The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York Part 22

"W. E. STOWE & CO., INCORPORATED"

At the suggestion of my attorneys, I decided to continue the business as a corporation.

The reason for this was that I wanted to continue under the same firm name and not as an agent, and while aside from Caine there were no antagonistic creditors, it was deemed wise to provide against any possibility of such appearing later on and jeopardizing the new capital which I expected to raise without difficulty.

As a matter of fact no creditor except Caine ever a.s.sumed such an att.i.tude.

Under the laws of West Virginia a corporation was organized as W.

E. Stowe & Co., Incorporated.

The charter was made broad enough to cover every possible branch of the business and the capital stock fixed at twenty-five thousand dollars with liberty to increase to one million.

The organization was completed by electing as officers members of my family, and the ten per cent required by law to be paid in was raised in part by my wife by the sale of personal property and the remainder by myself in a loan from a gentleman who was one of the heaviest losers in the operations carried on for our friends.

My bankers, within certain reasonable limits and restrictions, promised me their a.s.sistance, and I believed I would soon again be on the highway to prosperity.

The first step was to raise the twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars to complete the capitalization.

This seemed easy; why not? There was my friend Viedler; a man worth several millions. He had been warmly sympathetic in his expressions of regret at my misfortune. He and Mrs. Viedler had always shown a cordial fondness for us, which we reciprocated. The social intimacy had been close and always delightful.

At first I thought I would ask him for the entire amount, then concluded to ask for five thousand dollars, really believing he would comply with pleasure and offer more if wanted.

I wrote him asking for the money as a loan, telling him the purpose for which it was wanted and offering to give him a lien on my library, if he so desired, as security.

By return mail came a brief reply, typewritten and signed by his secretary: "Mr. Viedler makes no more personal loans."

That was the sum and substance of the communication, and the first intimation I had that another friend had deserted us. It was such a surprise that I did not fully realize the fact until I had re-read the letter.

Some months later I was informed, to my complete astonishment, that Mr. Viedler had some feeling against me because I had not protected him on that note for five thousand dollars he held and which it will be remembered I gave to Banford in 1893 without any consideration and solely as a matter of accommodation to him. The pearls which I held as security for the money due me from Banford, had been, at Viedler's request, consigned to him for sale, under an agreement by which Banford was to pay out of the proceeds to Mr. Viedler the amount of the note with interest. At the time of the consignment I handed to Mr. Viedler's secretary an order on Banford directing him to do this.

If Mr. Viedler had considered that note my liability it is most singular he did not demand payment at its maturity early in 1894.

As soon as I learned of his feelings in the matter I wrote him on the subject and asked for an interview that we might go into every detail of the transaction. This he declined, and it became evident to me he knew there was no cause for the feeling he claimed to have, and his refusing to aid me was simply for the reason he did not want to, which, of course, was his indisputable right.

Well; Viedler had failed me, who next?

On my desk, amongst the letters of sympathy received immediately after my failure, was one from a prominent Wall Street man, whom I had known for many years and who for a time had been one of my neighbors at Knollwood. I wrote to him about the same as I had written Viedler.

The return mail brought his reply, written personally, expressing regret that he was "unable to a.s.sist me as he was a large borrower himself."

All stock brokers are large borrowers in their business, but here was an instance in which this universal custom was given as an excuse for not making a loan of five thousand dollars to a friend in trouble.

And who was this man? Here is what Thomas W. Lawson had to say of him in one of the chapters of "Frenzied Finance":

J*** M*** deserves more than a mere pa.s.sing mention here, for he was at this time a distinguished Wall Street character and one of the ablest pract.i.tioners of finance in the Country. During the last fifteen years of his life, M*** was party to more confidential jobs and deals than all other contemporaneous financiers, and he handled them with great skill and high art. Big, jolly, generous, a royal eater and drinker, an a.s.sociate of the rich, the friend of the poor, a many-times millionaire.

Another friend off the list--but there were many left. Now for the next one. "The third time a charm"--perhaps.

Again I turned to the letters on my desk. This time I took up one from a former mayor of New York. A man widely known, politically, socially, and as a philanthropist.

His kind letter when received had been a pleasant surprise to me.

I had known him but a few years and could not claim a very close intimacy, though he had always been most cordial and our families were acquainted. As I re-read his letter it seemed to me as if it invited me to address him under just such circ.u.mstances as then existed.

Again, and for the third time, my messenger went forth seeking for the friend who would help a man when he is down.

The reply came promptly enough and brought me the information that my friend did not "desire to invest in any new business."

I had not asked him to; my request was for a loan, but his answer was all-sufficient.

Despondency followed. Where is the use? I asked myself. "To succeed is to win fame; to fail, a crime." "The world has no use for an unsuccessful man." Thus I gave up the attempt to raise a sum of money that, before I made the effort, seemed but a trifle, "light as air."

During the summer two of our Connecticut friends, who had been members of the syndicate, between them made me a loan of six thousand dollars, and this gave me a capital of eighty-five hundred dollars.

With this I attempted to save what I could of the enormous business I had built up. How absurd it seemed, and yet my courage was far from gone.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

THE STRUGGLE COMMENCED

By midsummer of 1896 the liquidation of the affairs of the old firm was practically completed; that is, in so far as related to the conversion of our a.s.sets into cash and payment of the proceeds to our creditors. These payments were very large, but there was still a heavy deficiency, which I hoped in time to pay in full with interest, gigantic as the burden seemed.

Every business day found me at my office working early and late as I had never worked before. With but one clerk and an office-boy, a vast amount of detail had to be undertaken by myself. Night after night my thoughts were almost constantly on plans to keep together the business I had established.

I was fighting an octopus. My compet.i.tors all were arrayed against me with a force I had never before experienced. They spared no effort to crush the man who had beaten them over and over again in battles for commercial supremacy. It was their turn now and they showed no mercy.

But how different was the warfare waged on me! In the days gone by I had struck them powerful blows, straight from the shoulder; but a foul blow?--never! No man, living or dead, can or could say I did not fight fair. Nor did I ever press an advantage unduly or profit by the necessities of a compet.i.tor.

Here was one enemy, sneaking through the trade with his lying tongue, always under cover, doing his utmost to injure me. Had that man forgotten the day in 1888 when he came to my office and told me he would be ruined unless our London friends would accept a compromise from him and asked me to cable urging them to do so? Had he forgotten how on the following day, when I showed him the reply reading, "Risk of buyers does not concern us. Cannot a.s.sist," he raised his hands, and shouting, "My G.o.d! what shall I do"? almost collapsed?

_Surely_ he must have forgotten how I told him that I would stand between him and ruin, allowed him to settle on his own terms, and carried him along for years.

Here was another enemy, a different stripe of man. He sat in his palatial office and never let an opportunity pa.s.s to thrust a knife in my back. His blows, less coa.r.s.e and brutal, were even more effective, for they were backed by the weight of great wealth and respectability. An adept in the refinement of cruelty, between Sundays, when as a vestryman of a prominent church he presumably asked forgiveness of his sins, he did all that he could by false insinuations to help along the work of putting down and out forever the man who had never done him an injury, or conquered him in any way not warranted by fair and generous business compet.i.tion.

There were many like this man.

I had to fight against practically unlimited wealth in the hands of a score of bitter enemies, men without conscience in the matter of crushing a compet.i.tor. Anything to beat Stowe was the war-cry; get the orders away from him, no matter what the cost, the plan of campaign. Those men knew I could not long survive if they could keep me from getting business.

To fight them back I had complete knowledge of the trade, great personal popularity with my customers, and only eighty-five hundred dollars capital. The last item was the weak point. Had I controlled even only one hundred thousand dollars I believe with all their wealth I could have beaten them to a standstill.

My customers stood n.o.bly by me. There were hundreds of instances when telegrams came to the office advising me of my compet.i.tors'

quotations and giving me the opportunity to meet the price and secure the business. I never lost an order that the buyer did not write and express his regret at our failure to secure it; but I could not do business at a loss, my compet.i.tors knew this, and that sooner or later they must surely win the fight.