The growth of young Frank Algernon Cowperwood was through years of what
might be called a comfortable and happy family existence. Buttonwood
Street, where he spent the first ten years of his life, was a lovely
place for a boy to live. It contained mostly small two and three-story
red brick houses, with small white marble steps leading up to the front
door, and thin, white marble trimmings outlining the front door and
windows. There were trees in the street—plenty of them. The road
pavement was of big, round cobblestones, made bright and clean by the
rains; and the sidewalks were of red brick, and always damp and cool.
In the rear was a yard, with trees and grass and sometimes flowers, for
the lots were almost always one hundred feet deep, and the
house-fronts, crowding close to the pavement in front, left a
comfortable space in the rear.
The Cowperwoods, father and mother, were not so lean and narrow that
they could not enter into the natural tendency to be happy and joyous
with their children; and so this family, which increased at the rate of
a child every two or three years after Frank’s birth until there were
four children, was quite an interesting affair when he was ten and they
were ready to move into the New Market Street home. Henry Worthington
Cowperwood’s connections were increased as his position grew more
responsible, and gradually he was becoming quite a personage. He
already knew a number of the more prosperous merchants who dealt with
his bank, and because as a clerk his duties necessitated his calling at
other banking-houses, he had come to be familiar with and favorably
known in the Bank of the United States, the Drexels, the Edwards, and
others. The brokers knew him as representing a very sound organization,
and while he was not considered brilliant mentally, he was known as a
most reliable and trustworthy individual.
In this progress of his father young Cowperwood definitely shared. He
was quite often allowed to come to the bank on Saturdays, when he would
watch with great interest the deft exchange of bills at the brokerage
end of the business. He wanted to know where all the types of money
came from, why discounts were demanded and received, what the men did
with all the money they received. His father, pleased at his interest,
was glad to explain so that even at this early age—from ten to
fifteen—the boy gained a wide knowledge of the condition of the country
financially—what a State bank was and what a national one; what brokers
did; what stocks were, and why they fluctuated in value. He began to
see clearly what was meant by money as a medium of exchange, and how
all values were calculated according to one primary value, that of
gold. He was a financier by instinct, and all the knowledge that
pertained to that great art was as natural to him as the emotions and
subtleties of life are to a poet. This medium of exchange, gold,
interested him intensely. When his father explained to him how it was
mined, he dreamed that he owned a gold mine and waked to wish that he
did. He was likewise curious about stocks and bonds and he learned that
some stocks and bonds were not worth the paper they were written on,
and that others were worth much more than their face value indicated.
“There, my son,” said his father to him one day, “you won’t often see a
bundle of those around this neighborhood.” He referred to a series of
shares in the British East India Company, deposited as collateral at
two-thirds of their face value for a loan of one hundred thousand
dollars. A Philadelphia magnate had hypothecated them for the use of
the ready cash. Young Cowperwood looked at them curiously. “They don’t
look like much, do they?” he commented.
“They are worth just four times their face value,” said his father,
archly.
Frank reexamined them. “The British East India Company,” he read. “Ten
pounds—that’s pretty near fifty dollars.”
“Forty-eight, thirty-five,” commented his father, dryly. “Well, if we
had a bundle of those we wouldn’t need to work very hard. You’ll notice
there are scarcely any pin-marks on them. They aren’t sent around very
much. I don’t suppose these have ever been used as collateral before.”
Young Cowperwood gave them back after a time, but not without a keen
sense of the vast ramifications of finance. What was the East India
Company? What did it do? His father told him.
At home also he listened to considerable talk of financial investment
and adventure. He heard, for one thing, of a curious character by the
name of Steemberger, a great beef speculator from Virginia, who was
attracted to Philadelphia in those days by the hope of large and easy
credits. Steemberger, so his father said, was close to Nicholas Biddle,
Lardner, and others of the United States Bank, or at least friendly
with them, and seemed to be able to obtain from that organization
nearly all that he asked for. His operations in the purchase of cattle
in Virginia, Ohio, and other States were vast, amounting, in fact, to
an entire monopoly of the business of supplying beef to Eastern cities.
He was a big man, enormous, with a face, his father said, something
like that of a pig; and he wore a high beaver hat and a long frock-coat
which hung loosely about his big chest and stomach. He had managed to
force the price of beef up to thirty cents a pound, causing all the
retailers and consumers to rebel, and this was what made him so
conspicuous. He used to come to the brokerage end of the elder
Cowperwood’s bank, with as much as one hundred thousand or two hundred
thousand dollars, in twelve months—post-notes of the United States Bank
in denominations of one thousand, five thousand, and ten thousand
dollars. These he would cash at from ten to twelve per cent. under
their face value, having previously given the United States Bank his
own note at four months for the entire amount. He would take his pay
from the Third National brokerage counter in packages of Virginia,
Ohio, and western Pennsylvania bank-notes at par, because he made his
disbursements principally in those States. The Third National would in
the first place realize a profit of from four to five per cent. on the
original transaction; and as it took the Western bank-notes at a
discount, it also made a profit on those.
There was another man his father talked about—one Francis J. Grund, a
famous newspaper correspondent and lobbyist at Washington, who
possessed the faculty of unearthing secrets of every kind, especially
those relating to financial legislation. The secrets of the President
and the Cabinet, as well as of the Senate and the House of
Representatives, seemed to be open to him. Grund had been about, years
before, purchasing through one or two brokers large amounts of the
various kinds of Texas debt certificates and bonds. The Republic of
Texas, in its struggle for independence from Mexico, had issued bonds
and certificates in great variety, amounting in value to ten or fifteen
million dollars. Later, in connection with the scheme to make Texas a
State of the Union, a bill was passed providing a contribution on the
part of the United States of five million dollars, to be applied to the
extinguishment of this old debt. Grund knew of this, and also of the
fact that some of this debt, owing to the peculiar conditions of issue,
was to be paid in full, while other portions were to be scaled down,
and there was to be a false or pre-arranged failure to pass the bill at
one session in order to frighten off the outsiders who might have heard
and begun to buy the old certificates for profit. He acquainted the
Third National Bank with this fact, and of course the information came
to Cowperwood as teller. He told his wife about it, and so his son, in
this roundabout way, heard it, and his clear, big eyes glistened. He
wondered why his father did not take advantage of the situation and buy
some Texas certificates for himself. Grund, so his father said, and
possibly three or four others, had made over a hundred thousand dollars
apiece. It wasn’t exactly legitimate, he seemed to think, and yet it
was, too. Why shouldn’t such inside information be rewarded? Somehow,
Frank realized that his father was too honest, too cautious, but when
he grew up, he told himself, he was going to be a broker, or a
financier, or a banker, and do some of these things.
Just at this time there came to the Cowperwoods an uncle who had not
previously appeared in the life of the family. He was a brother of Mrs.
Cowperwood’s—Seneca Davis by name—solid, unctuous, five feet ten in
height, with a big, round body, a round, smooth head rather bald, a
clear, ruddy complexion, blue eyes, and what little hair he had of a
sandy hue. He was exceedingly well dressed according to standards
prevailing in those days, indulging in flowered waistcoats, long,
light-colored frock-coats, and the invariable (for a fairly prosperous
man) high hat. Frank was fascinated by him at once. He had been a
planter in Cuba and still owned a big ranch there and could tell him
tales of Cuban life—rebellions, ambuscades, hand-to-hand fighting with
machetes on his own plantation, and things of that sort. He brought
with him a collection of Indian curies, to say nothing of an
independent fortune and several slaves—one, named Manuel, a tall,
raw-boned black, was his constant attendant, a bodyservant, as it were.
He shipped raw sugar from his plantation in boat-loads to the Southwark
wharves in Philadelphia. Frank liked him because he took life in a
hearty, jovial way, rather rough and offhand for this somewhat quiet
and reserved household.
“Why, Nancy Arabella,” he said to Mrs Cowperwood on arriving one Sunday
afternoon, and throwing the household into joyous astonishment at his
unexpected and unheralded appearance, “you haven’t grown an inch! I
thought when you married old brother Hy here that you were going to
fatten up like your brother. But look at you! I swear to Heaven you
don’t weigh five pounds.” And he jounced her up and down by the waist,
much to the perturbation of the children, who had never before seen
their mother so familiarly handled.
Henry Cowperwood was exceedingly interested in and pleased at the
arrival of this rather prosperous relative; for twelve years before,
when he was married, Seneca Davis had not taken much notice of him.
“Look at these little putty-faced Philadelphians,” he continued, “They
ought to come down to my ranch in Cuba and get tanned up. That would
take away this waxy look.” And he pinched the cheek of Anna Adelaide,
now five years old. “I tell you, Henry, you have a rather nice place
here.” And he looked at the main room of the rather conventional
three-story house with a critical eye.
Measuring twenty by twenty-four and finished in imitation cherry, with
a set of new Sheraton parlor furniture it presented a quaintly
harmonious aspect. Since Henry had become teller the family had
acquired a piano—a decided luxury in those days—brought from Europe;
and it was intended that Anna Adelaide, when she was old enough, should
learn to play. There were a few uncommon ornaments in the room—a gas
chandelier for one thing, a glass bowl with goldfish in it, some rare
and highly polished shells, and a marble Cupid bearing a basket of
flowers. It was summer time, the windows were open, and the trees
outside, with their widely extended green branches, were pleasantly
visible shading the brick sidewalk. Uncle Seneca strolled out into the
back yard.
“Well, this is pleasant enough,” he observed, noting a large elm and
seeing that the yard was partially paved with brick and enclosed within
brick walls, up the sides of which vines were climbing. “Where’s your
hammock? Don’t you string a hammock here in summer? Down on my veranda
at San Pedro I have six or seven.”
“We hadn’t thought of putting one up because of the neighbors, but it
would be nice,” agreed Mrs. Cowperwood. “Henry will have to get one.”
“I have two or three in my trunks over at the hotel. My niggers make
’em down there. I’ll send Manuel over with them in the morning.”
He plucked at the vines, tweaked Edward’s ear, told Joseph, the second
boy, he would bring him an Indian tomahawk, and went back into the
house.
“This is the lad that interests me,” he said, after a time, laying a
hand on the shoulder of Frank. “What did you name him in full, Henry?”
“Frank Algernon.”
“Well, you might have named him after me. There’s something to this
boy. How would you like to come down to Cuba and be a planter, my boy?”
“I’m not so sure that I’d like to,” replied the eldest.
“Well, that’s straight-spoken. What have you against it?”
“Nothing, except that I don’t know anything about it.”
“What do you know?”
The boy smiled wisely. “Not very much, I guess.”
“Well, what are you interested in?”
“Money!”
“Aha! What’s bred in the bone, eh? Get something of that from your
father, eh? Well, that’s a good trait. And spoken like a man, too!
We’ll hear more about that later. Nancy, you’re breeding a financier
here, I think. He talks like one.”
He looked at Frank carefully now. There was real force in that sturdy
young body—no doubt of it. Those large, clear gray eyes were full of
intelligence. They indicated much and revealed nothing.
“A smart boy!” he said to Henry, his brother-in-law. “I like his
get-up. You have a bright family.”
Henry Cowperwood smiled dryly. This man, if he liked Frank, might do
much for the boy. He might eventually leave him some of his fortune. He
was wealthy and single.
Uncle Seneca became a frequent visitor to the house—he and his negro
body-guard, Manuel, who spoke both English and Spanish, much to the
astonishment of the children; and he took an increasing interest in
Frank.
“When that boy gets old enough to find out what he wants to do, I think
I’ll help him to do it,” he observed to his sister one day; and she
told him she was very grateful. He talked to Frank about his studies,
and found that he cared little for books or most of the study he was
compelled to pursue. Grammar was an abomination. Literature silly.
Latin was of no use. History—well, it was fairly interesting.
“I like bookkeeping and arithmetic,” he observed. “I want to get out
and get to work, though. That’s what I want to do.”
“You’re pretty young, my son,” observed his uncle. “You’re only how old
now? Fourteen?”
“Thirteen.”
“Well, you can’t leave school much before sixteen. You’ll do better if
you stay until seventeen or eighteen. It can’t do you any harm. You
won’t be a boy again.”
“I don’t want to be a boy. I want to get to work.”
“Don’t go too fast, son. You’ll be a man soon enough. You want to be a
banker, do you?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well, when the time comes, if everything is all right and you’ve
behaved yourself and you still want to, I’ll help you get a start in
business. If I were you and were going to be a banker, I’d first spend
a year or so in some good grain and commission house. There’s good
training to be had there. You’ll learn a lot that you ought to know.
And, meantime, keep your health and learn all you can. Wherever I am,
you let me know, and I’ll write and find out how you’ve been conducting
yourself.”
He gave the boy a ten-dollar gold piece with which to start a
bank-account. And, not strange to say, he liked the whole Cowperwood
household much better for this dynamic, self-sufficient, sterling youth
who was an integral part of it.