A PHILANTHROPIC WHISPER
There have been all manner of big stock operators and “leaders” in Wall Street—gentlemanly, well-educated leaders with a gift of epigram and foul-spoken leaders who knew as little of grammar as of manners; leaders to whom the stock market was only the Monte Carlo of the Tape and leaders to whom it was a means to an end; cool, calculating, steel-nerved leaders and fidgety, impulsive, excitable leaders; leaders who were church pillars and total abstainers and leaders whose only God was the ticker and whose most brilliant operations were carried on during the course of a drunken debauch. But never before, in the breathless history of Wall Street, had there been a leader whose following was numbered by the thousands and included not only the “shoe-string” speculators but the very richest of the rich! Never before a leader whose word took the place of statistical information, whose mere “I am buying it” created more purchasers for a stock than all the glowing prospectuses and all the accountants’ affidavits and all the bankers’ estimates.
At first Wall Street said the public was suffering from an epidemic of speculative insanity; that Colonel Treadwell was merely a bold operator “backed” by a clique of the greatest fortunes in America; that he was not a skilful “manipulator” of values, but by sheer brute force of tremendous buying he made those stocks advance with which he was identified and that, of course, the public always follows the stocks that are made active; and many other explanations. But in the end Wall Street came to realize exactly to what it was that the blind devotion of the speculative public for the colonel was due. Defying all traditions, upsetting all precedents, violating all rules, driving all the “veterans” to the verge of hysterics and bankruptcy by his daily defiance of accepted views as to the art of operating in stocks, Colonel Josiah T. Treadwell founded a new school: He told the truth.
The colonel sat in his office alone with his thoughts. The door was open—it was always open—and the clerks and customers of Treadwell & Co. as they passed to and fro caught glimpses of the great leader’s broad, kindly face and shrewd, little, twinkling eyes that seemed to smile at them. They wondered what new “deal” the colonel was planning. And then they wished with all their souls and purses they knew the name of the stock—merely the name of it—so that they might “get in on the ground floor.”
The famous operator sat on a revolving chair by his desk. He had turned his back on an accumulation of correspondence and he now rotated from right to left and from left to right. The tips of his shoes—he was a short man—missed the floor by an inch or two and he swung his feet contentedly. A ticker whirred away blithely and from time to time Treadwell ceased his rocking and his foot-swinging, and glanced jovially at the ticker “tape.” From his window he could see a Mississippi of people or a bit of New York summer sky, but his restless eyes were roaming and skipping from place to place. And the clerks and the customers wondered whether the market was going the way the colonel had planned. The ticker was whirring and clicking, impassively, and the colonel wore a meditative look. What was the “old man” scheming? The bears had better be on their guard! As a matter of fact, Josiah T. Treadwell was thinking that his brother Wilson, who had left him a few minutes before, was certainly growing bald. He also wondered whether people who advertised “restorers” and “invigorators” were veracious or merely “Wall Streety” as he put it to himself.
A young man, an utter stranger to Colonel Treadwell, halted at the door, and looked at the leader of the stock market, hesitatingly.
“Come in, come in,” called out the colonel, cheerily. “Won’t you walk into my parlor?”
“Good-morning, Colonel Treadwell,” said the lad, diffidently.
“Who are you, and what are you, and what can I do for you?” said the colonel, extending his hand.
The youth did not heed the chubby, outstretched hand. “My name,” he said, very formally and introductorily, “is Carey. My father used to know you when he was editor of the Blankburg Herald.”
“Well,” said the colonel, encouragingly, “shake hands anyhow.”
Carey shook hands; his diffidence vanished. He was a pleasant-faced, pleasant-voiced young fellow, Treadwell thought. He was a good-hearted, jocular old fellow, unlike what he had imagined the leader of the stock market would be, Carey thought.
“Yes,” went on the colonel, “I remember your father very well. I never forget my up-the-State friends, and I am always glad to see their sons. When I ran for Congress, Bill Carey wrote red-hot editorials in my favor, and I was beaten by a large and enthusiastic majority. I haven’t seen your father in twenty-odd years—not since he went wrong and took to politics.”
“Well, Colonel Treadwell,” laughed Carey, “I guess Dad did his best for you. And if you didn’t go to Congress you’re better off, from all I have read in the papers about you.”
You would have thought they had known each other for years.
“That’s what I say; I have to,” chuckling.
“Colonel,” said the young man, boldly, “I’ve come to ask your advice.”
“Most people don’t ask it twice. Be careful now.”
“Do you mean that they get so rich following it that they don’t have to come again?”
“You are a politician, young man. You’ll wake up and find yourself in Congress, some fine day, unless your father goes back to newspaper work and writes some editorials in your favor.”
The boy had a pleasant smile, the colonel thought.
“I have saved up some money, Colonel.”
“Keep it. That’s the best advice I can give you. Go away instantly. Great Scott, youngster, you are in Wall Street now.”
“Oh, I—I’m safe enough in this office, I guess,” retorted Carey.
The famous leader of the stock market looked at him solemnly. The boy returned the look, imperturbably. Then Colonel Treadwell laughed, and Carey laughed back at him.
“What are you doing to keep out of State’s prison?” asked Treadwell.
“I’m a clerk in the office of the Federal Pump Company, third floor, upstairs. I have saved some money and I want to know what to do with it. I read an article in the Sun the other day. It said you had advised people to put their savings into Suburban Trolley and how well they had fared.”
“That was a year ago. Trolley has gone up 50 points since then.”
“That shows how good the advice was. And you also said a young man should do something with his savings and not let them lie idle.” The young man looked straight into the little, twinkling, kindly eyes of the leader of the stock market.
“How much money have you?”
“I have two hundred and ten dollars,” replied the lad with an uncertain smile. He had felt proud of the magnitude of his savings in his own room; in this office he felt a bit ashamed of their insignificance.
“Dear me,” said the millionaire speculator, very seriously, “that is a good deal of money. It’s a blame sight more’n I had, when I started in business. Got it with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ll introduce you to my brother Wilson, who has charge of our customers. Come in, John.”
“John” came in. His other name was Mellen. He was a slim, quiet-looking man of about five-and-fifty. His enemies said that he had made $1,000,000 for every year he had lived and had kept it.
“Sit down, John,” said Colonel Treadwell, shaking hands with Mr. Mellen, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
At the door he shook hands with two more visitors—a tall, ruddy-faced, white-haired, and white-whiskered man, Mr. Milton Steers, after-dinner speaker and self-confessed wit; and, incidentally, president of a railroad system; also Mr. D. M. Ogden, who looked like an English clergyman and was the owner of the huge Ogden Buildings in Wall Street. They had come to discuss the advisability of a new deal in “Trolley.” They represented, they and their associates, more than $500,000,000. But Colonel Treadwell made them wait while he escorted his new acquaintance to his brother’s room.
“Wilse,” he said, “I’ve brought you a new customer, Mr. Carey.”
Wilson P. Treadwell smiled pleasantly. He was a tall, slender man with a serious look. The firm did not desire new accounts, for there was already more business than could be handled. They were the busiest and the best-known stock brokers in the United States. But the colonel’s friends were welcome, always.
“I’m very glad to meet Mr. Carey,” said Wilson Treadwell. The firm had some very youthful customers; but their means were in inverse ratio to their years.
“I think,” said the colonel, “that we had better buy some Easton & Allentown for him.” He was smiling; he generally did. Moreover, he was thinking of his brother’s mistaken impression of the new customer.
“That is a good idea,” assented Wilson. “You ought to put in your order at once. The stock is going up very fast, Mr. Carey.”
“Well, young man, give him your margin and let him buy you as much as he thinks best,” said the colonel.
“Five thousand shares?” suggested Wilson Treadwell.
Colonel Treadwell chuckled. “Five thousand? A paltry five?”
“Well, fifty thousand if he wants them, and you guarantee his account,” said his brother with a smile.
“I guess,” said the leader of the stock market, slowly, “that you had better begin with one hundred shares.”
Then Wilson, who knew his brother thoroughly, said “Oh!” and smiled and gave an order to a clerk to buy one hundred shares of Easton & Allentown Railroad stock at the “market” or prevailing price, for Mr. Carey, and took the boy’s two hundred and ten dollars with the utmost gravity. The smallest Stock Exchange house would not accept such a pitiful account. Treadwell & Co. being the largest, would and did.
The colonel shook hands with young Carey, whose father had once edited a country newspaper, but who had never been an intimate friend, told him to “Come again, any time,” and went back to his accomplices.
Easton & Allentown stock was the “feature” of the market that week and the next. Ten days after Carey had bought his hundred shares at 94 the stock sold at 106.
The young man went into the office of Treadwell & Co., on the eleventh day. He knew he had made a great deal of money—more than he had ever thought of having at his age—but he did not know what to do now. He heard one man say to another: “Take profits? Not at this price. E. & A. is sure to go to 115.”
Carey figured that if he waited for the stock to sell at 115, he would make nearly a thousand dollars more.
“There is no use of being a blamed hog,” the man continued, with picturesque emphasis, “but where in blazes is the sense of throwing away that much money by selling out too soon? Limit your losses and let your profits run.”
They stood in the corridor of the partitioned office, the crowd of men, all of them customers of Treadwell & Co., excepting the newspaper reporters who had called for their usual daily interview with the famous leader of the stock market. There were two United States Senators; an ex-Congressman; a score of men who had inherited fortunes and were doubling them in the stock market; three or four gray-haired shrewd-faced capitalists whose names appeared many times in the financial pages of newspapers; a baker’s dozen of prominent municipal politicians, a well-known Western railroad president with a ruddy face and a snow-white beard; two famous physicians; the vice-president of a life insurance company; a half score of wholesale merchants and a low-voiced, insignificant little man, with a quiet, almost apologetic look, who seldom spoke and never smiled, but who, next to the colonel himself, was beyond question the heaviest “plunger” in the office.
The colonel came out of his office to go to his brother’s room, where, seated about a long polished table were several directors of the Suburban Trolley Company—men to whom the newspapers always referred not by name but as “prominent insiders.” It was a very important gathering. It involved no less than a final understanding in regards to the great “Trolley pool” whose operations, later on, were to become historical in Wall Street. It was, as one of the speculators outside put it, “a case of show down”—the cash resources available for pool purposes were to be ascertained, each man announcing the proportion of the 100,000 shares for which he was willing to “put up.”
Carey was standing by the door of Wilson Treadwell’s office. He did not feel altogether comfortable, among so many elderly and obviously very rich men. His diffidence was the saving of him for as the colonel passed he paused and said, in a low voice: “Got your stock yet?”
The customers in the corridor, men who, by the colonel’s advice, were “carrying” from 500 to 10,000 shares each of Easton & Allentown, leaned forward eagerly. All were men who north of Wall Street would not have stooped to listen to others’ conversations if their lives depended on it. In a broker’s office, when the leader of the stock market was speaking, such notions were absurd, almost wicked. Certainly, at that moment, twenty pairs of eyes were looking fixedly at the great leader of the stock market and the young clerk.
The colonel felt this intuitively. He confirmed it with a quick glance of his sharp little eyes. He had not sold all his Easton & Allentown, but was disposing of it just as fast as the market would take it. It was not likely that the stock would go much higher. Wall Street, ever loath to believe well of any stock operator, used to comment sneeringly on the fact that the world heard much about the “Treadwell buying” but never a word about the Treadwell selling.
If the colonel gave a hint to the customers there would be an avalanche of selling orders that would make the price of the stock break sharply, and this would not benefit anyone. He had advised them to buy the stock at 90 and at 95—it was 105 now. He had more than done his duty. If they did not sell out, in the hope of making more, it was their own lookout.
But there was the boy with the one hundred shares, the pleasant little clerk from up-the-State, who had brought in his entire fortune, his accumulated savings of two hundred and ten dollars. He was a stranger to Wall Street. But supposing he should tell that he had been advised to sell? There would be the deuce to pay!
The colonel took chances. Out of one corner of his mouth, so that he did not even turn his head toward the boy and so that the watching customers could not suspect what he was doing, he shot a quick whisper—a lob-sided but philanthropic affair—at him: “Look at the color of your money, boy! Take your profits and say nothing!” And he walked into the room where the Suburban Trolley magnates awaited him impatiently.
Carey, thrilled but taciturn, gave his order to sell his Easton & Allentown, unsuspected by the mob. They sold it for him at 105⅛. Deducting commissions and interest charges the colonel’s whisper had put $1,050 in the young clerk’s pocket.
And the stock went a little higher and then declined slowly to about 99. The customers all made a great deal of money as it was, but not as much as they would have “taken out” of the Easton & Allentown “deal” if they had overheard that one of Colonel Treadwell’s many whispers—lob-sided but philanthropic affairs!