Page 2 Advertisements Column 2

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10884, 7 February 1901, Page 2

AN IN EXPECTED RESULT. A STORY OF THE~STOCK EXCHANGE. Ik _ , c • «v S. A. Nelsov. It was the beginning of the last year of e _ the old century—so early that one had not _,_ yet acquired the habit of dating his letters Q . in the new year, with its clumsy double cipher. And it was in Wall street, where , c everyone, the bee. the drone, and the parax\ site, was busy with the excitement of honest p. toil, the haste to get rich without work, or _». the employment of razor-like wits in th? ,n daily contest of the Stock Exchange. Ie Four years of prosperity had passed; four it years of a scarcely interrupted "boom," and ig now the waves of a little panic were subsi.l s. ing on the nervous sea of finance. Of cour. ; 1© prices were up—so high up that the new; n. papers referred to them daily as "records' breakers." Iron, steel, cotton, wheat, corn, ie freights, labour, and everything that man r- had to sell sold for amazing prices. There is had been an election and a war. One brought is prosperity, and the other—according to a ie rule of finance—doubled it. Then another d war in another country, and bumper har■S vests following bumper harvests combined s, to pour money iv the lap of the republic, all Le helping to make a wonderful ending to a ie wonderful century. Four momentou*L.years had disappeared, in which millionaire Txinkrupts had seized, fortune on the wing and n again become millionaires. j. Such a man walked along Broadway beneath the shadow of Trinity's spire, turned into Wall street, thence to Broad street, and entered the door of an office directly oppo- -*-" site the Stock Exchange. He was Colonel 3 " Timothy Willard, recently of Chicago, but k ® now of New- York. Six" feet high, broad- '? shouldered, deep-chested, and clean-shaven, *. he impressed the stranger as an extremely X robust, uninteresting, middle-aged man of ' business. His face was as a sealed boob, having an unprinted. unadorned cover. You could not read anything there; —neither joy. despair, satisfaction nor discontentment. All re that you could say was that it reflected In calmness and. neutrality. Colonel Willard o by profession was a lawyer, but his trade ie ' "was that of "promoting." Four years beI- j fore he had failed for 4,000,000 dollars. Now ie be appeared as the successful promoter, who ie had retired his liabilities, paying 100 cents jr on the dollar, plus interest at 6 per cent., s- and his fortune was estimated to exceed ~ 6.000,000 dollars. And that, too, after s. making due allowance for exaggeration. Like h all great men of business, he was neyer in a hurry—never appeared to be busy. Colonel Willard had promoted three iron s and steel combinations. The superficial d denounced them as trusts. Their combined ■ c capitalisation represented 200,000,000d01. in a handsomely engraved stock cartificatcs. . c True, the figures sound incomprehensible, _,_ absurd if you like, but the time had arrived 0 in Wall street wh-En millions were talked „ of with the glibness that four years before , had described thousands. And the public 1( j bought industrial stocks, for they were the _ street's leading fashion in a decade, and the n wares of Colonel Willard were among them. Then they bought more, and after that they L g kept on "buying. Why should not a pron_ motor win 6,000,000 dollars when everyone t wanted to buy his stocks and the game "was so very simple axsd yet so dazzlingly big? Colonel Willard, "on entering tho branch offics of De Fere, Hurry and Co., sat down in front of the stock quotation board, a comf' pact, oblong arrangement stretched along the wall, upon which were posted abbrevia- " tions of the names of stocks, fractions and numbers, rspresenting the quotations made _" in the Stock Exchange market. At one end ;" was a boy closely watching a stock indie cator, a machine which recorded the sales i° on an endless ribbon of white paper, work* '" ing like an automatic type-writer. At each fractional change the boy would take a printed ticket of pasteboard and stick it on the board. And so, Colonel Willard, as his eyes scanned ths day's record, was enabled to see that the market had opened "steady" at unchanged prices as compared with those of the previous day, and had *- advanced throughout the morning. If he d f.lt any satisfaction on observing that his own stocks had risen in value, his face did & not reveal it. ■*' In charge of the office was Henry Hast- ' n ings, for it was a Chicago firm, the chief r ' business of which was in grain trading, but ■**■ for four years grain had occupied second ■}, place to stock*?. Hastings, although a young -- man, was an old employee. In twelve years v , h, had climbed the ladder from office boy -"- to manager of the New York brunch, and at 11 times his thoughts were directed toward his chances cf acquiring an interest in the -" firm. His character was spotless; his abu solute honesty conceded by everyone who > c knew him. Had lis been dishonest, a fortune 11 in money had repeatedly been in his grasp. c It was his duty to keep the five telegraph -" operators, operating the special wires to l " Chicago, working steadily and accurately. IC Over those wires flashed orders to buy and n sell stocks that represented millions of doly lars a week—sometimes millions a day— n as De Fere, Hurry and Co. were th.mselVes' d heavy speculators, and their western comd mission business was very large. Hastings -- distributed the orders for execution on the •" Stock Exchange with rare- speed and skill. ■•■ His knowledge of the varying capabilities 0 of t-he active brokers on the board-room was n acquired in a school of experience that, by d rea.son of its limitations, admitted few pupils. "I would like," said Colonel Willard, "to f see you for a few minutes in private." ~ "Step this way, Colonel," requested Hast* , ings, who led the way to an inner office. . "Mr Hastings," whispered the promoter j very earnestly, "I want to unload 30,000 ~ shares of Steel Pipe, and I don't want anyone to know that I am selling. Can you E do it?" c The only indication of Mr Hastings's s excitement at this request was betrayed in -] dropping his cigarette as he replied: — x "I thin-: so." "Above all," continued Colonel Willard, • as he pointed to the telegraph instruments, • "I do not want to let Chicago know of the ,- order until you have executed it," i "Do you insist upon that? Had I not ; better notify the firm?" j,- "No—no. Under no circumstances. If - you cannot take the order as I give it," : was the emphatic response, "say so, and I Avill go elsewhere." "Very well. When do you want to bet gin to sell?" f

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