All the men who got rich with John Breakspeare developed strange
pathologies from nervous shock and strain. Their eyes became opaque
and had that uncanny trick of suddenly and without movement changing
their focus while they looked at you, as if something were transacting
on the far-away horizon of their thoughts and you for that instant
were transparent. They had their luck by the tail and could not let
go. They could count their gains; they could not seize them. John was
always getting them in; he never got them out. Their wealth was in
property to which enormous additions had continuously to be made by an
uncontrollable law of growth. Thus the richer they grew the greater
correspondingly their liabilities were and there seemed no way either
to quit or get out. If you had all the wealth in the world you could
not sell it. There would be no one to buy it. In principle that was
their problem. If they could sell out they would be millionaires. But
where was there anybody with money enough to buy them out? It would
take twenty-five millions or more. Once they had begun to look at this
dilemma they could not let it alone; it filled them with anxiety. They
began to worry John about it. He had got them in. Couldn’t he find a
way to get them out?
“All right,” he said. “I’ll show you a way out.”
“How?”
“We’re like a railroad,” he said. “No railroad is privately owned any
more. It’s too big. It represents too much capital. Only the public is
rich enough to own a railroad. It takes thousands of investors putting
their money together to build a railroad. Then somebody works it for
them and pays them dividends on their shares. We can do that,--put our
shares on the New York Stock Exchange and sell out to the public.”
So he led them to Wall Street. The motive was theirs; the plan was his.
The American Steel Company was reorganized. Its capitalization was
increased to take in properties hitherto jointly owned among them and
for other purposes. They agreed to sell no shares except through John
in order that all should fare alike. It was a verbal agreement. All
of their private agreements were verbal and never so far had one been
broken.
Enter John Breakspeare upon the Wall Street scene with something to
sell.
The shares of the American Steel Company were duly listed on the
New York Stock Exchange,--that is, they were added to the list of
securities permitted to be dealt in there and allotted sign and booth
in the great investment bazar.
People stared and passed by. It was a strange sign not only because it
was new but for the reason also that the public knew only mining and
railroad shares. The day of industrial company shares had not come.
John was a pioneer in that line. He was a vendor unused to the ways of
this fair with merchandise nobody had ever seen before.
He was not disappointed. He knew, if anybody did, that goods must be
brought to the buyer’s attention. Nothing will sell itself, least
of all seven per cent. shares for which there is instinctively
neither hunger nor thirst. He knew also in principle how this kind of
impalpable merchandise should be displayed. It has no appeal to any of
the natural senses. Therefore it must be made to appeal to all of them
at once, symbolically. How?
First to be engaged is the sense of sight. The shares move. They go up.
People ask: “What is that?” They move again. People ask: “Why is that?”
They continue to move, going up, then down a little, then suddenly
up a great deal, and people say: “Here before our eyes is something
doing,--a chance to make some money.” And when once they begin to say
that all their senses and appetites are touched with expectation, for
money, however derived, is in itself palpable. It is the symbol of all
things whatever.
For the art of making shares go up and down in a manner to excite first
attention, then curiosity and then an impulse to act for gain, there
is a long, inartistic word. The word is manipulation. The stock market
manipulator is an illusionist. Perched high upon some eerie crag of
the Wall Street canyon, producing enchantment at a distance, he is
himself invisible save to the initiate, and even they do not know what
he intends or why, because what he seems to be doing is never at all
what he is really doing. If it were, the lesser fauna--the wolves,
the jackals, the foxes, apes and crows,--would anticipate his ends
and take the quarry out of his hands. He makes shares rise when he is
selling them and fall when he is buying them. He can take an unnoticed,
unwanted thing like American Steel and cause it to become an object of
extravagant speculative interest, so that tens of thousands hang over
the tape and wait for the next quotation, betting whether it shall be
up or down. Moreover, he is a ventriloquist. When he has made certain
shares very active by the apparently simple though extremely intricate
expedient of buying and selling them furiously through different
brokers, no two of whom know they have the same principal,--when he has
done this and people begin to ask the question, then answers suitable
to his purpose are in everyone’s ears, saturate the atmosphere, and
although he, the manipulator, is the source of them that fact is as
little known as the fact that he was himself the solitary source of
all the buying and selling that started the excitement. Not only is
the public deceived; the fauna, too, will often be caught. All is
flesh that rises to his lure. His work is sometimes legitimate, as
when he creates a public demand for shares the proceeds of which go to
build a railroad or some other great economic work so vast that the
capital could not have been obtained in any other way; it is sometimes
predatory, sometimes wanton.
At this time the pendragon of manipulators was one Sabath,--James
Sabath,--feared by the wicked and righteous both. He was not a member
of the Stock Exchange for he did not wish to be bound by the rules.
There was no name on his door nor was his name in any directory or book
of celebrities. Yet it was constantly on the lips of all men concerned
in gains and losses from speculation. One might have asked in every
bank in Wall Street who and where this Sabath was and one’s inquiry
would have been received with utter blankness. Yet there would have
been hardly a banker in Wall Street, certainly no very important one,
who had not had transactions with him of an extremely intimate and
delicate nature. Such is the way of men in the money canyon.
For example, there was Bullguard. He was the great private banker
of his time,--a kind of Cæsar’s wife to the institution of American
finance. His authority was absolute, his power was feudal and
tyrannical. For him to have been seen in the society of Sabath would
have been scandalous. Nobody would have known what to make of it. Yet
in the pursuit of his ends he often engaged Sabath to do things he
could not risk doing for himself. That again is the way of men in the
little autonomous state which is Wall Street.
John sought an audience with Sabath. After long delay and much
unnecessary mystery he was received in that strange man’s lair. Besides
himself there was nothing in it except a ticker, some chairs and a
worn Turkey carpet. The room was without windows, therefore lighted
artificially in daytime. Twice during the interview he rang a bell and
each time a boy appeared with one glass of whiskey in his hand. Sabath
drank it at a gulp, with no here’s how or by your leave. He sat in an
arm chair and combed his beard upward from its roots with his fingers,
or for change twisted it with the other hand. His head was continually
moving; sometimes he threw it far back to start his fingers through
his beard; no matter what he did with his head his eyes all the time
were perfectly still and held John in a blue, vise-like gaze. He looked
at people in a way to make them feel full of holes. His head was very
large; his body was neat and small; his voice was sarcastic, thin and
shrill.
John explained his errand. He wished Sabath to take hold of American
Steel shares and create some public interest in them. Sabath said
nothing, but continued to look at him. John went into details, telling
about the company, what it owned and what it earned. Still Sabath
continued to gaze at him in silence. John told him at length how the
shares had been pooled in his hands by his associates, none to be sold
except through him. And Sabath said nothing.
“Does it interest you at all?” John asked at last.
“Come back tomorrow,” said Sabath. He made a gesture toward the door
without looking at it. As John went he sat still, but for his head,
which turned slowly in a reptilian manner.
To John’s surprise Sabath was vocal the next day and asked many
questions in a high, twanging voice. Some of his questions were oblique
and some apparently quite irrelevant. Suddenly he said:
“And so you know that God-fearing Creed, do you? You must know him
very well. How much of this precious stock has Mr. Creed got?”
John told him. Sabath tweaked his beard, saying: “Who would imagine I’d
ever be found in the same alley with a he-cat like Creed.”
“What’s the matter with him?” asked John.
“I say nothing against him,” Sabath answered. “I only say I’d hate to
go into a room with him alone.”
There was a third interview, then a fourth and a fifth. Terms were
stated. It seemed to be all ready for the signatures and as there
weren’t going to be any signatures John couldn’t understand why Sabath
kept postponing the final word. Then one day out of a painted sky he
said: “We seem unable to make a trade, Mr. Breakspeare. I cannot allow
myself to waste any more of your valuable time. I’m not interested.”
John was amazed.
“However,” he said, “I suppose I can trust you to keep to yourself the
information you have obtained in the course of these interviews?”
“That’s what we live on down here,--trust,” said Sabath. “We couldn’t
do business without it.”
With that he turned his back and stood looking at the ticker. John,
thus rudely dismissed, was at the door with his hand on the knob when
Sabath spoke again, without turning around, without moving his head, as
if he were thinking out loud.
“What did you ever do to Mr. Bullguard?”
“I don’t know him,” said John. “Why?”
“He knows you,” said Sabath, still reading the tape. “He says you are a
gambler. Is that true?”
“I don’t know what he means,” said John. “It would be absurd to talk
about it. I have some business to transact in Wall Street. How does
that concern him?”
Sabath now turned and walked with him to the door. His manner was both
ingratiating and menacing; his voice was ironic, and yet there was
a suspicion of friendliness in his words. “Because if you are,” he
continued, as if John had not spoken, “I would urge you to keep all
that talent for the steel business. I understand the steel business
needs it. We don’t like gambling in Wall Street. You are a young man.
I have wasted your time. Now I offer you my advice. Don’t try anything
in Wall Street. Gamblers don’t go far down here. We eat them. Mr.
Bullguard would swallow you up at one bite.” He made an exaggerated
bow. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you before you go
back to Pittsburgh.”
“Thanks,” said John. “When I want to be amused I’ll look you up. Tell
Mr. Bullguard I’ve been eaten up so often that I like it. Sometimes I
fairly hunger for it. Why did you change your mind?”
“How could I have changed my mind?” Sabath injuredly asked. “How can
you say that? It had never been made up.”
“Why did you change your mind?” John insisted.
“You would be betrayed,” said Sabath. “I should be betrayed, too, of
course; but I’m used to it and you’re not. The only man you don’t
suspect is always the one who betrays you.”
“Did Mr. Bullguard call you off?” John asked.
“You might never get used to it,” Sabath continued, vaguely, ignoring
the question. “You wouldn’t know what to do. I’ve been betrayed so much
that I know it before it happens. And I know what to do. You never get
through a deal like this without being betrayed.”
He turned sadly and walked back to the ticker. The interview was closed.
John reacted to this experience with thoughtful curiosity. He was
baffled and chagrined and at the same time deeply interested, for
he perceived that here was a province of the dynamic mind in which
subtlety was carried to its ultimate point. After long reflection
he was still of the opinion that underlying Sabath’s diabolism lay
a vein of well meaning; also of the opinion still that the puissant
Bullguard had interfered. But why? What could his motive be? This was
presently to be discovered. John explored the matter adroitly and
learned that Bullguard was about to do for the Carmichael crowd what
John lone-handed had attempted to do for his crowd,--that is to say,
capitalize the steel business and introduce it to the public. Naturally
Bullguard desired the field to himself and took a high-handed way
against the interloper.
Nevertheless, John resolved to go on. He would be his own manipulator.
Why not? The stock market was nobody’s private preserve. He had as much
right there as Bullguard or Sabath. Besides, where was the risk? He
controlled all the shares of the American Steel Company.
So he engaged a broker, who engaged other brokers, and buying and
selling orders, both issuing from John, began to be executed in
American Steel. For a while he was delighted. It was so easy to make
the shares active, to make them go up and down, to create the illusion
of excited bargaining, that he began to wonder why anyone should pay
manipulators large fees to do this simple trick. He wondered, too,
what Sabath was thinking of his performance. He could almost feel
Sabath watching him. He imagined him at the ticker, tweaking his beard,
sneering at the amateur quotations that were appearing on the tape for
American Steel.
They were beautiful quotations, rising from 80 to 85, then to 90, then
to 95 and at length to 100; they were also very costly quotations.
Commissions to brokers who executed his orders began to run into
large figures and there were no offsetting returns. That is to say,
real buyers were not in the least intrigued. After several weeks John
himself was the only buyer and the only seller. He discussed it with
his broker who thought what he needed was publicity. He ought to get
American Steel written about in the newspapers.
Financial writers to the number of twenty were invited to meet the
president of the American Steel Company. Six came. John received them
in his broker’s private office and spoke eloquently and earnestly
of the company, its merits, earnings and all that. They stared at
him incredulously, then began to look very bored and went away. The
American Steel was not written about except in one newspaper, which
told of the solicited interview in a way to make it ludicrous.
Now a most improbable thing happened. John’s broker reported that
someone was selling American Steel shares.
Selling them? Who could be selling them? Nobody had any to sell.
Nevertheless, it was true. Well, next best to selling the shares to
the public, which he hadn’t succeeded in doing, was to buy them from
speculators who would sell them without owning them, for in that case
when the sellers were called upon to deliver what they never had then
they couldn’t and John would be in a position to squeeze them. He would
have them in a corner. So he gave orders to buy all the American Steel
anyone offered to sell. The selling steadily increased. How strange
that professional Stock Exchange gamblers, the canniest men in the
world, would sell themselves into a corner in that silly manner! Yet
what else could it be? Still sure the sellers were selling what they
couldn’t deliver John continued to buy until very large sums began to
be involved.
One afternoon his broker informed him that the selling had been traced
to Sabath. This John had already suspected. He was now in deep water
and wired for his crowd,--Slaymaker, Awns, Wingreene, Pick and Creed.
Having laid the cards before them he proposed that they should unite
their resources and bring off a corner in American Steel. Clearly they
had Sabath cornered. They had only to let him go on selling until he
was tired; then they could make him settle on their own terms.
Creed declined. This was John’s party, he said. They had authorized him
to sell their shares. Instead he had got himself involved in a contest
with the most powerful speculator in Wall Street and now expected them
to stand under. They would be fools to get into that kind of game. He
flatly wouldn’t do it.
The others wavered. They hated to leave John in the lurch; they were
afraid to stand by. Creed withdrew and vanished.
While the other four were hesitating a sudden panic shook the stock
market. American Steel shares fell from 103 to 25 in ten minutes,
plunging headlong through John’s buying orders. And while this was
taking place his broker came to him in a state of gibbering excitement.
“I thought you said nobody had any American Steel to sell?”
“Nobody has,” said John.
“Then we’re all crazy,” said the broker. “More than a million dollars’
worth of the stuff has just been delivered to us. We’ve got to pay for
it at once.”
“Let’s look at it,” said John. “I want to see it.”
He saw it. The shares that had been delivered to him were Creed’s.
John paid for them, though it almost broke his back. He used his
own money until he had no more and borrowed the rest from Slaymaker
and Pick on his notes. The fiasco was complete. American Steel was
indignantly stricken from the Stock Exchange list because it had been
manipulated in so outrageous a manner and the newspapers wrote about it
most scornfully.
It was all over and John and his crowd, now always excepting Creed,
were at dinner in the Holland House, when a reporter from _The Sun_
appeared at their table unannounced and asked: “Mr. Breakspeare, how do
you feel?”
John went on eating as he replied: “I feel like a dog that’s been
kicked so much he goes sideways. I’ve got every pain there is but one.
That’s belly ache.”
This was printed the next morning on the front page of _The Sun_, and
Wall Street forgot itself long enough to say: “Not a bad sport, anyhow.”
“Now I suppose we’ll go back and attend to the steel business,” said
Slaymaker.
“In a day or two,” John answered. “There’s something I want to do here
yet.”
He wanted to find out how it happened. And he did. Bullguard, knowing
Creed, had tempted him to part with his shares at a very nice price.
These shares Bullguard turned over to Sabath with the understanding
that they should be used to club John’s market to death. John had no
hostile feeling for Sabath. For Creed he felt only contempt. But with
Bullguard he opened a score.
His state was not one of anger. He had only himself to blame. “I don’t
so much mind getting plucked,” he said, “but I look so like Hell.”
He simply couldn’t leave until he had turned the laugh. This he did
in the way as follows: One morning at eleven o’clock a small funeral
cortege, instead of stopping at Trinity Church as funerals should in
that part of the city, turned down Wall Street and stopped at the door
of Bullguard & Company. Six men drew from the hearse a silver-mounted
mahogany coffin smothered in roses, carried it into the great banking
house, put it down on the floor, went immediately out and drove away.
It was so swiftly yet quietly done and it was so altogether incredible
that the door attendant knew not what to do or think. His wits were
paralyzed and while he stared with his mouth open the pall-bearers
disappeared. So did the hearse and carriages. A great crowd instantly
gathered. The nearest policeman was called. As no one could say how
the coffin got there or what was in it he refused either to move it
or to let it be moved until the coroner should come to open it. He
was a new policeman and could not be awed. He knew his duty and no
manner of entreaty availed. For an hour it lay there on the floor.
Police reserves were summoned to keep a way for traffic through the
gaping throng. Somewhere inside the banking house, out of sight, was
Bullguard, surrounded by his partners, apoplectic and purple with a
sense of unanswerable outrage. The coroner was accompanied by a group
of reporters.
When the coffin was opened, there upon the white satin pillow lay a
rump of a pig, rampant, tail uppermost; and in the curl of the tail was
twisted and tied like a ribbon the few feet of ticker tape on which the
last quotations for American Steel were printed. It was a freak story
and the newspapers made much of it. Wall Street rocked with glee. John
went back to Pittsburgh with a smile in his midriff, leaving the wreck
of a fortune behind him.