The labor shortage struck Wall Street, along with other sections of the country, and messenger boys were difficult to find. During this period there was also a great expansion in business. Nearly everyone in the country possessed bonds of some kind, and these changed hands in unparalelled quantities. On the floor of the Stock Exchange, daily transactions in bonds up to $20,000,000, and in stocks up to one or two million shares, were common. Following the sales, the stocks and bonds were transferred from seller to buyer by messenger boy. It was not unusual for irresponsible lads to be running from office to office in Wall Street with $250,000 each under the arms.
Then, with the shortage of boys, another type of messenger began to appear, and with this type trouble began. Disappearances and losses became more frequent and costly. The indemnities paid by the insurance companies reached such staggering figures that the custom of issuing blanket insurance was withdrawn. Various expedients were adopted to solve the mystery; boys were required to travel in pairs, guards were posted throughout Wall Street, the best detectives in the land were assigned to the matter, but without avail.
There was a strong disinclination in Wall Street toward publishing the figures of the losses, for fear the publication might be destructive of public confidence in the Street’s financial condition. But the news was known in the underworld and drew to New York criminals from all parts of the country. For a time all efforts were fruitless; the losses continued and the mystery deepened.
Then, suddenly, in the early part of 1920, certain arrests were made and confessions obtained, which disclosed one of the most amazing criminal conspiracies in the history of the United States.
There was proved the existence of a vast Jewish conspiracy to loot Wall Street. It was found that a band of astute Jewish criminals, many of them wealthy men, some of them ex-convicts, had created an organization by which Wall Street financial houses were to be plundered.
Bands of young Jews, mostly of Russian origin and living on the East Side, had been shaped into being.
