DOLLAR HYDROPHOBIA
Our first fears of failure were soon succeeded by apprehensions of a
different nature. By Tuesday noon it was evident that the flotation
would far exceed the low expectations of Rogers and Rockefeller, and I
knew that if the people's interest continued to develop at the rate the
subscriptions indicated, the totals would be far ahead of my own most
sanguine anticipations. Every hour the excitement intensified. The
crowds on the street and in the brokers' offices; the rush of investors
to the City Bank--all demonstrated a feverish condition of the public
mind, a state of unrest that fills the conservative banker with dread
lest something happen to precipitate a disorder and a panic. The acute
sensitiveness of a body of investors to extraneous influence, however
slight, is familiar to any one who has had to do with market
manipulation. In a theatre or church one strenuous spirit can quell a
tumult with some ringing assurance, but long before the leader of a
financial movement has got word to his following, wide-spread over the
country, it has taken alarm, the rout has begun, and the field is strewn
with corpses. A great financial excitement, like a rocket, should soar
triumphantly into the air, leaving behind it a comet-like trail of
glory, climaxing in a shower of gold; diverted from its course, it runs
a mad, brief, tragic career along the earth, spreading ruin and disaster
in its path.
There comes a time when all great enterprises must emerge from the
nursery and be exposed to the sunlight and the breezes of every day. We
were crossing the ominous tract which divides the trenches of
preparation from the sheltering fortress of attainment, and the hosts
of failure were rallied to dispute our passage.
At this juncture any accident to our venture might affect the whole
American business fabric, and no one realized the danger of the
situation better than Mr. Rogers and myself. During the anxious days
that were passing we canvassed the dire possibilities that the situation
contained, just as children tell each other ghost stories when left
alone in the darkness of the night. The great catastrophes of finance,
we remembered, had all been born of the unexpected--of unforeseen
contingencies--far beyond the range of human foresight. Who knew but
that the hours were pregnant with some terrible potentiality--the
assassination of a king or president, a Chicago or Boston fire, an
epidemic of cholera, a belligerent message from the President, such as
Cleveland's Venezuela ultimatum, a great bank defalcation, the suicide
of an important operator, the death of an eminent capitalist--a breath
of one of these world cyclones would crumble our structure into the dust
and take along with it the neighboring edifices on both sides of the
street. There were also the hidden possibilities of betrayal, of
treachery, for we knew that scores of Wall Street's most ingenious minds
were bent on unravelling and exposing the secret threads of our
enterprise.
On Wednesday morning soon after ten o'clock Mr. Rogers, on his way
downtown, came to the Waldorf. He was plainly excited.
"Lawson," he said, "this is something unheard of, unprecedented. The
bank is being buried under subscriptions. Stillman says he is adding
scores of clerks, but that he cannot possibly keep pace with the
subscriptions. Mr. Rockefeller is very nervous, and I must confess to
feeling a bit of 'rattle' myself. It now looks as though the total would
run into fabulous figures. The Lewisohns are being swamped with orders
from Europe. They alone will probably put in more than ten millions.
Wall Street has lost its head entirely, and our people at 26 Broadway
are coming in asking advice and doubling and trebling their
subscriptions. If we don't keep our heads something bad may happen, for
it looks now as though the cash the subscription is tying up would make
a money-pinch. This affair must not be allowed to run away with us. What
do your reports from Boston and the country show?"
"The same as yours. The people have simply gone wild. Calls come in
ceaselessly to me from Wall Street men. The hotel is so full of brokers
from out of town that they are placing cots in the big rooms. I went
down into the office just now to talk to them and was nearly mobbed.
Already they are talking of a premium of $40 to $60 per share, but if we
keep to the line we have laid down, I don't think we need fear bad
consequences."
We discussed other aspects of the affair, the intense interest developed
in Europe, and the effect of the excitement on the price of the metal.
As he started to go down to his office, Mr. Rogers said, as though by
way of an after-thought:
"Lawson, if the people are so hungry, why should we not take some
advantage of it?"
The suggestion, with all it implied, stunned me for a second.
"What do you mean, Mr. Rogers? Take advantage--how?"
"Would it not be well to let the subscribers have more than the amount
we agreed? Why not take more of this money than five millions?"
This was out of a clear sky, for there had not been the slightest
suggestion of a change of programme and I had rested in the certainty
that our plan insured the safety of all who had gone in on my say-so. I
choked down my excitement.
"Good God, Mr. Rogers, are you mad?" I exclaimed. "Don't let us depart a
hair from what we all in our cool moments decided was best. We are in
the field now. It would be sure ruin to try any new schemes at this
moment."
"You are rattled yourself, Lawson. There's no need for excitement. I
merely offered the suggestion. Everything is going well," he reassured
me, but the picture his words conjured before my mind disturbed me all
day. That he would dare do what he had suggested I did not credit, for
the assurances I had were too solemn to allow me to believe such
treachery could be meditated. Nevertheless I brooded over the matter,
and late in the afternoon ran down to 26 Broadway, ostensibly to hear
the latest news from the bank, but really to try if I could not look
into Mr. Rogers' head and see if the imps I had sighted early in the day
were still there.
Mr. Rogers was over with Stillman at the bank. In half an hour he came
in, and the excitement he labored under was plainly evident in his face.
"Lawson," he said, "no one has ever seen anything like this before.
Stillman is bewildered. He says it looks as though by to-morrow there
will be a mob around the bank doors, and if between now and then
anything unusual should happen, there'll be the devil to pay sure. I
tell you I'm so tired out that I'm going home now to rest up."
Together we went uptown on the Elevated, and when I left him at
Thirty-third Street to cross over to my hotel, somehow the dark
forebodings of the morning had been lulled by his frank geniality and
carried away by his enthusiastic rejoicings in the success of our
enterprise. The picture of that soft spring evening hangs in my memory's
gallery--the declining sun seen through a long perspective of gilded
brick and brownstone facades, the heavy rumble of trains, the clamor of
newsboys crying last editions, the packed cable-cars slowly threading
their way amid the hurrying crowds of clerks and shop girls streaming
homeward, the cabs swinging in and out of the throng, through whose
windows I caught glimpses of jewels on bare shoulders, light silks, and
sweeping plumes--the butterflies of fashion or folly hurrying out on
their evening trysts. Broadway, with its hundreds of sights and sounds,
was before me in the hour of its transformation, the street lamps
breaking into incandescence, and the huge electric signs beginning to
glare above the theatre entrances. By the time I reached the Waldorf,
that high abode of Yankee royalty, the kinks and curlicues were so far
ironed from my nerves and brain that I had little doubt of my ability to
take a fall out of Fate in whatever sort of collar-and-elbow tussle she
might designate. In this mood I swung into the huge hotel through the
carriage entrance on Thirty-fourth Street, eager to forget myself amid
the rapt concourse of dollar worshippers, preening themselves against
the plush, onyx, and gildings of the Astor caravansary. I seemed to see
in the mirrors, on the walls, on the buttons of the lackeys' livery, in
the patterns of the rugs, inscribed on the tessellated floors and
painted on the lofty ceilings, dazzling and glittering, the universal
crest of the twisted S with its two upright bars.
_Dollars, dollars, dollars._
Through the office I pushed, my path disputed by the hosts of Croesus
in ambush for market information. Colonels and generals of the
almighty-dollar army were on either flank of me, and the air was thick
with the echo and the rumor of millions. At last I found myself in the
high and splendid room, with its tall windows elaborately curtained with
velvet, its floor space studded with small tables, where after four
o'clock any afternoon, the year round, you will find the active Wall
Street contingent busily discussing the day's doings and plotting good
or evil for the morrow. There they all were, that eventful evening, in
parties of seven or eight clustered at the little tables, and as I
entered a vigorous hail caught my ear and again I found myself
surrounded.
"Sit down a minute, Lawson," said ex-Congressman Jefferson M.
Levy--"Jeff Levy" in Wall Street--"and tell us about Amalgamated. I
suppose there's not a chance to get what one wants unless one subscribes
for five or ten times more than one needs, but if you say that's
straight, I'll put in another subscription for ----."
In the group were sitting "Harry" Weil, who time and again has tied tin
cans to Wall Street's tail; big, bluff, honest "Billy" Oliver, whose
"I'll take ten thousand more" is as familiar to Stock Exchange members
as the sound of the gong; and little "Jakey" Field, most audacious and
resourceful of floor operators, graduated but a few years ago from the
ranks of Wall Street's errand boys--"Jakey" Field, who is able
single-handed to turn a "bear" market in a rout by "bidding 'em up all
round the room five thousand at a crack"--which means he dares buy one
hundred thousand shares off the reel in a demoralized market when every
one is selling, thus standing to make or lose a million or two on his
judgment.
They listened, breathless, while I poured out the story of the terrific
rush of Amalgamated subscribers. Another group hailed me and I recounted
the same story. So it went all over the busy assemblage--"_dollars,
dollars, dollars_," how to get them, how to get them quick. The money
talk ebbed and flowed; the chink of dollars echoed in the rattle of
china, in the tinkling of glasses, in the laughs and salutations, in the
shuffle of feet. It was the one word, the single theme, the alpha and
omega of all these men of talent and virility who accorded me
recognition as one of themselves and assumed that I, too, was crucified
to the two bars on the snaky S; the whole thing was so interesting that
I lost sight of the terrible seriousness of it, and I chuckled as one
does when one sits on the cool grass under the apple-trees in summer and
watches myriads of ants hustling and jostling and bumping over each
other to get away with what to humans is but a tiny grain of dirt.
As I arose to go at last, the head waiter came forward and led me into a
corner, where his assistant and the chef awaited me. All with tremendous
earnestness asked, "Is it safe, Mr. Lawson, for us to put our savings in
Amalgamated?" They took my breath away by telling me they proposed to
subscribe for one thousand, five hundred, and two hundred shares each,
$100,000, $50,000, and $20,000 worth, if I but said the word.
"_Dollars, dollars, dollars_" beat a tattoo on my ear-drums as the rain
used to on the roof at the old farmhouse.
A moment later Manager Thomas of the great hotel slipped up to me. "I'm
in for a thousand or two, if you say the word," he whispered. At dinner
my old waiter, who I would have sworn did not know a stock certificate
from a dog license, bent over respectfully to tell me that twenty of the
boys had chipped in and desired me to take their thousand dollars and
put it up for two hundred shares--$20,000 worth more. Room Clerk Palmer
called over to me as I went by his desk a moment later to say he was
going in for three hundred shares if it broke him. And so it
went--bell-boys, chambermaids, valets, elevator men, all begging an
interview, and all with the same request--"Would I not put their savings
into this magic money-maker?"
All were friends or proteges of mine, these managers, clerks, stewards,
and waiters. Their money was more sacred to me than my own. I had been
instrumental in bringing many of them up to the palace of American
dollar royalty from the old Brunswick, and I would rather have lost a
finger any day than have jeopardized their savings. For all of them I
had but one answer: "Go your limit."
I looked over the memoranda and telegrams piled high on the table in my
room, all recording the whirlwind sweep of this tremendous copper
movement that I had set a-booming.
"_Dollars, dollars, dollars._"
Requests from friends for some of the easy money I was dispensing to the
public, appeals from old associates for special allotments of the
subscription, urgent petitions from capitalists and bankers with whom I
had business relations that their bids for shares should have
preference, perfumed notes on tinted paper in feminine handwriting
begging aid, advice, my influence, on a hundred specious pleas. It
seemed to me that all the world was in a conspiracy of dollars and I the
one object of its plotting. For a moment there overcame me a sickening
disgust at this universal greed, at this all-absorbing passion for gold
which my momentary pre-eminence revealed to my view. Then sanity
asserted itself, and I remembered that if there was a conspiracy I was
its ringleader, that I myself for months past had thought intensely of
nothing but dollars. Why, then, should I resent the eager desires of
others to attach to their own bank accounts some of the money which I
was proclaiming from the housetops any one who desired might have for
the asking? Many of these men, moreover, who sought my assurance of the
safety of their little ventures, had earned the private word by
thoughtful service and friendly attentions. Dollars were food and drink
and fine raiment; were music, pictures, and theatres; were horses and
dogs; were green fields, blossoming trees, and the open air of heaven;
were liberty, release from sordid cares, from servitude--and why should
I, who had helped myself in bountiful measure to the good things in
life's cornucopia, feel superior when confronted by the lusts I myself
had been instrumental in arousing? I laughed at my egregious virtue and
dropped off to sleep.