AN IMPORTER AND DEALER
While during 1888 we were nominally brokers, a considerable portion
of our business was actually in the nature of that of an importer
and dealer. This position was really forced on us by circumstances
beyond our control. To protect ourselves from loss in our sales
for London account we had to take from time to time an interest in
the market and this made us dealers. To complete our sales we were
compelled to import the material and thus became importers.
With the opening of the year 1889 we found ourselves possessed of
fairly large capital and a firmly established credit with bankers.
These facts, combined with the best facilities for doing the
business, decided us to eliminate the brokerage phase entirely,
except in our transactions with our speculative clients. From that
time on we bought and sold for our own account.
We had a very large trade with consumers throughout the country,
and we knew we had but to say the word to increase this by calling
back all the small buyers with whom we parted company in 1884. As
brokers we did not care for that small trade, but as dealers it
was an entirely different proposition.
Of course as soon as the New York dealers learned of our new
departure they would give us sharp and active competition for the
orders, but we felt so strong in our position we did not fear it.
We made no public announcement, but quietly bought the necessary
spot stock in the cheapest market, and as soon as we were ready,
when the orders came to us, filled them ourselves instead of passing
them on to the dealers as heretofore.
Only a few days passed before the dealers, missing the orders they
had been accustomed to receive through our hands, commenced to
investigate. When questioned we told them frankly what we were doing.
At first, argument was used to dissuade us from such a policy, but
when we were told we had no right to the business I replied that
we were not dealing in a patented article and I knew of no law to
prevent us from trading as dealers if we so desired.
That ended the argument, and men who for years had been in close
business intimacy and friendship with us, became our enemies.
I knew well what that meant. Henceforth I was to get my share of
the personal animosity that in this trade superseded the spirit of
fair competition.
Those men held up before the world as models of Christian piety, who
never missed a church service, whose names appeared in the papers
as subscribers to charitable and mission funds; those Sunday-school
teachers who would not have in their homes on the Sabbath day
a newspaper, who would not take a glass of wine at dinner because
of the example to their boys, and yet in their efforts to injure a
business rival never hesitated to break the Ninth Commandment--not
in words, oh no, too cautious for that, nothing that one could
put his finger on; but the shrug of the shoulder, the significant
raising of the eye-brows, the insinuation, the little hint to
unsettle confidence. Bah! on such Christianity.
And now those men were to train their guns on me.
I had been twenty years in the trade and knew how others had fared.
I grant, in many cases, it was tit-for-tat, the man injured had
done his best to injured others. With _few exceptions_ the entire
trade were "birds of a feather."
We had not long to wait for the first shot and it fell very flat,
the honors in that engagement all being with us.
A broker had offered us a parcel for future delivery at a price he
thought cheap and we accepted it. Later he called and said when
he gave up our name as the buyer, the seller declined to confirm
unless we would deposit with him, the seller, five thousand dollars
as security.
This concern knew we were perfectly responsible, but took this
method of discrediting us, expecting that the broker would help
the matter on by gossiping through the trade about it.
We heard his story and then said to him, "Go back and say to your
principal that we will not deposit with him one dollar; but if he
will deposit with any trust company five thousand dollars, we will
deposit twenty-five thousand against it."
The seller declined to deposit anything and the sale was cancelled.
The broker did gossip about it, but as his account of the incident
was correct, it added to our prestige.
Every now and then we would hear of something that one or another
of our competitors had intimated to our discredit, but treating
all such rumors with silent contempt, we kept up the even tenor of
our way and closed the year with a profit of seventy-two thousand
dollars.