgment.

They listened, breathless, while I poured out the story of the terrific rush of Amalgamated subscribers. Another group hailed me and I recounted the same story. So it went all over the busy a.s.semblage--"_dollars, dollars, dollars_," how to get them, how to get them quick. The money talk ebbed and flowed; the c.h.i.n.k of dollars echoed in the rattle of china, in the tinkling of gla.s.ses, in the laughs and salutations, in the shuffle of feet. It was the one word, the single theme, the alpha and omega of all these men of talent and virility who accorded me recognition as one of themselves and a.s.sumed that I, too, was crucified to the two bars on the snaky S; the whole thing was so interesting that I lost sight of the terrible seriousness of it, and I chuckled as one does when one sits on the cool gra.s.s under the apple-trees in summer and watches myriads of ants hustling and jostling and b.u.mping over each other to get away with what to humans is but a tiny grain of dirt.

As I arose to go at last, the head waiter came forward and led me into a corner, where his a.s.sistant and the chef awaited me. All with tremendous earnestness asked, "Is it safe, Mr. Lawson, for us to put our savings in Amalgamated?" They took my breath away by telling me they proposed to subscribe for one thousand, five hundred, and two hundred shares each, $100,000, $50,000, and $20,000 worth, if I but said the word.

"_Dollars, dollars, dollars_" beat a tattoo on my ear-drums as the rain used to on the roof at the old farmhouse.

A moment later Manager Thomas of the great hotel slipped up to me. "I'm in for a thousand or two, if you say the word," he whispered. At dinner my old waiter, who I would have sworn did not know a stock certificate from a dog license, bent over respectfully to tell me that twenty of the boys had chipped in and desired me to take their thousand dollars and put it up for two hundred shares--$20,000 worth more. Room Clerk Palmer called over to me as I went by his desk a moment later to say he was going in for three hundred shares if it broke him. And so it went--bell-boys, chambermaids, valets, elevator men, all begging an interview, and all with the same request--"Would I not put their savings into this magic money-maker?"

All were friends or proteges of mine, these managers, clerks, stewards, and waiters. Their money was more sacred to me than my own. I had been instrumental in bringing many of them up to the palace of American dollar royalty from the old Brunswick, and I would rather have lost a finger any day than have jeopardized their savings. For all of them I had but one answer: "Go your limit."

I looked over the memoranda and telegrams piled high on the table in my room, all recording the whirlwind sweep of this tremendous copper movement that I had set a-booming.

"_Dollars, dollars, dollars._"

Requests from friends for some of the easy money I was dispensing to the public, appeals from old a.s.sociates for special allotments of the subscription, urgent pet.i.tions from capitalists and bankers with whom I had business relations that their bids for shares should have preference, perfumed notes on tinted paper in feminine handwriting begging aid, advice, my influence, on a hundred specious pleas. It seemed to me that all the world was in a conspiracy of dollars and I the one object of its plotting. For a moment there overcame me a sickening disgust at this universal greed, at this all-absorbing pa.s.sion for gold which my momentary pre-eminence revealed to my view. Then sanity a.s.serted itself, and I remembered that if there was a conspiracy I was its ringleader, that I myself for months past had thought intensely of nothing but dollars. Why, then, should I resent the eager desires of others to attach to their own bank accounts some of the money which I was proclaiming from the housetops any one who desired might have for the asking? Many of these men, moreover, who sought my a.s.surance of the safety of their little ventures, had earned the private word by thoughtful service and friendly attentions. Dollars were food and drink and fine raiment; were music, pictures, and theatres; were horses and dogs; were green fields, blossoming trees, and the open air of heaven; were liberty, release from sordid cares, from servitude--and why should I, who had helped myself in bountiful measure to the good things in life's cornucopia, feel superior when confronted by the l.u.s.ts I myself had been instrumental in arousing? I laughed at my egregious virtue and dropped off to sleep.

CHAPTER XXVI

DEVILTRY AFOOT