Frenzied Finance Part 9

I was tearing large strips from its values when Add.i.c.ks' bankers, who happened to be business friends of mine, sought to enlist me on their side of the gas war. I remember expressing frankly my opinion about the contestants and their contest at the time, stating that so far as morality, fairness, or justice went I could see little to choose between Add.i.c.ks and "Standard Oil." I continued to "bear" the stock until one day my banker friends brought me an earnest request from the Delaware financier that I go to New York and talk things over with him.

On reaching New York--the two bankers and myself--we went directly to Add.i.c.ks' apartments at the Imperial Hotel. Although the fortunes of war were rapidly crumbling this worthy's brilliant financial structure, there were as yet no outward signs of disintegration. His beautiful estate at Claymont, Del., his stock farm in the same State, his town-house in Philadelphia, his $30,000 apartments in the Knickerbocker on Fifth Avenue in New York, and the superbly furnished suite in the Imperial, close by, all seemed to testify to the man's boundless prosperity.

Memorable though this meeting was destined to be to both of us, my chief sensation in approaching it was a certain curiosity as to the personality of Add.i.c.ks, whom I had seen, but had never spoken to. I knew him to a "T" in my mind, but here was my opportunity to compare my mental "sizing-up" with the real man. The apartment into which we were ushered was of the low-burning-red-light, Turkish pattern. Add.i.c.ks rose from a great divan disturbing a pose which his white cricket-cloth suit and the scarlet shadows made so stagy that I guessed it was for my benefit. I looked him over, and he returned the inspection. After the introduction he at once unlimbered his business gun.

"Let's get right down to business, Lawson," he began. "I wanted to meet you to see if we could get together on any satisfactory basis."

I told him that that was my understanding of our meeting. Then he wanted a.s.surances that I had no connections with "Standard Oil" and that I was free, sentimentally and commercially, to enlist in his fight. I replied that I was a stock-broker and operator, and was looking for opportunities; no one had strings on me, and provided he made satisfactory terms I was free to join him; further, that when it came to enlisting in a fight between two such financiers as Add.i.c.ks and Rogers, sentiment seemed to me out of place.

"That's right," he said. "That's what I like to hear. Now, Lawson, will you take this fight of mine against 'Standard Oil'?"

"If you meet my terms, yes."

Add.i.c.ks looked at me. "What do you want?" he asked. "Perhaps, though, you'd first like to have me tell you how my affairs stand."

"I know sufficiently where you stand," I replied, "to name my terms right now. If they are acceptable, I'll hear you tell where you stand afterward. I'll take your fight for a cash commission of $250,000 and a cash capital of $1,000,000, to be used in the market on joint account, we to divide the profits of all operations."

Add.i.c.ks smiled. "You are too high," he said. "I'll pay you $50,000 commission and give you $250,000 capital, and after I show you in what good shape my fight now is and how near I am to victory, you'll agree that the terms I offer are good pay and fair."

"Mr. Add.i.c.ks," said I, "I have just time to get dinner, look in at the theatre, and catch the midnight back to Boston. It is my business to keep posted on such scrimmages as you are engaged in. If you and your affairs are where I believe they are, the terms I offer are exceptionally low. If your affairs are as you would have me believe, you need no one to captain your fight."

Add.i.c.ks asked where I thought his affairs stood, and I answered: "I don't think--I know, or, at least, I feel quite sure I do. You are at the end of your rope and are practically bankrupt."

At once Add.i.c.ks grew indignant. "You are absolutely wrong," he a.s.serted.

"I'll admit I have had a hard fight, and that it has cost me, so far, considerable money; but I give you my word I'm worth between six and seven millions clear and clean right now."

I bade him good-night and left. Our interview had consumed not over twenty to twenty-five minutes. I said to his bankers:

"Add.i.c.ks is the Add.i.c.ks I have sized him up to be, only worse."

We got back to Boston next morning, and at the opening of the Stock Exchange I sailed into the Bay State stock in earnest, for I felt surer than before that Add.i.c.ks was nearing his finish. A few minutes after the Exchange opened, Add.i.c.ks' banker rushed into my office and said the Delaware financier begged that I would return to New York at once, and whispered to me that in a conversation just held on the telephone Add.i.c.ks had stated that he would accept my terms. I informed the banker I was not anxious for the job, but as he urged his own interest, I jumped on the noon train and in the evening was again in New York.

It was a warm day and I was pleased to get a wire on the train from Add.i.c.ks asking me to meet him at the pier, as we should hold our conference on his yacht, the _Now-Then_, at that time one of the fastest steam-yachts afloat.

It was a night of memorable beauty. In the golden light of a dazzling sunset we flew up the majestic Hudson. From under the awning I watched the serried edges of the Palisades as we slipped swiftly by them to the broad reaches of tinted waters above Yonkers. Every natural influence conspired to make acute to me the warning whisper of my soul, which flashed the caution as I crossed the gang-plank, "Watch out!" But, as I said before, Fate hangs no red lights at the cross-roads of a man's career, and I plunged recklessly into the toils my Mephistophelian companion so artfully wove around me.

The _Now-Then_ was hardly in mid-stream before Add.i.c.ks had got down to business. His demeanor had changed since the previous evening. All his bravado had disappeared; he was simple, frank, direct, and, in the manner of one who has made a mistake and regrets it, he commenced without any delay:

"I didn't think last night I'd pay your price, Lawson. It staggered me a bit, but I gave it considerable thought after you left, and when this morning's prices showed me you were again on the war-path, I saw my error."

"Mr. Add.i.c.ks," said I, "let's have no fooling about this matter. If we do business together, it will only be after there is some plain--brutally plain talk between us. It will do no good to trick, because some one will get slaughtered when the trickery is discovered, as it surely would be, after we hitched up together."

Then, straight from the shoulder, free from all attempt to gloss over the raw truth, I detailed to him the things I knew he had done to his former a.s.sociates, and it was a tale of unbroken duplicity and double-dealing on his part, loss and misery for his lieutenants, and profits and curses for him. I ended by saying: "If we get together, Add.i.c.ks, it will be upon my terms, and I'll see to it that you never put me in the position in which you have put all the others you've been connected with. I don't trust you and I'll watch you all the time."

When I had finished Add.i.c.ks looked at me sadly with a wounded, "how-this-man-has misjudged-me" expression in his eyes.

"Lawson," he said, "you were never more mistaken in your life, but it's a matter I don't want to argue about. You'll tell me you were all wrong after you know me better. I'll do business with you--yes, and I'll allow you to make your own terms. I'll agree to them whatever they are, and I'll live up to the very letter of them, however hard."

I may mention that it is a peculiar characteristic of Add.i.c.ks that one may talk to him as though he were a pick-pocket, and he will not resent it, if it is "business." Where H. H. Rogers would flash into a Vesuvius of wrath, the Delaware statesman only smiles.

Add.i.c.ks by no means convinced me of his sincerity. I decided I would test him pretty thoroughly before I went further. So I said: "This seems the proper time for a clean statement from you as to just where you and your companies stand."

I did not believe this man could make an absolutely truthful statement on any subject of importance, but I knew enough of his real position to protect me from being fooled. What was my surprise, therefore, when in the most open way possible he calmly spread before me a condition of affairs far worse than the worst I knew. He was, indeed, bankrupt and his corporation was in little better shape.

As soon as I could catch my breath I said:

"No wonder you refused my proposition last night. If your bankers had dreamed of this state of affairs, they would have had a receiver to-day. You cannot meet my terms. You cannot even carry out the ones you yourself offered."

Add.i.c.ks leaned back on the cushions of his chair in the easiest, most _insouciant_ way imaginable. He grinned. "That's true," he replied, "but I never give up a ship till I feel her b.u.mp the bottom, and I am sure that, bad as things are, you and I can pull them out and whip Rogers to a standstill."

It was a remarkable situation. Here was one of the most ruthless financial schemers of the age cornered for slaughter, and he had put himself absolutely at the mercy of the man who had bitterly fought him and whom he knew hated his kind. Yet he was as cool and collected as a bunch of orange blossoms at a winter's wedding.

The man's supreme nerve astounded me, yet I could not help admiring him.

I saw through his game, yet his a.s.surance fascinated me. I thought a minute. I said to him: "Add.i.c.ks, I'm really sorry for you, and I'll promise you here now to keep what you've told me sacred. What's more, I'll stop fighting you. I'll cover my shares and without doing any one any harm I'll help make prices a bit better for your securities."

He smiled, said "Thank you!" and continued looking at me as though he awaited something further, a quizzical, expectant smile on his face.

There was an interval of silence. Finally I said to him--and there were neither red lights nor warning intuitions to signal my peril: "Just what do you expect me to do, Mr. Add.i.c.ks?"

"Whatever you think best," he replied in a mild tone. Then, rousing himself a bit, he went on: "They say in the market that you like a fight and the harder it is the better. Well, I certainly have an uphill fight.

Do as you would have the other fellow do to you."

After that I had no further doubts of Add.i.c.ks' slickness. I said to him: "You are certainly the shrewd man they describe you as. Now continue to be frank long enough to answer this one question: Did you figure this out as the last card to throw at me, knowing that the very desperation of the case might warm me up and tempt me to tackle it for the sake of the fight there's in it?"

Instantly Add.i.c.ks knew his game was won. He straightened up and was the able, shrewd, and cunning financier who had tricked conservative Boston.

His facts chased his figures in marvellously rapid succession, and he showed a knowledge of conditions, relations, and corporation tricks that dazzled me. For an hour he rushed on, and when at last he came to a stop I said to him:

"It's unnecessary to say any more. I see the situation as you would have me see it, and it comes to this: If I refuse to link up with you it means another 'Standard Oil' victory and another wreck for Boston.

Rogers' success means that New England speculators and investors will again, for the three hundred and thirty-third time, be robbed of their savings. If I get in, we may either avert all this or I may be ground up at the same time you are. However, it's too good a fight to miss, and so here goes. I'll link up."

At some particularly hazardous halting-place in after-years Add.i.c.ks and myself have often laughed as we have talked over that August evening on the _Now-Then_. I was easy, he a.s.serts, and I must admit that he is right--I was easy. Yet no one knew Add.i.c.ks better than I did then.

Looking back along his extraordinary career, one is obliged to allow a certain magic as a factor in his men-and-dollar tussles. We had absolutely nothing in common, Add.i.c.ks and I. We thought and felt differently about every relationship of life. A dozen other ventures, sure, easy, and promising infinitely greater profits, were ready at my hand--but he appealed to my sense of adventure, he promised me abundant and glorious fighting, and I forgot everything else and went with him.

When the _Now-Then_ touched her pier and I stepped ash.o.r.e, it was as captain of Add.i.c.ks' corporation and stock-market forces, with absolute power to wage war, make peace, and use in whatever way I thought best such resources of his as I could lay hands on. I lost no time. Within forty-eight hours of my return to Boston I had mapped out my campaign, reconstructed Add.i.c.ks' broken lines, and gayly set forth on about as forlorn a hope as ever operator or fighter tackled.

Nothing more desperate could be imagined than the condition of the Delaware financier's affairs when I a.s.sumed control. All the resources of his companies were pledged for loans, and the constantly falling prices of his securities, coupled with the discrediting stories Rogers'

agents kept in circulation, made it difficult to keep these going. To pay would mean ruin, for Add.i.c.ks had no further thing of value to pledge. At the same time, Rogers' company, which had now paralleled many of the Bay State Company's pipes, had secured a large slice of that corporation's business, and had a corps of up-to-date solicitors working overtime to secure the balance. Boston, in the meantime, having decided that Addicts' star was of the shooting variety, and on its return trip, was throwing up its hat in the wake of the "Standard Oil" band-wagon.

The city government and the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature had awakened to the enormity of Add.i.c.ksism and were boiling over with that brand of virtue which the "System" and "Standard Oil" know so well how to rouse in American b.r.e.a.s.t.s by way of American pockets. By this time Rogers'

investment in Boston had grown from the half-million he had in the beginning estimated as sufficient to annihilate Add.i.c.ks to three and a half millions, a million and a half of which represented real property, and the balance, all kinds of expenditures made in the fight to crush the Delaware financier, a large part of it being invested in the votes and favor of State and munic.i.p.al authorities.

Chief among the enemies of Add.i.c.ks at this period was the young and brilliant boss of Boston, its reform mayor, the Hon. Nathan Matthews, and thereby hangs a swinging tale. When the Add.i.c.ks-Rogers gas-fight broke out in Boston this Nathan Matthews was at the zenith of his political career, and was rather a greater man than even reform mayors generally fancy themselves. He was at that state of development in the lives of aspiring persons which compels the average spectator to debate whether the swelling of the cranium should be met by a larger hat-band or by a sweeping haircut. _En pa.s.sant_, Add.i.c.ks' Panama had had its fifth enlargement to accommodate the successive bulges of his brow.

Now, the city of Boston's contract with the Bay State Company for gas at a dollar and twenty-five cents, which had run a long term of years, was just expiring. One bright June morning the mayor's secretary telephoned the secretary of the Mogul from Delaware that His Honor of Boston, desired converse with the Gas King. If those who overheard the dialogue can be credited, the parley was of this character:

"This is the mayor of Boston, the Hon. Nathan Matthews."

"This is J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks, Gas King and United States Senator-to-be. What would you with me?"

"I would hold converse with you in regard to a contract of much moment which will expire in a few days."