CHAPTER LVI.STOCK EXCHANGE CELEBRITIES.
How Wall Street Bankers’ Nerves are Tried.—Fine Humor, Jocular Dispositions, and Scholarly Taste of Operators.—George Gould as a Future Financial Power.—American Nobility Compared with European Aristocracy.—How the Irish can Assist to Purge Great Britain of her Bilious Incubus of Nobility.—The Natural Nobility of our own Country, and their Destiny.
Among the well-known members of the Stock Exchange not elsewhere mentioned are James D. Smith, who is now in his second term as President, and who is also President of the New York and Exchange clubs and Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, a man of a genial nature and everyone’s friend; Brayton Ives, twice President of the Stock Exchange, the colonel of a cavalry regiment under General Sheridan in the civil war, and later a Brevet-Brigadier General; a graduate of Yale, and a member of the Union League, Century, Athletic and University clubs; Charles Johnes, the King of board room traders, once a clerk for Henry Clews & Co., now worth a million, and a Prince of good fellows, as bright and quick as he is popular; Louis Bell, a daring and successful operator, a son of the well-known Isaac Bell, and who was at one time a clerk with Brown Brothers & Co., the bankers; John Kirkner, another plucky operator, keen in forecasting the market, and tenacious of his opinions, whether contrary to generally accepted views or not; Eugene Bogert, Wm. B. Wadsworth, William Henriques and James Raymond, also successful traders; John Slayback, Edward Brandon, James Mitchell, Vice-Chairman Alexander Henriques, ex-President J. Edward Simmons, Secretary Geo. W. Ely, Donald Mackay,Thomas B. Musgrave, Frank Work, the Wormsers, R. P. Flower, John T. Lester, Frank Savin, Charles Schwartz and A. E. Bateman, are all worthy of special notice. Some of the foregoing have a large following, more particularly the large room traders, like Messrs. Johnes, Bell, Bogert, Kirkner and Wadsworth. There are eleven hundred members of the Stock Exchange, and it is seldom that a black sheep is discovered among them. There are some lambs, perhaps, who receive a spring and fall shearing, but if they have pluck the wool comes back again, and they push up the thorny and brambly path to wealth, leaving, it is true, a little fleece here and there in the struggle, but generally “getting there,” nevertheless. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that all the members of the Stock Exchange are wealthy. They have their ups and downs like everybody else, and some are in very moderate circumstances.
The strain on a Wall Street broker is so great, the tension of the nerves, in one of the most trying vocations known in the business world, is so severe, that joking and in fact boyish pranks constitute a safety valve for the relief of brains that would otherwise become disordered. Without the relief of joking and skylarking, Nature’s own remedy for the burdened mind in such circumstances—many a stock broker would go mad. “There is nothing so good as a laugh,” says the song, and this expresses a profounder truth than is generally suspected. Charles Darwin relaxed the severe mental strain induced by his inquiries into occult questions of biological science by reading the humorous extravagances of Mark Twain, and the greatest thinkers, men who are far out on the cold frontiers of thought, seeking, as intellectual pioneers, the solution of the fundamental problem of existence, are proverbially jocular in their hours of relaxation. Nature herself may be said to laugh, and why not overburdened business men? The pranks at Christmas on the Stock Exchange, the sound of hand organs in the Board Room, the smashing of hats, pushing and jostling, theblowing of tin horns, the waltzes and lanciers, the walking matches, wrestling and sparring—these are only the natural reaction through the safety valve of humor which tend to relieve undue tension and keep the spirits clear and fresh. There is more or less skylarking on all dull days, and the effect is mental invigoration. It is a mistake to suppose that only the younger men participate in these amusements. The older members are the most incorrigible. When a new member, for instance, is receiving his vigorous initiation and being hustled here and there like a chip in raging waters, his silk hat skimming along the floor, the foot ball of hundreds of feet, his collar at right angles with his person and his coat tails flying like a Dutch lugger under full sail, a group of older members may look on with apparent disapproval, but the moment the newcomer is driven in their direction he finds that his last state is worse than the first. The veterans give him a reception that makes him look wilder and gasp more than ever, and he is glad to escape from these gray bearded evil-doers. The horse play is rough but it does no harm, and the new member, after buying a new hat, is ready to “get square” on the next unfortunate wight to be initiated.
As to the Stock Exchange as a great financial institution, none stands higher in the world. Its transactions involve hundreds of millions in a year, and nowhere is there more regard for strict equity in business. Its members are as exemplary a class of business men as can be found anywhere. Its methods are strictly upright, and a black sheep finds no mercy. Wealth will not necessarily procure a membership in this great financial emporium. The applicant must be a person of good repute. It numbers men of great wealth, men of a high order of talent, men of scholarly tastes, connoisseurs in art, students of science, literature and philosophy, and men capable of standing at the helm and giving direction to vast enterprises in the domain of finance and commerce. There is not a more intelligent body ofmen in the world. The very nature of their business compels them to study great public questions, and many of the members are men of a distinctly statesmanlike caste of mind, of whom the Stock Exchange may well be proud, while they themselves derive no small distinction from being identified with so illustrious and honorable a body.
Washington E. Connor was born in New York city about 37 years ago. He first appeared in Wall Street as a clerk for Wm. Belden & Co., a firm in which the redoubtable Jim Fisk was once a partner. Black Friday of September, 1869, when a financial hurricane whistled through Wall Street, brought young Connor to the front, and he has ever since remained there. He was long the able lieutenant of Mr. Gould in large speculations. He is a natural leader in speculation—cool, quick and adroit. From time to time he has been a director in the Western Union, Union Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Missouri, Kansas & Texas, Kansas Pacific and Wabash Companies. He was president of the Central Construction Company, which established the lines of the American Union Telegraph Company. He was a director in the famous Credit Mobilier Company, the Texas & Colorado Improvement Company, the Metropolitan and New York Elevated roads and the New Jersey Southern. He is a member of the Union League and the Lotus clubs, and especially enjoys the society of artists, writers and other persons of talent and cultivation. He has a good library, and is of a somewhat studious turn of mind. As a youth he studied at the College of the City of New York.
George J. Gould
George J. Gould
George J. Gould
George J. Gould will be one of the few very rich men in this country, as he will, of course, be his father’s successor. He possesses good abilities, has an attractive presence, andis modest and retiring in his manners. He has, thus far, made an excellent record, and the Stock Exchange was glad to admit him to membership. He is connected with all of his father’s roads, and is gradually relieving him of much of the onerous work connected therewith. If anything should happen to Jay Gould, George Gould would stand in the same financial relation to his affairs that Wm. H. Vanderbilt sustained to his father, the Commodore, and, like him, would be found equal to the new honors and responsibilities devolving upon him. This reasonable expectation should dispel any apprehension of a financial shock in the event of Jay Gould’s demise.
George Gould is bright and agreeable, and a good husband. If Jay Gould has made enemies, that is no reason why his son should not be popular. It is proverbial that the male descendants of a family are more akin to the side of the mother than to that of the father, and as Mrs. Jay Gould has always been recognized as a most exemplary wife and mother, she may rightfully be regarded as the equal of any woman in New York, and one to be respected and honored accordingly by those whom we ought to take as social exemplars. There should be no other standard of social test than that of merit; not judging individuals by what they were, but by what they are to-day; not judging by the ridiculous test of ancestry—a criterion which would upset some of our social demi-gods—but by the real worth of the living man or woman. Suppose, for instance, the young Vanderbilts, who rank high in society, and are splendid specimens of nature’s noblemen, should be measured by the standard of the old Commodore when he was a boatman on Staten Island. Everybody would recognize such a test of fitness as to the last degree absurd. In the United States nature’s nobility is at the front, as against the parchment nobility of England and the Continent. Thepersonelleof the English nobility makes a sorry showing beside that of young George Gould, the young Vanderbilts, and others of our wealthy Americans.
The modern nobility spring from success in business. Peace has its victories in the formation of character greater than those of war; and peace and republicanism will develop the future greatness of the human family, and not pretentious yet effete monarchies, of which mankind is heartily sick. Many of the so-called noblemen of to-day shine only by a faint reflected glimmer from the armor of mediæval ancestors; or their ancestry may be much more recent, and steal slyly off in the gloom of forgotten crimes to the prison or the gallows; or their patent of nobility may be a thing of yesterday, a child’s bauble solemnly displayed by addle-pated dotards, ridiculous even to the unthinking. The English nobility is coming to the auction block. Not a few in former times laid their heads there for treason, but now it is articles of more value, namely, the curious, the antiquities, the bric-a-brac, the works of art, the rare furniture, which comes to the block, and they are purchased by the new nobility raised up by success in finance and commerce. There is very little in Europe which is not obtainable at a price. Titles in England may yet be sold as they have been in Italy. Who cares for a title of Italian or French nobility? To this low estate must English titles come at last. It is marvellous that they have endured so many centuries after the downfall of the feudal system that originally gave them birth.
Why is it that Gladstone has always refused a title?
One reason is that at his birth nature gave him a higher title to nobility than parchment can ever confer.
Another is that he did not care to be ennobled and then wrapped, as a titled mummy, in the sweet-scented cerements of political death, to be buried in that Egyptian tomb of political extinction, the House of Lords. And to-day he is a Colossus among statesmen, whose grand figure will loom up in history as one of the foremost men of the nineteenth century, a Titan dwarfing the proudest of a senile nobility. And yet he is simply a great Commoner.
If the Irish wish to assist nature in purging Great Britain of her bilious incumbus of nobility, they should recognize the fact that ridicule is a good medicine. The Irish are proverbially prolific. Let them make a point of christening the rising generation with titled names. Then there would be myriads bearing the name of Duke O’Reilly, Earl McCarty, Marquis O’Brien, Baron Sullivan, Sir Timothy Finnegan, Lord McSwynny, and so on. The objection to this plan, however, is that it would brand thousands of innocent and helpless children of worthy parents with titles which have become contemptible to all right-thinking persons as the badges of imbecility, mediocrity, or dishonor. This is a rather lengthy digression after beginning with one of the natural nobility which we have in this country, namely, the nobility founded solely on merit, but the case of a young man like George Gould naturally suggests contrasts. He is destined to take a commanding position in the world of finance in future years, and it is gratifying to know that he is a man of high character, excellent capacity, and of great promise. There is usually a disposition to criticise the sons of very wealthy men, due to that envy to which poor human nature is so prone, but the fact in this case is indisputable that young Gould is held in high esteem wherever he is known. He is a graduate of Harvard and Columbia, and a member of the Manhattan and other clubs, and he is, in the business world, where he is most powerful, simply a reserved and quiet associate, always controlling his lines, but never interfering in a strident way with those who are working for them.