Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son/Letter 14
| No. 14 |
| From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at The Travelers' Rest, New Albany, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has taken a little flyer in short ribs on 'Change, and has accidentally come into the line of his father's vision. |
XIV
Chicago, July 15, 189—
Dear Pierrepont: I met young Horshey, of Horshey & Horter, the grain and provision brokers, at luncheon yesterday, and while we were talking over the light run of hogs your name came up somehow, and he congratulated me on having such a smart son. Like an old fool, I allowed that you were bright enough to come in out of the rain if somebody called you, though I ought to have known better, for it seems as if I never start in to brag about your being sound and sweet that I don't have to wind up by allowing a rebate for skippers.
Horshey was so blamed anxious to show that you were over-weight—he wants to handle some of my business on 'Change—that he managed to prove you a light-weight. Told me you had ordered him to sell a hundred thousand ribs short last week, and that he had just bought them in on a wire from you at a profit of four hundred and sixty-odd dollars. I was mighty hot, you bet, to know that you had been speculating, but I had to swallow and allow that you were a pretty sharp boy. I told Horshey to close out the account and send me a check for your profits and I would forward it, as I wanted to give you a tip on the market before you did any more trading.
I inclose the check herewith. Please indorse it over to the treasurer of The Home for Half Orphans and return at once. I will see that he gets it with your compliments.
Now, I want to give you that tip on the market. There are several reasons why it isn't safe for you to trade on 'Change just now, but the particular one is that Graham & Co. will fire you if you do. Trading on margin is a good deal like paddling around the edge of the old swimming hole—it seems safe and easy at first, but before a fellow knows it he has stepped off the edge into deep water. The wheat pit is only thirty feet across, but it reaches clear down to Hell. And trading on margin means trading on the ragged edge of nothing. When a man buys, he's buying something that the other fellow hasn't got. When a man sells, he's selling something that he hasn't got. And it's been my experience that the net profit on nothing is nit. When a speculator wins he don't stop till he loses, and when he loses he can't stop till he wins.
You have been in the packing business long enough now to know that it takes a bull only thirty seconds to lose his hide; and if you'll believe me when I tell you that they can skin a bear just as quick on 'Change, you won't have a Board of Trade Indian using your pelt for a rug during the long winter months.
Because you are the son of a pork packer you may think that you know a little more than the next fellow about paper pork. There's nothing in it. The poorest men on earth are the relations of millionaires. When I sell futures on 'Change, they're against hogs that are traveling into dry salt at the rate of one a second, and if the market goes up on me I've got the solid meat to deliver. But, if you lose, the only part of the hog which you can deliver is the squeal.
I wouldn't bear down so hard on this matter if money was the only thing that a fellow could lose on 'Change. But if a clerk sells pork, and the market goes down, he's mighty apt to get a lot of ideas with holes in them and bad habits as the small change of his profits. And if the market goes up, he's likely to go short his self-respect to win back his money.
Most men think that they can figure up all their assets in dollars and cents, but a merchant may owe a hundred thousand dollars and be solvent. A man's got to lose more than money to be broke. When a fellow's got a straight backbone and a clear eye his creditors don't have to lie awake nights worrying over his liabilities. You can hide your meanness from your brain and your tongue, but the eye and the backbone won't keep secrets. When the tongue lies, the eyes tell the truth.
I know you'll think that the old man is bucking and kicking up a lot of dust over a harmless little flyer. But I've kept a heap smarter boys than you out of Joliet when they found it easy to feed the Board of Trade hog out of my cash drawer, after it had sucked up their savings in a couple of laps.
You must learn not to overwork a dollar any more than you would a horse. Three per cent, is a small load for it to draw; six, a safe one; when it pulls in ten for you it's likely working out West and you've got to watch to see that it doesn't buck; when it makes twenty you own a blame good critter or a mighty foolish one, and you want to make dead sure which; but if it draws a hundred it's playing the races or something just as hard on horses and dollars, and the first thing you know you won't have even a carcass to haul to the glue factory.
I dwell a little on this matter of speculation because you've got to live next door to the Board of Trade all your life, and it's a safe thing to know something about a neighbor's dogs before you try to pat them. Sure Things, Straight Tips and Dead Cinches will come running out to meet you, wagging their tails and looking as innocent as if they hadn't just killed a lamb, but they'll bite. The only safe road to follow in speculation leads straight away from the Board of Trade on the dead run.
Speaking of sure things naturally calls to mind the case of my old friend Deacon Wiggleford, whom I used to know back in Missouri years ago. The Deacon was a powerful pious man, and he was good according to his lights, but he didn't use a very superior article of kerosene to keep them burning.
Used to take up half the time in prayer-meeting talking about how we were all weak vessels and stewards. But he was so blamed busy exhorting others to give out of the fullness with which the Lord had blessed them that he sort of forgot that the Lord had blessed him about fifty thousand dollars' worth, and put it all in mighty safe property, too, you bet.
The Deacon had a brother in Chicago whom he used to call a sore trial. Brother Bill was a broker on the Board of Trade, and, according to the Deacon, he was not only engaged in a mighty sinful occupation, but he was a mighty poor steward of his sinful gains. Smoked two-bit cigars and wore a plug hat. Drank a little and cussed a little and went to the Episcopal Church, though he had been raised a Methodist. Altogether it looked as if Bill was a pretty hard nut.
Well, one fall the Deacon decided to go to Chicago himself to buy his winter goods, and naturally he hiked out to Brother Bill's to stay, which was considerable cheaper for him than the Palmer House, though, as he told us when he got back, it made him sick to see the waste.
The Deacon had his mouth all fixed to tell Brother Bill that, in his opinion, he wasn't much better than a faro dealer, for he used to brag that he never let anything turn him from his duty, which meant his meddling in other people's business. I want to say right here that with most men duty means something unpleasant which the other fellow ought to do. As a matter of fact, a man's first duty is to mind his own business. It's been my experience that it takes about all the thought and work which one man can give to run one man right, and if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty apt to scamp the building of his own.
Well, when Brother Bill got home from business that first night, the Deacon explained that every time he lit a two-bit cigar he was depriving a Zulu of twenty-five helpful little tracts which might have made a better man of him; that fast horses were a snare and plug hats a wile of the Enemy; that the Board of Trade was the Temple of Belial and the brokers on it his sons and servants.
Brother Bill listened mighty patiently to him, and when the Deacon had pumped out all the Scripture that was in him, and was beginning to suck air, he sort of slunk into the conversation like a setter pup that's been caught with the feathers on its chops.
"Brother Zeke," says he, "I shall certainly let your words soak in. I want to be a number two red, hard, sound and clean sort of a man, and grade contract on delivery day. Perhaps, as you say, the rust has got into me and the Inspector won't pass me, and if I can see it that way I'll settle my trades and get out of the market for good."
The Deacon knew that Brother Bill had scraped together considerable property, and, as he was a bachelor, it would come to him in case the broker was removed by any sudden dispensation. What he really feared was that this money might be fooled away in high living and speculation. And so he had banged away into the middle of the flock, hoping to bring down those two birds. Now that it began to look as if he might kill off the whole bunch he started in to hedge.
"Is it safe, William?" says he.
"As Sunday-school," says Bill, "if you do a strictly brokerage business and don't speculate."
"I trust, William, that you recognize the responsibilities of your stewardship?"
Bill fetched a groan. "Zeke," says he, "you cornered me there, and I 'spose I might as well walk up to the Captain's office and settle. I hadn't bought or sold a bushel on my own account in a year till last week, when I got your letter saying that you were coming. Then I saw what looked like a
| "I started in to curl up that young fellow to a crisp." |
safe chance to scalp the market for a couple of cents a bushel, and I bought 10,000 September, intending to turn over the profits to you as a little present, so that you could see the town and have a good time without it's costing you anything."
The Deacon judged from Bill's expression that he had got nipped and was going to try to unload the loss on him, so he changed his face to the one which he used when attending the funeral of any one who hadn't been a professor, and came back quick and hard:
"I'm surprised, William, that you should think I would accept money made in gambling. Let this be a lesson to you. How much did you lose?"
"That's the worst of it—I didn't lose; I made two hundred dollars," and Bill hove another sigh.
"Made two hundred dollars!" echoed the Deacon, and he changed his face again for the one which he used when he found a lead quarter in his till and couldn't remember who had passed it on him.
"Yes," Bill went on, "and I'm ashamed of it, for you've made me see things in a new light. Of course, after what you've said, I know it would be an insult to offer you the money. And I feel now that it wouldn't be right to keep it myself. I must sleep on it and try to find the straight thing to do."
I guess it really didn't interfere with Bill's sleep, but the Deacon sat up with the corpse of that two hundred dollars, you bet. In the morning at breakfast he asked Brother Bill to explain all about this speculating business, what made the market go up and down, and whether real corn or wheat or pork figured in any stage of a deal. Bill looked sort of sad and dreamy-eyed, as if his conscience hadn't digested that two hundred yet, but he was mighty obliging about explaining everything to Zeke. He had changed his face for the one which he wore when he sold an easy customer ground peas and chicory for O. G. Java, and every now and then he gulped as if he was going to start a hymn. When Bill told him how good and bad weather sent the market up and down, he nodded and said that that part of it was all right, because the weather was of the Lord.
"Not on the Board of Trade it isn't," Bill answered back; "at least, not to any marked extent; it's from the weather man or some liar in the corn belt, and, as the weather man usually guesses wrong, I reckon there isn't any special inspiration about it. The game is to guess what's going to happen, not what has happened, and by the time the real weather comes along everybody has guessed wrong and knocked the market off a cent or two."
That made the Deacon's chin whiskers droop a little, but he began to ask questions again, and by and by he discovered that away behind—about a hundred miles behind, but that was close enough for the Deacon—a deal in futures there were real wheat and pork. Said then that he'd been misinformed and misled; that speculation was a legitimate business, involving skill and sagacity; that his last scruple was removed, and that he would accept the two hundred.
Bill brightened right up at that and thanked him for putting it so clear and removing the doubts that had been worrying him. Said that he could speculate with a clear conscience after listening to the Deacon's able exposition of the subject. Was only sorry he hadn't seen him to talk it over before breakfast, as the two hundred had been lying so heavy on his mind all night that he'd got up early and mailed a check for it to the Deacon's pastor and told him to spend it on his poor.
Zeke took the evening train home in order to pry that check out of the elder, but old Doc. Hoover was a pretty quick stepper himself and he'd blown the whole two hundred as soon as he got it, buying winter coal for poor people.
I simply mention the Deacon in passing as an example of the fact that it's easy for a man who thinks he's all right to go all wrong when he sees a couple of hundred dollars lying around loose a little to one side of the straight and narrow path; and that when he reaches down to pick up the money there's usually a string tied to it and a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank. Easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury.
Of course, the Board of Trade and every other commercial exchange have their legitimate uses, but all you need to know just now is that speculation by a fellow who never owns more pork at a time than he sees on his breakfast plate isn't one of them. When you become a packer you may go on 'Change as a trader; until then you can go there only as a sucker.
Your affectionate father,
John Graham.