Edwin Lefevre

“ He became friendly and even familiar with Tracy & Middleton’s clients, among whom were some very wealthy men, for a stock-broker’s office is a democratic place. Men who would not have dreamed of taking their Wall Street acquaintances to their homes or to their clubs for a million reasons, all but called each other by their first names there.
He really was a bright, amiable fellow, very obliging—he was paid for it by the firm—and he made the most of his opportunities. The customers grew to like him exceedingly well, and to think with respect of his judgment, market-wise. ”

“ Those same joyous, winning stock-gamblers, with beaming faces, of the week before, were fear-clutched, losing stock-gamblers, with livid faces, on what they afterward called the day of the panic. It really was only a slump; rather sharper than usual. Too many lambs had been over-speculating. The wholesale dealers in securities—and insecurities—held very little of their own wares, having sold them to the lambs, and wanted them back now—cheaper. The customers’ eyes, as on happier days were intent on the quotation-board. ”

“ The customers in the corridor, men who, by the colonel’s advice, were “carrying” from 500 to 10,000 shares each of Easton & Allentown, leaned forward eagerly. All were men who north of Wall Street would not have stooped to listen to others’ conversations if their lives depended on it. In a broker’s office, when the leader of the stock market was speaking, such notions were absurd, almost wicked. Certainly, at that moment, twenty pairs of eyes were looking fixedly at the great leader of the stock market and the young clerk. ”

“ From ten to three they stood before the quotation board and watched a quick-witted boy chalk the price-changes, which one or another of the customers read aloud from the tape as it came from the ticker. The higher stocks went the more numerous the customers became, being allured in great flocks to the Street by the tales of their friends, who had profited greatly by the rise. All were winning, for all were buying stocks in a bull market. ”

“ He became neither more nor less than 10,000 other human beings in Wall Street—moved by the same impulses, actuated by the same feelings, experiencing the same emotions, having the same thoughts and the same views of what they are pleased to call their “business.” ”

“ A Wall Street worm will turn when the market misbehaves itself.
“What’s the matter?” he asked angrily. “What are you doing to Turpentine?”
Sharpe looked him full in the face, but his voice was even and emotionless as he replied: “Somebody has been selling on us. I don’t know who. I wish I did. I was afraid I might have to take 100,000 shares more, so I just sold as much as I could. I’ve marketed most of the pool’s stock. If it had not been for the jag of stock I struck around 60 and 62, Turpentine would be selling at 85 or 90 to-day. Come again next week, Greenbaum; and keep cool. ”

“ Now, the room traders and the tape-worms reasoned not illogically that the “Greenbaum gang” had all the stock and that perforce the “gang” had to find a market for it; and the only way to do this was by a nice “bull” or upward movement. When a stock rises and rises and rises the newspapers are full of pleasant stories about it and the lambs read but do not run away; they buy on the assumption that, as the stock has already risen ten points it may rise ten more. This explains why they make so much money in Wall Street—for the natives. ”

“ Jameson, looking crustier than ever, as though he were forever thinking how much better than Jenkins he could run the business; 110Danny, some inches taller, no longer an office boy but spick and span in a blue serge suit and a necktie of the latest style, exhaling health and correctness; Williamson, grown very gray and showing on his face thirty years of routine; Baldwin, happy as of yore at the ending of the day’s work, and smiling at the words of Jenkins—Gilmartin’s successor who wore an air of authority, of the habit of command which he had not known in the old days. ”

“ Then the manipulators had to “support” the stock at the higher level, that is, they had to keep it from declining, which could be done only by continuous buying. By doing this the public might imagine there was considerable merit in a stock which was in such good demand from intelligent people as to remain firm, notwithstanding its previous substantial rise. And if somebody wanted “Turp” why shouldn’t the public want it? The public generally asks itself that question. It is in the nature of a nibble and rejoices the hearts of the financial anglers. ”

“ The reporters rushed to Mr. Greener’s office. The little financier would not be seen. At length he reluctantly consented to be interviewed. He admitted, after a skilful display of unwillingness, that he had bought Iowa Midland stock. As to the amount, he said that was not of interest to the general public. The reporters finally cornered him and succeeded in making the little financier say, with a fleeting and very peculiar smile: “Yes; it is over 100,000 shares.” And not another word could the newspaper men get out of him.
Being an intelligent man, he never lied for publication. ”

“ And so, whenever there was a “good thing,” he “chipped in” one dollar to a telephone-boys’ “pool” that later operated in a New Street bucket shop to the extent of ten shares. His means were small, his salary being only $8 a week; and very often he thought that if he only had a little more money he would speculate on a larger scale and profit proportionately. If each time he had bought one share he had held twenty instead, he figured that he would have made no less than $400 in three months.
The time is ripe for other things when a boy begins to reason that way. ”

“ Sharpe had nothing of his own to unload on anyone else, no property to overcapitalize and sell to an undiscriminating public by means of artistic lies and his enemies often did. So they called him a gambler, very bitterly, and he called them philanthropists, very cheerfully. If he thought a stock was unduly high he sold it confidently, aggressively, stupendously. If he thought a stock was too low he bought it boldly, ready to take all the offerings and bid for more. And once on the march, he might be temporarily checked, be forced by the enemy to halt for a day or a week or a month ”

“ Greener really was in desperate straits. He was committed to many important enterprises. To carry them out he needed cash and the banks, fearful of stock market possibilities, were loath to lend him enough. Besides which, there was the desire on the part of the banks’ directors to pick up fine bargains should their refusal to lend Greener money force him to throw overboard the greater part of his load. Greener had despoiled innumerable widows and orphans in his railroad wrecking schemes. The money lenders should avenge the widows and orphans. ”

“ The philosophy of short selling is simple; it really amounts to betting 41that values will decline. A man who “sells short” sells what he does not possess, but hopes to buy, later on, at a lower price. But since he must deliver what he sells he borrows it from some one else, giving the lender ample security. To “cover” or to “buy in” is to purchase stock previously sold short. Obviously, it is unwise to be short of a stock which is held by such a few that it may be difficult to borrow it. To “squeeze” shorts is to advance the price in order to force “covering.” ”

“ Friedman has chosen a great theme for his new novel, one which affords a wealth of color and a wide field for bold delineation. It is a story of the steel-workers which introduces the reader to various and little-known aspects of those toiling lives. In the course of the work occurs a vivid description of a great strike. The author, however, shows no tinge of prejudice, but depicts a bitter labor struggle with admirable impartiality. Along with the portrayal of some of man’s worst passions is that of his best, his affection for woman, forming a love-story which softens the stern picture. ”

“ The reason why you use a margin is that you can do much more with the money that way than if you bought outright. It protects your broker against a depreciation in the security purchased, which is all he wants. In this case you theoretically owe us $61,000, but the bonds are in your name, and they are worth $96,000, so that if you want to pay us back, all you have to do is to order us to sell the bonds, return the money we have advanced, and keep the balance of your margin ”

“ IV. After the slump most of the customers returned to their legitimate business—sadder, but it is to be feared, not much wiser men. Gilmartin, after the first numbing shock, tried to learn of fresh opportunities in the drug business. But his heart was not in his search. There was the shame of confessing defeat in Wall Street so soon after leaving Maiden Lane; but far stronger than this was the effect of the poison of gambling. ”

“ It was a favorite trick to offer to sell thousands of shares lower than people were willing to pay, in order to frighten the timid holders and make them sell; which in turn would make still others sell, until the movement became general enough to cause a substantial fall.
Slowly the price began to yield. All that was needed was a leader. Whereupon Mr. Sharpe took the first lot of pool stock, 40,000 shares, and hurled it full at the market. The impact was terrible; the execution appalling. The market reeled crazily. ”

“ Nobody knew exactly how the enmity between Greener and Dittenhoeffer began. The “Little Napoleon of Railroading” had felt toward Dutch Dan a certain passive hostility for interference 165with sundry stock market deals. But Dan hated Greener madly, probably for the same reason that a hawk may have for hating a snake: the instinctive antipathy of the utterly dissimilar.
Scores of men had tried to “bust” Greener, but Greener had grown the richer by their efforts, the growth of his fortune being proportionate to the contraction of theirs. ”

“ Within less than three months he had broken his promise twice, and his unsuccessful operations in Alabama Coal at one time threatened seriously to embarrass the firm.
Colonel Thornton came to the rescue.
Sally promised, with a solemnity born of sincere fear, never to do it again.
But fright lasts but a little space, and memory is equally short-lived. Wall Street has no room for men with an excess of timidity or of recollection. He had gambled before he joined the New York Stock Exchange. ”

“ And he almost pushed the good man out of the office in his eagerness to be rid of him.
No sooner had the ground-glass door closed on the Rev. Dr. Ramsdell than Cranston rushed to the telephone and put in an order to buy 1,000 shares of Erie at the best possible price. By doing this before he notified his friends he proved that he himself firmly believed in Erie; also, he bought his stock ahead of theirs and thereby, in all likelihood, bought it cheaper. He then rushed into the customers’ room and yelled: “Hi, there! Everybody get aboard Erie! Silas Shaw is bullish as Old Nick on it. ”

“ Hayward, familiar with Dorr’s record, promptly “coppered” his “tip” to buy, banking on Dorr’s consistent mendacity. But Mr. William G. Dorr, shrewdest and boldest of all Western stock gamblers, fooled everybody—he actually told the truth. That week the directors did exactly as he had predicted. When a speculator of his calibre lies he fools only one half—the foolish half—of the Street. When he tells the truth he deceives everybody. Before Wall Street could recover from the shock the price of the stock was up 5 points, which meant that Hayward was out $25,000 on that deal alone. ”

“ The comparison is odiously trite, but the growth of an adverse rumor in Wall Street really resembles nothing so much as the traditional snowball rolling down a hillside and becoming larger and larger as it rolls, until it is huge, terrific, with appalling possibilities for evil.
The Board Room became Iowa-Midland-mad. Speculators often stampede—just like other animals. No stock can withstand their rush to sell, even though it be “protected” or “supported” by its manipulators, much less a stock like Iowa 137Midland, whose market sponsor was out of town, and out of reach of the telegraph. ”

“ Greenbaum was promptly admitted to Sharpe’s private office. It was a half-darkened room, the windows having wire-screens, summer and winter, in order that prying eyes across the street might not see his visitors or his confidential brokers, whose identity it was advisable should remain unknown to the Street. He was walking up and down the room, pausing from time to time to look at the tape. The ticker is the only telescope the stock-market general has; it tells him what his forces are doing and how the enemy is meeting his attacks. Every inch of the tape is so much ground ”

“ Again the Trust-maker smiled, uncertainly.
“You haven’t all the capital stock, I hope.”
“Well, call it 100,000 shares,” said Greenbaum, more uncertainly and less jovially.
“Who is to be in it besides you?”
“Oh, you know; the same old crowd.”
“Oh, I know,” mimicked Mr. Sharpe, scornfully, “the same old crowd. You ought to have come to me before; it will take something to overcome your own reputations. How much will each take?”
“We’ll fix that O. K. if you take hold,” answered Greenbaum, laughingly. “We’ve got over 100,000 shares and we’d rather some one else held some of it. We ain’t hogs. Ha! ”

“ Nearly every American may be met as an equal on the field of Humor. To jest in business matters of the greatest importance bespoke the national trait. Moreover, if Sharpe declined, Greenbaum could treat the entire affair—the proposal and the rejection—as parts of a joke. ”

“ By Frank H. Spearman While railroad life affords fewer elements of passion and emotion than the life of Wall Street, it offers however a far greater field for the depiction of the heroic. Deeds of bravery are probably more common among these hardy, cool, resourceful men—the railroad employees—than among any other members of society. ”

“ In the first place, the boy knows whether his firm is buying or selling certain stocks; he must exercise discrimination in the matter of awarding the orders, should the Board member of the firm happen to be unavailable when the boy receives the order. For example: International Pipe may be selling at 108. A man in Tracy & Middleton’s office, who has bought 500 shares of it at 104, wishes to “corral” his profits. He gives an order to the firm to sell the stock, let us say, “at the market,” that is, at the ruling market price. ”

“ Such was the first of a series of skirmishes by 142means of which the diminutive Napoleon of the Street captured the floating supply of Iowa Midland stock, until he had no less than 65,000 shares safe in his clutches.
All the old tricks that he knew and new devices he invented were used to hide from the Street the fact that Mr. Greener was buying the stock on every opportunity. But beyond a certain limit extensive purchases of a particular stock cannot be concealed from the thousand shrewd men who make their living—a very good living, indeed—by not being blind. ”

“ Any member who, in order to increase his business, charges an outsider or another member less than exactly the prescribed amount for buying or selling stocks, is liable to severe penalties. The offer of a two-dollar broker to give a telephone-boy fifty cents for each order of 100 shares secured was obviously a violation of the rule. ”

“ As the result of much thought about his losses Gilmartin became a professional tipster. To let others speculate for him seemed the only sure way of winning. He began by advising ten victims—he learned in time to call them clients—to sell Steel Rod preferred, each man 100 shares; and to a second ten he urged the purchase of the same quantity of the same stock. To all he advised taking four points’ profit. Not all followed his advice, but the seven clients who sold it made between them nearly $3,000 over night. ”