FOOTNOTES:[5]The New York "curb" is the latest invention in finance, coming closely upon the heels of the invention of trusts, and it holds the same relation to the New York Stock Exchange that Private Things hold to corporations. Before a stock can be bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange, there must be submitted to the governors a description of what the stock is, which must be of such tangibility that any one who cares to investigate may find there every detail and particular of the property represented, set forth with the utmost exactitude. But on the "curb" stocks can be traded in without responsible sponsors or descriptions that mean anything. In other words, a stock may be bought and sold there, which is so vague and indefinite as to be little more than a name, and it is through the "curb" that the value of "Standard Oil" stock is established, for it is daily bought and sold there at the steadily held prices of 650 to 800, and the press of the world makes daily record of these prices.
[5]The New York "curb" is the latest invention in finance, coming closely upon the heels of the invention of trusts, and it holds the same relation to the New York Stock Exchange that Private Things hold to corporations. Before a stock can be bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange, there must be submitted to the governors a description of what the stock is, which must be of such tangibility that any one who cares to investigate may find there every detail and particular of the property represented, set forth with the utmost exactitude. But on the "curb" stocks can be traded in without responsible sponsors or descriptions that mean anything. In other words, a stock may be bought and sold there, which is so vague and indefinite as to be little more than a name, and it is through the "curb" that the value of "Standard Oil" stock is established, for it is daily bought and sold there at the steadily held prices of 650 to 800, and the press of the world makes daily record of these prices.
[5]The New York "curb" is the latest invention in finance, coming closely upon the heels of the invention of trusts, and it holds the same relation to the New York Stock Exchange that Private Things hold to corporations. Before a stock can be bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange, there must be submitted to the governors a description of what the stock is, which must be of such tangibility that any one who cares to investigate may find there every detail and particular of the property represented, set forth with the utmost exactitude. But on the "curb" stocks can be traded in without responsible sponsors or descriptions that mean anything. In other words, a stock may be bought and sold there, which is so vague and indefinite as to be little more than a name, and it is through the "curb" that the value of "Standard Oil" stock is established, for it is daily bought and sold there at the steadily held prices of 650 to 800, and the press of the world makes daily record of these prices.
The "System" has all sorts of votaries. About J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks there is nothing that remotely suggests coworkers of the types of Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller. A description that left him in any part a duplicate of either would do him and them a grievous wrong. Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller have two sides, their social side and their business side. Socially, they are good men; in business they work evil. J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks is a bad man, socially, in business, in every way. The term "bad man" is used advisedly. My idea of a "bad man" is that like a bad dollar he is a counterfeit. A counterfeit has all the appearances of reality, and is yet devoid of its properties and virtues. So with Addicks. It is easy to find men who will declare by all that is sacred that Henry H. Rogers is one of the best fellows in the world, though as many more will as earnestly proclaim him the fiend incarnate. About Addicks, among those who know the man, there is but one opinion. I have yet to meet the man, woman, or child who would say aught of Addicks, after a month's acquaintance, other than, "Don't mention him! He is the limit." And it will be said with the calm of dispassionate conviction, as one might speak of a stuffed tiger in a dime-museum jungle.
Here we have a man without a heart, without a soul, and, I believe, absolutely without conscience—the type of man who even his associates feel is likely to bring in after their deaths queer bills against their estates as an offset for what he owes them; the type of man whose promise is just as good as his bond, and whose bond is so near his promise as to make it absolutely immaterial to him which you take.
Exhibited in the side show of one of the great circuses some years ago was a strange creature which, for lack of a better name, its owner and the public dubbed, "A What Is It?" This freak had the semblance of humanity, and yet was not human. All its functions and feelings reversed the normal. Tickle it and it would cry bitterly; pinch or torture it and it would grin rapturously; when starved it repelled food, and when overfed it was ravenous for more. It had heart-beats but no heart. The public gave it up. The public would long ago have given up J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks if he would have let them.
Illustration is better than explanation, and perhaps I can more graphically set J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks before my readers by a few incidents which show his contradictory characteristics in action than by verbal diagrams, however laborious.
Once upon a time Addicks, entering Delmonico's for dinner, stumbled on a couple of newsboys at the entrance. One, broken-hearted, was being consoled by the other. Addicks, observing the deep sobs, asked: "What's the matter with you, bub?" The consoler explained that his chum had lost $2, his day's earnings and capital, and "His mudder—his fadder's dead—an' de baby'll git trun outter de tenement." Addicks, without more ado, slipped the suffering young news-merchant a bill which his friends supposed was $2 to replace the lost funds. As they were taking off their coats in the hall, however, the little newsboy pushed his way in with: "Say, boss, did yer mean ter guv me de twenty?" Addicks nodded a good-natured assent, and his friends registered silently a white mark to his score, and felt that, after all, somewhere beneath the surface he was more of the right sort than they had given him credit for being. After dinner, as they left, the newsboy again approached. "'Scuse me, boss, but me chum 'd like ter t'ank yer too. I'm goin' ter give him a V outter it." Addicks looked at the boy in his mildly cold way and said: "Let me have that bill. I will change it for you." The boy gave it up, and Addicks, after methodically placing it in his purse, handed him back a $2 bill with: "That's what you lost, isn't it? And you" (tothe second little fellow, who by this time had mapped out visions of new duds for the kids and a warm seat in the gallery of a Bowery theatre), "you didn't lose anything, did you? Well, both of you run along now!"
His friends looked at each other, and from their slates wiped away the white mark and replaced it with a deep, broad, black one. And yet Addicks had made good the loss—done a good deed, but in an—Addicks way. I should perhaps remark that J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks has never smoked, nor used a swear-word, nor taken liquor in any form.
During the Addicks gas campaign in Boston one of his lieutenants demanded as his share of the deal a large amount of money, which he claimed Addicks was withholding from him. Addicks refused to pay. Friends and associates urged him to settle. While yet refusing, he agreed to meet this man at one of the leading hotels in the presence of counsel and lieutenants. The interview was a hot one. Addicks surprised all by his absolute fearlessness in the face of a savage attack, which culminated in the production of a document signed by certain Massachusetts legislators, wherein they receipted for the bribe money Addicks had paid for their votes. The man who claimed he was being cheated threatened this would be laid before the Grand Jury the following day. All the witnesses were dumfounded at the situation and in concert begged Addicks to hush the matter up by paying what was claimed. "Gentlemen," said this great financier, "my honor, my business and my personal honor, has been assailed, and rather than submit to this outrage I would die! I now ask you all to bear witness that under no circumstances will I pay to this man a single dollar!" And he indignantly left the meeting.
While his counsel and associates were appalled at what might be the outcome, they admired Addicks' manly pluck, and asked themselves if they had not, after all, been mistaken in their estimates of his courage and principle. In the middle of the same night, the man with the document was surprised by a telegram reading: "Meet me in Jersey City to-morrow sure with paper; keep absolutely secret."Next day in Jersey they met, and Addicks simply said: "There is the full amount. Give me the paper. You don't suppose I would compound a felony in the State in which it was committed, and before witnesses, do you?"
In the national election of 1896 J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was a candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware, and for a variety of reasons was anxious to secure a Republican victory. Within the State, however, the real contest was not over national issues, but to obtain control of the Legislature which in the following January had to elect a United States Senator. There were three factions, the Democrats and two wings of the Republicans, the Addicks and anti-Addicks parties, the latter calling themselves "regulars." On Election Day Addicks used an even $100,000 buying votes, and that evening Delaware was safe for McKinley—both the "regulars" and the men whom Addicks' money bought having voted for a Republican President. But it was early bruited around that if the vote of Sussex County (there are three counties in Delaware—Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex) were allowed to stand as received, all Addicks' efforts to control the Legislature would have been fruitless and his "made dollars" expended for nothing. The ex-flour dealer of Philadelphia was not satisfied to accept the people's sacred verdict. He quickly called his lieutenants together, mapped out a campaign of almost reckless audacity and daring, and assigned his best men to its execution.
The ballot-boxes with their contents were in the sheriff's charge and stored under lock and key in the court-house. The sheriff was an Addicks tool. At midnight he turned over his charge to one of the would-be statesman's trustiest lieutenants, who, with the aid of a lantern and a slip of paper containing the directions, sorted over the legal ballots, threw some out, and put in new ones. When another sun arose the dastardly outrage upon the American elective franchise had been completed, and Addicks was busily scheming to carry out the remainder of the plot. On the declaration which he or one of his associates would make, that there had been fraud in Sussex County, the Government at Washington must send on an investigating committee to whom it wouldbe asserted that the voting lists had been doctored by the Democrats. To prove it the boxes would be opened, the ballots counted, and lo! the villany of the Democrats would be, beyond contradiction, demonstrated.
But the scheme was an Addicks scheme. Had it been the plot of any other man with the brains, the nerve, and the lack of principle to concoct it and set it in motion, inevitably it would have been carried through to the designed conclusion. As it was, this is what happened: The lieutenant who had charge of the actual commission of the crime thoughtlessly chuckled over the details of it with another, and this other "in the presence of witnesses" laughingly congratulated Addicks on his plan's success. What was the astonishment of the group to hear the candidate for the Senate say: "Gentlemen, I could not countenance such a transaction. This is the first I have heard of it, and it is so outrageously criminal that I refuse to allow it to proceed further. There will be no investigation, and if it is a fact that those ballots have been changed in the box, the ones who changed them shall receive no benefit from their nefarious work. I have spoken."
Mind you, every member of the group was a party to the scheme and had been carefully rehearsed in the part assigned him by Addicks himself, but alone, that is, without witnesses; nevertheless so earnest and apparently honest was the man in his protest that for an instant they doubted their senses—until they remembered it was Addicks.
The investigation was never held, and to this day Addicks' lieutenants, especially he who did the midnight work and who still lives in the peaceful State of Delaware, turn with disgust when Addicks' daring is mentioned.
It should be explained here that, whenever Addicks plans an illegal transaction—one for which he might be made civilly or criminally liable—he invariably coaches each of his accomplices alone, "without witnesses." And when it becomes necessary in developing the plot to have a confab, at which the several parties to the proceeding must meet, Addicks is most careful to preserve a legal semblance of ignorance of incriminating details. At intervals, when a danger-place inthe discussion is approaching, he will get up from his seat and, moving to the door, will say: "Gentlemen, halt right there, until I step out of the room; tap at the door when you are over that bad spot, and I will return."
Addicks' "Wait until I step out of the room" is as familiar among his coworkers as the "I am going upstairs" is among the "Standard Oil" family.
Try to conjure before your mind's eye a picture of the anomalous character these instances suggest. I'll warrant your mental image as little resembles the original Addicks as Mr. Hyde did Dr. Jekyll in the story. He does not look the part assigned him here, nor any other part for that matter. I saw him coming toward me on State Street one summer day some years ago, a tall, wiry man, in a white-flannel suit, perfect in fit and spotless as snow, wearing a fine Panama hat. This was in the period before Panamas were commonly worn. He was to the life the elegant and luxurious Southern planter of ante-bellum days. Six months afterward in about the same place I saw approaching me a splendid person in rich sable outer garments who looked for all the world like an exiled Russian grand duke. It was Addicks in winter. You will not surprise his secret from that pleasant, rather ambiguous, but square-jawed face, nor from the mouth hidden under a long, drooping, gray, military mustache. His is a good-sized, well-shaped head, you might say, and the gray, shallow eyes that look out at you are almost merry in their glances. But they are inscrutable eyes which seem to have a challenge in their gaze, a sort of "look-me-over-as-long-as-you-like-and-you'll-never-guess-what's-under-the-surface" expression that is baffling and provocative. Yet this sybarite, this daring coward, this stingy prodigal, this sincere hypocrite, this extraordinary blending of contradictory qualities, is the man who from 1887 to 1892 made Boston look like the proverbial country gawk at circus-time.
Power the man certainly has, and of a distinct quality, yet his intimates cannot explain the reason of their obedience to him. After a brief acquaintance he is revealed as the very soul of insincerity—he "works" his friends, he pays toll to his enemies, he frankly shows himself without thesense of moral obligation. I believe his talent resides in his capacity to select the proper type of man to "make rich" in the illicit schemes his abnormal mind conceives. These coworkers of his are of different grades; some have a super-abundance of cash; others a desire to get it—in common are their lack of principle and dearth of brains. Addicks cannot do business long with men of real ability, nor does he understand them, whereas he can read the minds of his ordained victims as if they were an open book. The big men who have encountered or been associated with Addicks are prone to characterize him as a mountebank, a joker, or a chump.
J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was born in Philadelphia in 1841, and was in the eighties plodding along the ordinary, uneventful path of a seller of flour to the people of that city which since the death of William Penn holds the record for the highest and densest percentage of sleep per capita of any English-speaking community.
In the eighties two things happened that changed the whole course of J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks' life. Some one invented water-gas and "let in" Addicks on the invention; and the Philadelphia branch of the "Standard Oil," represented by Widener, Elkins, and Dolan, "trustified" the gas companies of the city of Chicago, which enabled Addicks to "hold up" the "trustification" until Dolan and Dolan's associates paid him the sum of $300,000 for the instrument with which he had done the holding up, $10,000 worth of the stock of one of the necessary Chicago companies.
The law of compensation, which gets in its deadly work on all the prettiest plans of man, but decreed that what goes up must come down when it ceases going up. It has a shrewd trick of grafting sorrows on our joys, and of handicapping success with discomfiting conditions. The favorite of fortune whose feet have fallen in pleasant places sooner or later stubs his toe.
Addicks' first "made dollars" certainly came easy—so easy, indeed, that those who watched his early career marvelled at his success; but nowhere on God's footstool is there to-day a more terrible illustration of the inevitable workingsof the law of compensation than the present standing of J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks affords.
The thief whose first excursion into a wayfarer's pocket is rewarded with the equivalent of days and nights of honest labor will surely be convinced thereafter of the superiority of theft over toil as a means of money-getting. Invariably the manufacturer of "made dollars," after his first coup, forsakes forever after the cold arithmetic of commerce for the rule of guess, dream, hope, and "I will," which constitutes the mathematics of high finance. Addicks' first "made dollars" came with such magical ease that there awoke in his slumbering substitute for a soul a disgust for those prosaic pursuits at which one could never, try how one might, make more than four by the addition of two and two. He probably argued to himself: "Why should I work in the flour business when I know a way of getting overnight more than I can make out of flour in a lifetime? If people are so simple in guarding their savings that I can by a trick take away from them enormous wealth without the slightest danger to my own safety or my profit, even if detected, why should I not devote my life to such healthful and profitable occupation?" The logic of the proposition was convincing. Accepting its conclusions, J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, of Philadelphia, embarked on his career. Soon afterward he discovered gas in Boston.
This was in 1887. Equipped with his "made dollars" for capital, his impressive name, sublime effrontery, and a pedigree free from anything suggestive of his new purpose in life, the ex-flour merchant "lit" into our everything-figured-out-ahead-and-every-promise-made-taken-at-par town of Boston. To appreciate the lights and shadows of this event, one should know Boston and, at the same time, Addicks. Every country boy will remember Tom Hood's poem beginning:
I remember, I remember the house where I was born,With the little lattice window where the sun came peeping in at morn,
I remember, I remember the house where I was born,With the little lattice window where the sun came peeping in at morn,
and can recall milking-time in July or August when, sitting on the rail-fence surrounding the barn-yard, he watched thepigeons snipping up grain, the old hen scratching up worms for the chicks, the ducks and the drakes and the geese and the ganders proudly waddling back and forth, among and around the fluffy ducklings and goslings, and the bull-pup sound asleep by the side of the tortoise-shell cat. Probably he will think of some particular milking-time when the calm, contented serenity of the barn-yard was suddenly disturbed by the unexpected descent in its midst of a neighboring peacock, who, apparently unconscious of the consternation produced by his entry, proceeded proudly to spread his dazzling plumage to convince every one, from Uncle Cy, on the milking-stool, and mild-eyed Bess, down to the white fan-tailed dove, that he was—It.
Conjure up the picture—the peacock at milking-time in the farm-yard; thus Addicks came to Boston—though it is far from my intention to identify the bucolic background I have drawn with the Hub of the Universe.
Boston, up to this time, had been singularly free from the mushroom variety of millionaire which had sprung up overnight in such numbers in New York and Philadelphia. Proudly defiant of a product so alien to all her traditions, her citizens would have sworn that no votary of modern high finance could exist over one curfew-toll within her gates. For Boston had her own financial eminence, of a character in keeping with the chill conditions of conservatism and rectitude appropriate to the metropolis of the New England conscience. She had her Stock Exchange, her numerous great corporations, her scores of single and multimillionaires, and it was her boast that her capital had played the greatest legitimate part in the country's growth. She had furnished a large percentage of the money which had created our vast Western railway system; she had found and made the superb copper-mines of Michigan and Montana, and in all parts of the land branches of her sturdy institutions were vitally assisting the miracle of America's development. Notwithstanding what these wide-flung enterprises imply of commercial push and audacity, Boston, at the time Addicks discovered gas there, was one of the most trusting wealth-investing communities in the world. She had her simple rules of business conduct which years of usage had consecrated into all-powerful precedent, but her brokers and capitalists, however fearful of all things quick or tricky, had never previously figured as candidates for what in Western parlance are described as "come-ons."
At the time Addicks "lit" in Boston that city numbered among her proudest possessions several extremely rich gas companies, and they were owned by her "best people." To do business with Boston's "best people" is no easy task, and up to the advent of Addicks, to do business with her "best people" without doing it through others of her "best people" who could absolutely vouch for you was an unheard-of thing. The manner in which the ex-flour merchant of Philadelphia managed to slip by the barriers and into the heart of our blue-blooded citadel affords the most unparalleled example of audacity of which I know.
In many ways Boston is unlike other great American cities. Some of her institutions through antiquity or association have acquired a positive sanctity. Pedigree is important. The average inhabitant spends much of his time watching the grandson of his neighbor's father, to see the old man's characteristics crop out in him. The boy's failures will be remembered against his own offspring fifty years hence. It is a city of long memories and of traditions. In 1887 Boston, as now, consisted largely of her traditions, her blue-glass window-panes and her Somerset Club.
Now the distinction, sanctity, and antiquity of the Somerset Club are quite beyond peradventure. Since Boston has been Boston she has had her Somerset Club, a club distinctively of grandfathers, fathers, and sons. The right to membership in the Somerset Club is as much the inheritance of a Somerset man's son as his name or as the proud title which always will be found affixed to his signature when he reaches man's estate, "of Boston." For a man to get intothe Somerset without long years of waiting and intense scrutiny, not only of his own record but of his parents' before him, is a rare event. Yet the name of J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was up for full membership, with Boston's picked best for his sponsors, a few days after he "lit." How Addicks got upon the Somerset list Boston will never tell, and the mention of the fact nowadays within the club-house will empty its sideboard instanter.
The campaign of arrangement for the advent of Addicks in Boston was more elaborate, more astute and expensive than was ever organized for exploitation of prima donna or great pianist. For months an advance agent had been preparing the way for his chief's arrival in a blaze of glory. There was talk in the papers and among the financiers about the wonderful water-gas process which enormously enhanced the profits of gas-making, and such rumor was always linked with the name of the brilliant Philadelphia Gas King, for so the press had already dubbed him. A wonder and magic immensely provocative of curiosity were woven about the identity of this J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, who it was said might be persuaded to visit Boston to work marvels with the stocks that had been "in the family" long before the present generation could remember. When it was sure that the great man was really coming the agent sought the advice of Boston's best in selecting quarters for him. In the Tudor, a beautiful family hotel adjoining the Somerset Club on Beacon Hill, a magnificent suite of apartments was taken, and though the great man could remain in Boston but a brief space, the furniture, the hangings, and even the carpets were all changed for him.
Eminent financial tricksters have various ways of handling their victims. Some believe that the most skilful mode of attack is the slow, confident, dignified approach which allays the subject's fears by its solemn display of deliberation. Others (and Addicks is of this creed) are persuaded of the superior efficacy of the "rush-in-and-drag-out" method. The subject, they say, "gives up" more and quicker when the hurry call is sounded. It was a winter's day when Addicks "lit" in Boston, and circumstances had arisen, thesuave advance agent told various Boston's best, with whom he was in consultation, that would make his chief's stay much briefer than either had anticipated. So when the great man arrived at the club just before dinner, quite an array of important people were congregated there.
Addicks ran the gantlet of the critical glances of as critical a group as you'll find on earth, and the word went round—no one could remember afterward who started it—"Typical Southern gentleman! Breeding sticking out everywhere!" So well had the astute advance agent done his work that a little dinner was arranged on the spot, and Addicks made such rapid progress with these reserved and conservative Bostonians that, by the time coffee was served, conversation had reached the stage where it was natural for him to send the waiter to the coat-room for his bunch of gas papers. The emissary returned bringing the fur overcoat with which Addicks always envelops himself in chilly weather. Addicks searched the pockets, and, apparently to his surprise, discovered that they did not contain the required documents, but where they should have been he found a small bale of 1,000-dollar government bonds, containing, one of the party said afterward, at least one hundred certificates. "How careless of my secretary!" said Addicks, nonchalantly replacing the packet in the pocket and motioning the waiter to take the overcoat away again.
It was, of course, due to the admirable work of his advance agent that these Monte Cristo effects impressed the cultured little set who would have laughed to scorn such a display on the part of one of their own kind. In Addicks it was the dazzling eccentricity of the wonder-worker, and so excusable; and the free, flash, careless exhibit of wealth made the man's conversation and subsequent demands seem natural. Next morning, in discussing the work of the previous evening with his lieutenant, Addicks delivered himself of the wise remark: "Finance, my boy, like theatricals, is dependent for success on the staging, more even than on the actor. My experience has shown me that men the world over are alike—if you properly surround them, they will hiss at hissing time and clap at applauding time; yes, uponthe way you stage your finance plays depends their success." The fact is that by no other method could this scenic artist of finance have set his plans moving so rapidly. The man had calculated to a nicety on the romantic cupidity he aroused.
After dinner, Addicks at once "got down to business": "Gentlemen, my project is as simple as it is feasible and conservative, for I will touch nothing but conservative enterprises. Gentlemen, you have three great gas companies supplying this great city with light, the Boston, Roxbury, and South Boston. They are worth at the present time about five million dollars. I am going to buy them and spend three or four millions more on a new company; then I shall consolidate the four and turn them from coal into water-gas companies, which will sell gas to your people at less than they now pay, and at the same time make a lot of money for you and for myself. What do you say?"
This was certainly quick action. Boston's best was breathless for a minute. Then some one suggested that in so weighty a matter it would be necessary for solicitors to investigate, for the families owning the stock to be consulted and agree before a proper basis could be arrived at on which to dispose of their holdings.
Addicks' genius was equal to the occasion. "I regret, gentlemen, any seeming haste, but this is the situation: I am going to invest fifteen or twenty millions, or perhaps thirty or forty, in city gas properties, and as the project will require quite a bit of financiering, I have got to round it up at once, in time to slip over to London to lay it before my associates, ——, ——, and ——" (naming some of the great English lords of finance), "with whom you, gentlemen, are probably well acquainted. I think you will, after you have given the matter a little thought, agree with me that it would be a mistake to postpone the conversion of these magnificent Boston plants to the water-gas system until after other cities I have in mind are reconstructed. You see we can turn over but one city at a time, the system being new and competent engineers and builders few."
The painful thought took shape in the minds of the distinguished little gathering that if they were not careful, Monte Cristo might actually slip out of their town without working any of the promised golden marvels.
"Just what is your idea, Mr. Addicks, of how this gigantic piece of business could be done?" one asked.
"Simple, simple"—the great Colonel Sellers of eye-water fame never looked more cool and unconcerned when calling attention to the facts, "100,000,000 of people, two eyes each, a bottle of my patent eye-wash for each at a dollar a bottle, and eye-wash made at a net cost of a dime a barrel"—"simple, simple; you name your price, I pay it, and the thing is done."
Some one pointed out that the gas properties were valued very high. That in the Boston, for instance, the par value of each share was $500—and that it was improbable Mr. Addicks could buy it for less than—than eight hundred.
"Of course, of course; I am not buying gas companies that are not well thought of by their present owners," returned Addicks. "I think you underestimate the value of the Boston Company's stock when you say $800. Naturally, as a conservative business man I wish to buy as reasonably as possible, but as I know what the future of your company will be under the water-gas change, I consider $1,000 a share cheap; and if you say so, will take it now—majority, minority and all—at that price."
This was strong talk. In spite of their proverbial frigidness under all conditions, Boston's best began to get fidgety.
"Indeed," went on the Monte Cristo from Philadelphia, "I'll do better than that. On second thought I will give you $1,200 a share. Think it over and we'll have another sit-down to-morrow."
It took Addicks but a few days to trade, for at each sitting the staging was more enticing and the call from his associates in London more insistent. Minor difficulties were magnificently waved away. A number of scions of Boston's best families had good paying positions in the different companies; what would Mr. Addicks do with them?
"Simple, simple," he replied; "double the time of contractand the salary; no favor to them or you; good men are very hard to get, you know."
One episode that occurred about this time was allowed to get into print when the stocks and bonds were being floated, by way of showing what a tremendous fellow Addicks was. In a hired hack he had driven up to the club from State Street. A snow-storm was raging. After Addicks had been in the club a few moments word was brought in to him that the driver had found his sable overcoat inside the carriage. Addicks stepped into the vestibule to speak to the driver, and next day it was all over the club-house and through the "Street" that the prodigal Philadelphian, overcome at the thought of the unfortunate driver in his scanty clothing exposed to the cruel storm, had said: "My good man, take that coat as a present from me."
For the truth of the story I do not vouch, nor for that other which explains that the door-boy who spread this tale of generosity said afterward, when discharged, that Addicks himself had told him what he had done, and at the same time had given him a five-dollar bill. He would have sworn the moment before that he heard Addicks tell the driver to take the coat to his apartments.
Addicks got what he came to Boston for—the Boston, Roxbury, and South Boston Gas companies. He did what he said he would, built a new one, the Bay State of Massachusetts, and turned them all into the Bay State of Delaware, and the Bay State of Delaware turned them out on the public in exchange for their savings to the extent of $19,000,000 in the form of bonds and stock. Addicks, to use his own language, "cleaned up around $7,000,000," and turned to new fields, fields suited to his peculiar genius.
As he looked over the United States he found but one great city which had not already been captured by "Standard Oil" or some of its disciples—Brooklyn, N. Y. To the present day Rogers swears Addicks' only reason for coming to Brooklyn was to hold up the "Standard Oil" "trustification." Addicks retorts with: "I saw it first." Whatever the facts, in 1892 Rogers in the midst of tagging the different companies was surprised and angered to find thatAddicks had slipped in ahead and had secured one of those necessary to the success of his plan. He quickly served notice on the man from Delaware to "git," and Addicks, flushed with an unbroken chain of victories, as promptly returned the notice with, scrawled across its face, a variation of Rogers' pet phrase—for it must be remembered Addicks never "cusses"—"I'll see you in heaven first."
If there is any one time when Henry H. Rogers is quicker of action than any other, it is when his notice to "git" in a stock deal has been returned with "sass."
The ink was hardly dry on Addicks' answer before the Master of "Standard Oil" and his hosts were upon him, but not where the Philadelphian looked for them. While he awaited their attack in Brooklyn, N. Y., he received a series of hurry-up calls from his lieutenants in Boston. Rogers had bought the insignificant Brookline Gas Company, which supplied gas to one of the suburbs of Boston. It was only a $300,000 affair, but it possessed charter rights to come into any and all of the streets of Boston. This was a characteristic "Standard Oil" attack. It came out of a clear sky, and before the public had even a warning of it they were witnessing a war which looked as though it had been years in maturing. Rogers let it become public knowledge that the entire "Standard Oil" forces were to be brought to bear to crush Addicks and that untold millions would, if necessary, be spent in the effort. In reality he had most carefully mapped out a cyclonic campaign which he believed would not call for an expenditure of over $500,000, and which he was sure would in a few months drive Addicks out of Brooklyn, N. Y., and bring him to his knees in Boston. His fight began in earnest in 1894. Gas in Boston was $1.25 per thousand cubic feet, and the rate yielded a good profit to the Addicks companies. Rogers served notice that he would parallel with the Brookline Company every pipe of the different Boston companies and would reduce the price of gas to $1. Simultaneously he attacked the Addicks stocks and bonds in the market, his charters in the Legislature, and took away from him the contracts to supply the municipality of Boston with gas. For a time Addicks struckback savagely. Then, as the fight became hotter, he gave it up in Brooklyn, and concentrated all his resources on repelling the savage inroads Rogers was making in Boston. By this time the contest had grown to such proportions and so much bad blood had been engendered that Rogers declined to be mollified by Addicks' surrender in Brooklyn and refused to retire from Boston unless Addicks repaid "Standard Oil's" entire outlay and got down on his knees in public—a demand that called forth one of Addicks' sardonic smiles.
Addicks had at this time additional difficulties to face. He had spread out his financial commitments, and now he found his stocks and bonds all declining. It was obvious to State and Wall streets that Rogers was in a fair way to drive the buccaneer from Philadelphia to the wall.
It is at this stage that I come into the story.
Right here, before plunging deeper into the current of events which led to the organization of Amalgamated—for what has gone before is only that which I deem necessary setting for the story, necessary in order that my readers may clearly take in its meaning—it is only fair to them and to myself for me to say that my life has been spent in the stock-market for the purpose of gain. I have never in my stock operations set myself up for a philanthropist nor in any way posed as a reformer, nor pretended to be a bit better than the business I had chosen for a livelihood. From the first day until now I have endeavored to keep strictly to the principle that I would never knowingly deceive any man, woman, or child who, out of confidence in me, risked their money in speculation or investment. At the same time it should be remembered that the stock-brokerage business often makes queer bedfellows. Moreover, the true stock-operator is sometimes tempted to buckle on his armor and get into an exciting fight solely for the combat's sake, and then he may not be over-concerned about the rights and wrongs of the contention, if upon both sides are lined up professional captains of finance. The minister, the college professor, the dry-goods merchant, may exclaim against this, but they have never known the delicious tingle which, since the abolition of the tournaments of old, can be felt only on the great financial battlefields. If the critics of the stock-gambler could be put through a single minute of a thousand I have known they would be less brash in their denunciations. And let it be remembered that in these terrific dollar-wars there is as much opportunity for heroism, for generosity, for kindly deeds, as ever physical fighting affords. Iread here in the papers of the noble act of a captain in the navy who has taken his life in his hands; in another place of a rich man who has given a million to create a charity. On the same page that these men are eulogized I will find references to "Jim Keene, the stock-gambler," etc., "heartless, soulless stock-sharp," etc. "Jim Keene, Stock-gambler," keeps no press agent to flaunt his kindly acts, but from the noble things I know he has done, and the things others with whom I am personally acquainted know he has done—men, women, and children saved from misery, pain, and death, at the risk of ruin to himself—I'll warrant the celestial scroll shows to his record as many deeds of mercy and noble daring as are credited to any soldier or philanthropist who has achieved worldly fame in recent years.
The desire for sudden wealth is strong in all parts of our American community. Men want money, and women too, for a score of reasons—some good, some bad—and the stock-market is the magical place where miracles occur and dollars multiply themselves overnight. The agent for all the cupidity of the world is the stock-broker, and he sees life from a strange angle.
Hundreds of letters come to me daily from all kinds of people, who have no other call upon me than their belief that, having at some previous time profitably followed my advice or advice credited to me, they have a right, when "the papers say" I am doing or going to do this, that, or the other thing in stocks, to come to me with their troubles. In 1899 there reached me from a woman a picture of her husband, herself, her three children, and the aged father and mother of her husband. I wish I might print it, but I dare not through fear that they would be recognized. The letter accompanying it was one of the most touchingly pathetic I have ever read. I investigated the case. The statements made were absolutely true. The woman's husband was the cashier of one of the small national banks in one of the old towns in a New England State. His father's brother had been cashier before him. The family's past was thickly strewn with all those simple honors and good things which are so often the heritage of families of theold, self-respecting, God-fearing, middle-class communities of New England and like long-settled sections of the country. On his death-bed the uncle confessed that for years he had carried upon the books of the bank a shortage which had arisen from mistakes. Her husband, to keep the family's name from stain, had continued to keep this buried, which was an easy thing to do, as when he was moved up from teller to cashier at his uncle's death the two positions were combined into one. The wife explained that her husband had let her into the fearful secret, and together they had carried it until it had eaten its way into their hearts. At last the man could no longer stand the strain. He had followed my printed sayings about the market, and now had made the fatal plunge. He had bought upon margin 2,000 shares of Sugar stock to see if it were not possible to make up quickly a shortage of over $20,000, because I had said Sugar was going right up; and then horror of worse than death had seized the wife and she had given me the awful secret, and a description, a word picture of what would happen if I had made a mistake.
She could go no further. She did not need to. I read the letter. I saw the picture, and even I, who believed myself from long years of experience with such affairs immune—I, too, became horror-stricken. It was no affair of mine. I had not said Sugar was going up; as is often the case, some newspaper had printed what another operator had said and credited it to me. I was not even operating in Sugar, nor at the time particularly interested in it. I could not return the letter nor have any communication with these persons without in a way becoming their accomplice. The woman had said that with the purchase her husband had given orders to sell the stocks at twelve points' rise.
Try as I might to look at the matter in a cold-blooded business way the picture haunted me—the old gentleman proud of his family's long record of sturdy honesty, the old mother's faith in her boy, the wife seeing on each of her children the brand of a felon father, and the husband watching each day's market prices to see whether they had brought him a verdict which meant State's prison or permanent relief from the haunting fear which had become his never-absent shadow; and I read and reread the closing lines of the faithful wife: "Mr. Lawson, you will put Sugar up?—you surely will, just this once—and we will teach the children to pray for you and yours, and God answers this kind of prayers, you know He does."
The picture haunted me; I saw it in the market prices; I heard the story in each tick of the ticker and each rustle of the tape; and every time my eye caught "SUG," the stock-exchange abbreviation for Sugar, I winced, as one does at the dentist's probe—well, I could not stand it. I determined to put up Sugar—that is, I determined to try. Little the woman knew what she asked when she wrote: "You will put up Sugar?" She had read that a stock operator works magic, but it had never entered her head that his wand was a stick of dynamite a thousand times concentrated—a stick of dynamite that the law of stock-market averages shows goes off in his hand nine out of every ten times it is handled, and that when it goes off there is nothing more for the handler but the minister, the flowers, and the head-stone; indeed, often the explosion leaves nothing with which to buy even a head-stone! Little she thought that it might strain the wealth of the Bank of England to move Sugar up twelve points. I moved it up, and it went so easy—oh, so easy! that—well, I will let the first description I pick from my scrap-book from among a hundred from the daily press tell the story:
[From theBoston Journal, March 17, 1899]LAWSON'S LUMPhis coffee sweetened with quarter of a million—made it in sugar thursday in two hours' tradingA quarter of a million in a day!That was Thomas W. Lawson's record for March 16, 1899.The celebrated "Unthroned King of State Street" was on top of the Sugar market; that is the reason of it all.Sugar was the big card of stock speculation yesterday.Indeed, the stock had one of the wildest days in its history, and its high price—$170—reached amid great excitement—is the highest onrecord. The speculation was something tremendous, and it has been through the speculation that the people who have been under the impression that the markets were drifting into a dull and uninteresting condition have had a sudden awakening.From the opening it quickly advanced to 149, receded a point or more, and shortly after noon started sharply upward. The demand for it came so rapidly that the tape could not keep up with it, and the excitement grew as the demand increased. The scenes on the floors of both the New York and local boards were most exciting. Blocks of 500 and 1,000 shares changed hands frequently, and at one time the quotation in the Boston market was fully four points behind that of the New York list. The small army of shorts scrambled to get covered up, and everybody was in a fever of wild excitement over the marvellous movement. Before it had culminated the price reached 170, or a gain of twenty-nine points over the opening—the most remarkable display of strength in so short a period of time that this remarkable stock has ever shown.Broker Lawson did the buying, and while the excitement was running high he bought freely. He had taken 20,000 shares all told before the advance had fairly gotten under way at from 143-1/2 to 144. At 170 he gave an order to sell 20,000 shares at a limit of 155, and obtained an average of over 160, thereby netting an estimated snug profit of $250,000 or more within two hours. Asked as to whether the strength in Sugar meant a settlement of the Sugar war, Mr. Lawson smiled and said: "There has never been any Sugar war."The conservative people on the Street are disposed to regard the whole movement as a piece of clever manipulation.[From theBoston Herald, March 16, 1899]Mr. Thomas W. Lawson was the mover in the deal, and his orders for 20,000 shares early in the day excited other buying, which encompassed the astonishing rise. What point Mr. Lawson had to trade upon is his own asset, if he had any point, and it would not matter so far as the event was concerned whether he had a point. The market was in a position to respond to orders of these dimensions, and it did respond.[From theNew York Journal, March 17, 1899]The frenzied brokers fought like madmen around the Sugar post. The wildest sort of excitement prevailed throughout the day. The rest of the floor was practically abandoned, and brokers crowded, pushed, elbowed, and yelled frantically in their efforts to fill orders. There was no warning. The sudden jump of the stock almost threw the brokers into a panic. Men became ferocious in their efforts to fill orders. Those on the outside made wild rushes to get into the whirlpool. Men who are generally calm fell over each other in their excitement. Scores of arms whipped the air, and men yelled themselves hoarse. So great wasthe din and so compact the yelling crowd that those on one side of the post did not know the bidding on the other. At one point Sugar was going at 159, and five feet away it was bringing 164. While almost at arm's-length farther away it was going at 160, and farther around the post at 162.The excitement became general among the offices of stock-brokers as the news flew on the ticker. Members of firms who were not on the floor gathered about the tickers in excited groups and watched the pyrotechnic fluctuations of Sugar to the exclusion of all other stocks. The quotations came out at two and three points apart. One minute the stock was away up, and the next it seemed to fall hopelessly. Then it would as suddenly soar upward again. It reached 170, and in five minutes it was down to 152.[From theBoston Post, March 22, 1899]Late in the afternoon Mr. Lawson was induced to give the following explanation of his movements in Sugar: "You know it is not conducive to the health of an active operator to talk on what he is doing, for if he expects to retain his hirsute adornment he must either keep jumping so lively that none of the expert scalpers who haunt the jungles of Wall Street can find him long enough in one spot to cut the floor from under him, or he must envelop himself in mystery so dense that all seeking for him will grow color-blind; but on this particular commodity—Sugar—I can depart from the standard formula."I have been twenty-nine years dodging the scalping-knives of Wall Street Comanches, and, although I am still here, I have many places on my head where the hair refuses to grow, and, strange to tell, almost all the bare spots are labelled 'Sugar.' I suppose that I have, during the past ten years, contributed money enough to Sugar to endow a fair-sized asylum for tailless bears. It has never seemed to matter whether I bought or sold, went long or short, the dollars which I secured by the employment of pick and shovel, brawn, muscle or gray matter, all seemed to follow one another into the relentless maw of that modern Saccharine Titanotherium."Way back in 1890 I invested the profits of my Lamson deal—$700,000—in 10,000 Sugar at 84, and in a few days, amid brilliant fireworks, I bade it adieu, when it gracefully dropped below 50. Again, four years ago, I decided I could make no better long-time investment of $700,000 or $800,000 Electric profits than to short Sugar from 61 to 70. In eleven days it took $1,500 more than my profits to even up my accounts."Thinking these things over of late, I determined to make a final demand on astute and relentless Wall Street for my accumulated deposits—a kind of please-give-me-back-my-losses demand. I carefully loaded up two weeks ago to the extent of 20,000 Sugar in the thirties, and feeling the atmosphere was redolent of opportunities, last Friday I bought 20,000 more, the last 5,000 of which in a rather open and frankway that seemed but fair to my scalping New York friends. Well, you know the rest. It took fire. I cleaned up something over $700,000, and put out a short line of 30,000 shares, the last of which I have covered to-day at something over $350,000 profit. Strange as it may seem, I was quit. I have struck a balance with Sugar, and it gets no more of my money."I am one of the few Bostonians who are contented to live in the knowledge that Wall Street is too big and bright and cute a metropolitan centre for country boys to monkey with, and you can say I am so tickled to get back my bait that I will never again, never, wander away from home. There is one moral that may be drawn by Wall and State streets from the last few days in Sugar. It is this: It is not necessary to-day, any more than it was in old days, to work deals with false stories or fakes. In doing what I did in Sugar I depended on no fakes nor stories. I simply followed Charley Osborne's old admonition: 'If you want to bull stocks, buy 'em. If you want to bear 'em, sell 'em.' I bought 'em and I sold 'em. These are Sugar facts as far as my movements have affected them!"
[From theBoston Journal, March 17, 1899]
LAWSON'S LUMP
his coffee sweetened with quarter of a million—made it in sugar thursday in two hours' trading
A quarter of a million in a day!
That was Thomas W. Lawson's record for March 16, 1899.
The celebrated "Unthroned King of State Street" was on top of the Sugar market; that is the reason of it all.
Sugar was the big card of stock speculation yesterday.
Indeed, the stock had one of the wildest days in its history, and its high price—$170—reached amid great excitement—is the highest onrecord. The speculation was something tremendous, and it has been through the speculation that the people who have been under the impression that the markets were drifting into a dull and uninteresting condition have had a sudden awakening.
From the opening it quickly advanced to 149, receded a point or more, and shortly after noon started sharply upward. The demand for it came so rapidly that the tape could not keep up with it, and the excitement grew as the demand increased. The scenes on the floors of both the New York and local boards were most exciting. Blocks of 500 and 1,000 shares changed hands frequently, and at one time the quotation in the Boston market was fully four points behind that of the New York list. The small army of shorts scrambled to get covered up, and everybody was in a fever of wild excitement over the marvellous movement. Before it had culminated the price reached 170, or a gain of twenty-nine points over the opening—the most remarkable display of strength in so short a period of time that this remarkable stock has ever shown.
Broker Lawson did the buying, and while the excitement was running high he bought freely. He had taken 20,000 shares all told before the advance had fairly gotten under way at from 143-1/2 to 144. At 170 he gave an order to sell 20,000 shares at a limit of 155, and obtained an average of over 160, thereby netting an estimated snug profit of $250,000 or more within two hours. Asked as to whether the strength in Sugar meant a settlement of the Sugar war, Mr. Lawson smiled and said: "There has never been any Sugar war."
The conservative people on the Street are disposed to regard the whole movement as a piece of clever manipulation.
[From theBoston Herald, March 16, 1899]
Mr. Thomas W. Lawson was the mover in the deal, and his orders for 20,000 shares early in the day excited other buying, which encompassed the astonishing rise. What point Mr. Lawson had to trade upon is his own asset, if he had any point, and it would not matter so far as the event was concerned whether he had a point. The market was in a position to respond to orders of these dimensions, and it did respond.
[From theNew York Journal, March 17, 1899]
The frenzied brokers fought like madmen around the Sugar post. The wildest sort of excitement prevailed throughout the day. The rest of the floor was practically abandoned, and brokers crowded, pushed, elbowed, and yelled frantically in their efforts to fill orders. There was no warning. The sudden jump of the stock almost threw the brokers into a panic. Men became ferocious in their efforts to fill orders. Those on the outside made wild rushes to get into the whirlpool. Men who are generally calm fell over each other in their excitement. Scores of arms whipped the air, and men yelled themselves hoarse. So great wasthe din and so compact the yelling crowd that those on one side of the post did not know the bidding on the other. At one point Sugar was going at 159, and five feet away it was bringing 164. While almost at arm's-length farther away it was going at 160, and farther around the post at 162.
The excitement became general among the offices of stock-brokers as the news flew on the ticker. Members of firms who were not on the floor gathered about the tickers in excited groups and watched the pyrotechnic fluctuations of Sugar to the exclusion of all other stocks. The quotations came out at two and three points apart. One minute the stock was away up, and the next it seemed to fall hopelessly. Then it would as suddenly soar upward again. It reached 170, and in five minutes it was down to 152.
[From theBoston Post, March 22, 1899]
Late in the afternoon Mr. Lawson was induced to give the following explanation of his movements in Sugar: "You know it is not conducive to the health of an active operator to talk on what he is doing, for if he expects to retain his hirsute adornment he must either keep jumping so lively that none of the expert scalpers who haunt the jungles of Wall Street can find him long enough in one spot to cut the floor from under him, or he must envelop himself in mystery so dense that all seeking for him will grow color-blind; but on this particular commodity—Sugar—I can depart from the standard formula.
"I have been twenty-nine years dodging the scalping-knives of Wall Street Comanches, and, although I am still here, I have many places on my head where the hair refuses to grow, and, strange to tell, almost all the bare spots are labelled 'Sugar.' I suppose that I have, during the past ten years, contributed money enough to Sugar to endow a fair-sized asylum for tailless bears. It has never seemed to matter whether I bought or sold, went long or short, the dollars which I secured by the employment of pick and shovel, brawn, muscle or gray matter, all seemed to follow one another into the relentless maw of that modern Saccharine Titanotherium.
"Way back in 1890 I invested the profits of my Lamson deal—$700,000—in 10,000 Sugar at 84, and in a few days, amid brilliant fireworks, I bade it adieu, when it gracefully dropped below 50. Again, four years ago, I decided I could make no better long-time investment of $700,000 or $800,000 Electric profits than to short Sugar from 61 to 70. In eleven days it took $1,500 more than my profits to even up my accounts.
"Thinking these things over of late, I determined to make a final demand on astute and relentless Wall Street for my accumulated deposits—a kind of please-give-me-back-my-losses demand. I carefully loaded up two weeks ago to the extent of 20,000 Sugar in the thirties, and feeling the atmosphere was redolent of opportunities, last Friday I bought 20,000 more, the last 5,000 of which in a rather open and frankway that seemed but fair to my scalping New York friends. Well, you know the rest. It took fire. I cleaned up something over $700,000, and put out a short line of 30,000 shares, the last of which I have covered to-day at something over $350,000 profit. Strange as it may seem, I was quit. I have struck a balance with Sugar, and it gets no more of my money.
"I am one of the few Bostonians who are contented to live in the knowledge that Wall Street is too big and bright and cute a metropolitan centre for country boys to monkey with, and you can say I am so tickled to get back my bait that I will never again, never, wander away from home. There is one moral that may be drawn by Wall and State streets from the last few days in Sugar. It is this: It is not necessary to-day, any more than it was in old days, to work deals with false stories or fakes. In doing what I did in Sugar I depended on no fakes nor stories. I simply followed Charley Osborne's old admonition: 'If you want to bull stocks, buy 'em. If you want to bear 'em, sell 'em.' I bought 'em and I sold 'em. These are Sugar facts as far as my movements have affected them!"
For years after, even up to to-day, this yarn turned up in the press in different parts of the world, and every time I read it I chuckled to myself, for I see a big manly fellow, president of a bank now and asking no odds of any, for he can buy 2,000 shares of Sugar at any time and draw his check to pay for it against a bank account honestly earned since the day his wife wrote that letter.
And I see a grateful mother teaching three youths to say a certain prayer, and then I forget the critics' scathing sermons against stock gamblers. It does not pain me when my own children ask, "Why do they say such awful things about the stock operator?" I answer: "Oh, they mean no harm; they don't know the stock gambler they write about."
one of the system's shadows
That my readers may not drop this chapter with a false idea of the results of the stock-broker's efforts to "live and let live," I will give them an illustration of one of the counterbalances of the law of compensations.
In the same year with the Sugar transaction, in an evil moment my mail brought me the following letter: