FORTUNES IN FIVE MINUTES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 August 1924, Page 7

FORTUNES IN FIVE MINUTES.

BY STOCK EXCHANGE SPECULATIONS. There are scores of men in the United States who think nothing of adding from half a million to a million dollars to their pile between breakfast and dinner. A few- years ago Air. Joseph Hoadley made £200,000 in five minutes on the New York Cotton Exchange, and before he sat down t<? a well-earned dinner his profits had reached the enor_ mous sum of £BOO,OOO, as the result of a few hours’ dealing in cotton bales, during every hour of which he, made “twelve times his own r weight in gold.” During the panic caused by the report that there was a short cotton crop, Air. Theodore Price cleared £IOO,000 in ten minutes, and doubled this amount be/ore he adjourned for luncheon. (Jn 'G(no( crowded quarter of an hour Air. J. L. Livermore, who, a few years earlier, had been a poor office boy employed by a Boston broker, added £IOO,OOO to his capital by selling cotton to alarmed speculators. During a more recent boom on the New Stock Exchange, inaugurated by the surprising and utterly unexpected dividends declared by the Union and Southern Pacific Railways, many men made fortunes varying from £IOO.OOO to £500,000 in a single day’s operations. As the result of a few hours’ gambling A Dr. Abraham AYhite, a well-known broker, was able to make a birthdaypresent to his wife of a- palatial house on the Atlantic seaboard, -which its late owner, Air. AlcCall, had spent £150.000 in beautifying. On the same day Air Harriman is credited with having netted £400,000 between a late breakfast and luncheon; and Aressrs. J. AV. Gates, A\ 7 illiam Rockefeller, H. H. Rogers, and half-a-dozen • others cleared sums ranging up to two and a hajf million dollars.

Even larger amounts than these have been won by Stock Exchange speculation in America. Thus Commodore A'anderbilt once netted £1.000,000 by a. deal in Harlem Railway stock, which he bought at 8_ and 9 dollars a share and sold it at /£> to 19c dollars: and on the memorable occasion Air. Jav Gould made £BOO,OOO in five minutes in Wall Street—a. sum sufficient to maintain a hundred families in comfort for ever.