Wall Street Stories/Pike’s Peak or Bust
PIKE’S PEAK OR BUST
He was only seventeen, fair-haired and rosy-cheeked, with girlish blue eyes, when he applied for the vacancy in the office of Tracy & Middleton, Bankers and Brokers. His name was Willis N. Hayward, and he was a proud boy, indeed, when he was selected out of twenty “applicants” to be telephone-clerk for the firm.
From 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. he stood by Tracy & Middleton’s private telephone on the floor of the Stock Exchange—the Board Room—receiving messages from the office—chiefly orders to buy or sell stocks for customers—and transmitting the same messages to the “Board member” of the firm, Mr. Middleton; also telephoning Mr. Middleton’s reports to the office. He spoke with a soft, refined voice, and his blue eyes beamed so ingenuously upon the other telephone-boys in the same row of booths, that they said they had a Sally in their alley, and they immediately nicknamed him Sally.
It was all very wonderful to young Hayward, who had been out of boarding-school but a few months—the excited rushing hither and thither of worried-looking men, the frantic waving of hands, the maniacal yelling of the brokers executing their orders about the various “posts,” and their sudden relapse into semi-sanity as they jotted down the price at which they had sold or bought stocks. It was not surprising that he should fail to understand just how they did business; but what most impressed him was the fact, vouched for by his colleagues, that these same clamoring, gesticulating brokers were actually supposed to make a great deal of money. He heard of “Sam” Sharpe’s $100,000 winnings in Suburban Trolley, and of “Parson” Black’s famous million-dollar coup in Western Delaware—the little gray man even being pointed out to him in corroboration. But, then, he had also heard of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and Jack the Giant Killer.
He learned the business, as nearly all boys must do in Wall Street, by absorption. If he asked questions he received replies, but no one volunteered any information for his guidance, and in self-defence he was forced to observe closely, to see how others did, and to remark what came of it. He heard nothing but speculate! speculate! in one guise or another, many words for the same meaning. It was all buying or selling of stocks—a concentrated and almost visible hope of making much money in the twinkling of an eye. Nobody talked of anything else on the Exchange. Bosom friends met at the opening of business and did not say “Good-morning,” but plunged without preamble into the only subject on earth—speculation. And if one of them arrived late he inevitably inquired forthwith, “How’s the market?”—asked it eagerly, anxiously, as if fearful that the market had taken advantage of his absence to misconduct itself. The air was almost unbreathable for the innumerable “tips” to buy or sell securities and insecurities of all kinds. The brokers, the customers, the clerks, the Exchange door-keepers, all Wall Street read the morning papers, not to ascertain the news, but to pick such items as would, should, or might, have some effect on stock values. There was no god but the ticker, and the brokers were its prophets!
All about Sally were hundreds of men who looked as if they took their thoughts home with them and dined with them and slept with them and dreamed of them—the look had become settled, immutable. And it was not a pleasant look, about the eyes and lips. He saw everywhere the feverishness of the “game.” Insensibly the atmosphere of the place affected him, colored his thoughts, induced certain fancies. As he became more familiar with the technique of the business he grew to believe, like thousands of youthful or superficial observers, that stock-market movements were comparable only to the gyrations of the little ivory ball about the roulette-wheel. The innumerable tricks of the trade, the uses of inside misinformation, the rationale of stock-market manipulation, were a sealed book to him. He heard only that his eighteen-year-old neighbor made $60 buying twenty shares of Blue Belt Line on Thursday and selling them on Saturday, 3⅜ points higher; or that Micky Welch, Stuart & Stern’s telephone-boy, had a “tip” from one of the big room traders which he bravely “played”—as you “play” horse or “play” the red or the black—and cleared $125 in less than a week; or that Watson, a “two-dollar” broker, made a “nice turn” selling Southern Shore. Or else he heard, punctuated with poignant oaths, how Charlie Miller, one of the New Street door-keepers, lost $230 buying Pennsylvania Central, after he accidentally overheard Archie Chase, who was “Sam” Sharpe’s principal broker, tell a friend that the “Old Man” said “Pa. Cent.” was due for a ten-point rise; instead of which there had been a seven-point decline. Always the boy heard about the apparently irresponsible “bulges” and “drops,” of the winnings of the men who happened to guess correctly, or of the losses of those who had failed to “call the turn.” Even the vernacular of the place savored of the technicalities of a gambling-house.
As time wore on the glamour of the game wore off; likewise his scruples. His employers and their customers—all gentlemanly, agreeable people—speculated every day, and nobody found fault with them. It was not a sin; it was a regular business. And so, whenever there was a “good thing,” he “chipped in” one dollar to a telephone-boys’ “pool” that later operated in a New Street bucket shop to the extent of ten shares. His means were small, his salary being only $8 a week; and very often he thought that if he only had a little more money he would speculate on a larger scale and profit proportionately. If each time he had bought one share he had held twenty instead, he figured that he would have made no less than $400 in three months.
The time is ripe for other things when a boy begins to reason that way. Having no scruples against speculating, the problem with him became not, “Is it wrong to speculate?” but rather, “What shall I do to raise money for margin purposes?” It took nearly four months for him to arrive at this stage of mind. With many boys the question is asked and satisfactorily solved within three weeks. But Hayward was an exceptionally nice chap.
Now, the position of telephone-boy is really important in that it requires not only a quick-witted but a trustworthy person to fill it. In the first place, the boy knows whether his firm is buying or selling certain stocks; he must exercise discrimination in the matter of awarding the orders, should the Board member of the firm happen to be unavailable when the boy receives the order. For example: International Pipe may be selling at 108. A man in Tracy & Middleton’s office, who has bought 500 shares of it at 104, wishes to “corral” his profits. He gives an order to the firm to sell the stock, let us say, “at the market,” that is, at the ruling market price. Tracy & Middleton immediately telephone over their private line to the Stock Exchange to their Board member to “sell 500 shares of International Pipe at the market.” The telephone-boy receives the message and “puts up” Mr. Middleton’s number, which means that on the multicolored, checkered strip on the frieze of the New Street wall, Mr. Middleton’s number, 611, appears by means of an electrical device. The moment Mr. Middleton sees that his number is “up,” he hastens to the telephone-booth to ascertain what is wanted. Now, if Mr. Middleton delays in answering his number the telephone-boy knows he is absent, and gives the order to a “two-dollar” broker, like Mr. Browning or Mr. Watson, who always hover about the booths looking for orders. He does the same if he knows that Mr. Middleton is very busy executing some other order, or if, in his judgment, the order calls for immediate execution. The two-dollar broker sells the 500 shares of International Pipe to Allen & Smith, and “gives up” Tracy & Middleton on the transaction, that is, he notifies the purchaser that he is acting for T. & M., and Allen & Smith must look to the latter firm—the real sellers—for the stock bought. For this service the broker employed by Tracy & Middleton receives the sum of $2 for each 100 shares, while Tracy & Middleton, of course, charge their customers the regular commission of one eighth of one per cent., or $12.50 per each hundred shares.
Young Hayward attended to his business closely, and when Mr. Middleton was absent from the floor, or busy, he impartially distributed the firm’s telephoned buying or selling orders among the two-dollar brokers, for Tracy & Middleton did a very good commission business indeed. He was a nice-looking and nice-acting little chap, was Hayward—clean-faced, polite, and amiable. The brokers liked him, and they “remembered” him at Christmas. The best memory was possessed by “Joe” Jacobs, who gave him $25, and insinuated that he would like to do more of Tracy & Middleton’s business than he had been getting.
“But,” said Sally, “the firm said I was to give the order to whichever broker I found first.”
“Well,” said Jacobs, oleaginously, “I am never too busy to take orders from such a nice young fellow as yourself, if you take the trouble to find me; and I’ll do something nice for you. Look here,” in a whisper, “if you give me plenty of business, I’ll give you $5 a week.” And he dived into the mob that was yelling itself hoarse about the Gotham Gas post.
Hayward’s first impulse was to tell his firm about it, because he felt vaguely that Jacobs would not have offered him $5 a week if he had not expected something dishonorable in return. Before the market closed, however, he spoke to Willie Simpson, MacDuff & Wilkinson’s boy, whose telephone was next to Tracy & Middleton’s. Sure enough, Willie expressed great indignation at Jacobs’s action.
“It’s just like that old skunk,” said Willie. “Five dollars a week, when he can make $100 out of the firm. Don’t you do it, Sally. Why, Jim Burr, who had the place before you, used to get $20 a week from old man Grant and $50 a month from Wolff. You’ve got a cinch, if you only know how to work it. Why, they are supposed to give you fifty cents a hundred.” Willie had been in the business for two years, and he was a very well-dressed youth, indeed. Sally now understood how he managed it on a salary of $12 a week.
He did not say anything to the firm that day, nor any other day. And he didn’t say anything to Jacobs in return, but, by Willie’s sage advice, contented himself with merely withholding all orders from that oleaginous personage, until Mr. Jacobs was moved to remonstrate. And Sally, who had learned a great deal in a week under Willie’s tuition, answered curtly: “Business is very bad; the firm is doing hardly anything.”
“But Watson told me,” said Jacobs, angrily, “that he was doing a great deal of business for Tracy & Middleton. I want you to see that I get my share, or I’ll speak to Middleton and find out what the trouble is.”
“Is that so?” said Sally, calmly. “You might also tell Mr. Middleton that you offered me $5 a week to give you the bulk of our business.”
One of the most stringent laws of the Stock Exchange treats of “splitting” commissions. Any member who, in order to increase his business, charges an outsider or another member less than exactly the prescribed amount for buying or selling stocks, is liable to severe penalties. The offer of a two-dollar broker to give a telephone-boy fifty cents for each order of 100 shares secured was obviously a violation of the rule.
Jacobs came down to business at once. “I’ll make it $8,” he said, conciliatingly.
“Jim Burr, who had the position before me,” expostulated Sally, indignantly, “told me he received $25 a week from Mr. Grant, with an extra $10 thrown in from time to time, when Mr. Grant made some lucky turn, to say nothing of what the other men did for him.”
Three months before he could not have made this speech had his life depended on it. The rapid development of his character was due exclusively to the “forcing” power of the atmosphere which surrounded him.
“You must be crazy,” said Jacobs, angrily. “Why, I never get much more than a thousand shares a week from Tracy & Middleton, and usually less. Say, you ought to be on the floor. You are wasting your talent in the telephone business, you are. Let’s swap places, you and I.”
“According to our books,” said Sally to the irate broker, having been duly coached by Mr. William Simpson, “the last week you did business for us you did 3,800 shares, and received $76.”
“That was an exceptional week. I’ll make it $10,” said Jacobs.
“Twenty-five,” whispered Sally, determinedly.
“Let’s split the difference,” murmured Jacobs, wrathfully. “I’ll give you $15 a week, but you must see that I get at least 2,500 shares a week.”
“All right. I’ll do the best I can for you, Mr. Jacobs.”
And he did, for the other brokers gave him only twenty-five cents, or at the most fifty cents per hundred shares. In the course of a month or two Sally was in possession of an income of $40 a week. And he was only eighteen.
II.
Time passed. As it had happened with his predecessor, so did it happen now with Sally. He began by speculating, wildly at first, more carefully later on. He met with sundry reverses, but he also made some very lucky turns indeed, and he was “ahead of the game” by a very fair amount—certainly a sum far greater than any plodding clerk could save in five years, greater than many an industrious mechanic saves in his entire life. From the bucket-shops he went to the Consolidated Exchange. Then he asked Jacobs and the other two-dollar brokers to let him deal in a small way with them, which they did out of personal liking for him, until he had three separate accounts and could “swing a line” of several hundred shares. He became neither more nor less than 10,000 other human beings in Wall Street—moved by the same impulses, actuated by the same feelings, experiencing the same emotions, having the same thoughts and the same views of what they are pleased to call their “business.”
At last the blow fell which Sally had so long dreaded—he was “promoted” to a clerkship in Tracy & Middleton’s office. The firm meant to reward him for his devotion to his work, for his brightness and quickness. From $15 a week they raised his salary to $25, which they considered quite generous, especially in view of his youth, and that he had started three years before with $8. He was only twenty now. But Sally, knowing it meant the abandonment of his lucrative perquisites as telephone “boy,” bemoaned his undeserved fate.
He took the money he had made to Mr. Tracy and told him an interesting story of a rich aunt and a legacy, and asked him to let him open an account in the office. Tracy congratulated his young clerk, took the $6,500, and thereafter Sally was both an employee and a customer of Tracy & Middleton.
Addicted to sharp practices though Mr. Tracy was and loving commissions as he did, he nevertheless sought to curb Sally’s youthful propensity for “plunging,” which was as near being kind as it was possible for a stock-broker to be. But the money had “come easy.” That is why fortunes won by stock gamblers are lost with apparent recklessness or stupidity. Sally speculated with varying success, running up his winnings to $10,000, and seeing them dwindle later to $6,000. But in addition to becoming an inveterate speculator, he gained much valuable experience. And when he had learned the tricks of the trade he was taken from the ledgers and turned loose in the customers’ room, to take the latter’s orders and keep them in good humor and tell them the current stories, and give them impressively whispered “tips,” and “put them into” various “deals” of the firm, and see that they traded as often as possible, which meant commissions for the firm. He became friendly and even familiar with Tracy & Middleton’s clients, among whom were some very wealthy men, for a stock-broker’s office is a democratic place. Men who would not have dreamed of taking their Wall Street acquaintances to their homes or to their clubs for a million reasons, all but called each other by their first names there.
He really was a bright, amiable fellow, very obliging—he was paid for it by the firm—and he made the most of his opportunities. The customers grew to like him exceedingly well, and to think with respect of his judgment, market-wise. One day W. Basil Thornton, one of the wealthiest and boldest customers of the firm, complained of the difficulty of “beating the game” with the heavy handicap of the large brokerage commission.
Jestingly, yet hoping to be taken seriously, Sally said: “Join the New York Stock Exchange or buy me a seat, and form the firm of Thornton & Hayward. Just think, Colonel, we would have your trade, and you could bring some friends, and I could bring mine, and I think many of these”—pointing to Tracy & Middleton’s customers—“would come over to us. They all think a lot,” diplomatically, “of your opinions on the market.”
Thornton was favorably impressed with the idea, and Sally saw it. From that moment on he worked hard to gain the Colonel’s confidence. It was he who gave Thornton the first hint of Tracy & Middleton’s condition, which led to the withdrawal of Thornton’s account—and his own—from the office. It was a violation of confidence and of business ethics, but Thornton was very grateful when, two months later, Tracy & Middleton failed, under circumstances which were far from creditable, and which were discussed at great length by the Street. He showed his gratitude by adding a round sum to Sally’s $11,500, and Willis N. Hayward became a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Shortly afterward the firm of Thornton & Hayward, Bankers and Brokers, was formed. Sally, then in his twenty-fifth year, had become a seasoned Wall Street man.
III.
From the start the new firm did well. Colonel Thornton and two or three friends who followed him from Tracy & Middleton’s office, all of them “plungers,” were almost enough to keep Hayward busy on the Exchange executing orders, and, moreover, new customers were coming in. Had he been satisfied with this start, and with letting time do the rest, he would have fared very well. But he began to speculate for himself, and all reputable commission men will tell you, with varying degrees of emphasis, that this not only “ties up” the firm’s money, but that no man can “trade”—speculate—on his own hook and at the same time do justice to his customers.
Thornton was a rich man, and protected his own speculations more than amply. He noticed the development of his young partner’s gambling proclivities, and remonstrated with him—in a kindly, paternal sort of way.
Sally vowed he would stop.
Within less than three months he had broken his promise twice, and his unsuccessful operations in Alabama Coal at one time threatened seriously to embarrass the firm.
Colonel Thornton came to the rescue.
Sally promised, with a solemnity born of sincere fear, never to do it again.
But fright lasts but a little space, and memory is equally short-lived. Wall Street has no room for men with an excess of timidity or of recollection. He had gambled before he joined the New York Stock Exchange. After all, if speculating were a crime and convictions could be secured in fifty out of a hundred flagrant instances, one half the male population of the United States would perforce consist of penitentiary guards forever engaged in watching over the convicted other half, Sally told a customer one day.
And then, too, Willis N. Hayward, the Board member of Thornton & Hayward, was a very different person from Sally, the nice little telephone-boy of Tracy & Middleton’s. His cheeks were not pink; they were mottled. His eyes were not clear and ingenuous; they were shifty and a bit watery. He had been in Wall Street eight or ten years, and he overworked his nerves every day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Stock Exchange; also from 5 P.M. to midnight at the café of a big up-town hotel, where Wall Street men gathered to talk shop. His system craved stimulants; gambling and liquor were the strongest he knew.
When, after three years, the firm expired by limitation, Colonel Thornton withdrew. He had had enough of Hayward’s plunging. To be sure, Sally had become a shrewd “trader,” and he had made $75,000 during the big bull boom; but he was at heart a “trader,” which is to say, a mere gambler in stocks, and not a desirable commission man.
But Sally, flushed with success on the bull side, did not worry when Thornton refused to continue the partnership. The slogan was “Buy A. O. T. It’s sure to go up!” the initial standing for Any Old Thing! The most prosperous period in the industrial and commercial history of the United States begot an epidemic of speculative madness such as was never before known, and probably never again will be. Everybody had money in abundance, and the desire for speculation in superabundance. Sally formed a new firm immediately—Hayward & Co.—with his cashier as partner.
IV.
All mundane things have an end, even bull markets and bear markets. The bull market saw Hayward & Co. doing a good business, as did everybody else in Wall Street. It ended, and the firm’s customers, after a few bad “slumps” in prices, were admonished to turn bears in order to recoup their losses. Bears believe prices are too high and should go lower; bulls, optimists, believe the opposite. The public can’t sell stocks “short” any more than the average man is left-handed. These customers were no exception, so they did nothing.
Hayward had “overstayed” the bull market, though not disastrously; that is, he was in error regarding the extent and duration of the upward movement of prices. He proceeded to fall into a similar error on the bear, or downward, side. The market had been extremely dull following what the financial writers called a “severe decline,” but which meant the loss of millions of dollars by speculators. A panic had been narrowly averted by a timely combination of “powerful interests,” after which the market became professional. In the absence of complaisant lambs, the financial cannibals known as “room traders” and “pikers” tried to “scalp eighths” out of each other for weeks—to take advantage of fractional fluctuations instead of waiting for big movements. Hayward’s customers, like everybody else’s customers, were not speculating. So he used their money to protect his own speculations. Office expenses were numerous and heavy, and commissions few and light.
Hayward was very bearish. He had sold stocks, sharing the belief of the majority of his fellows, that the lowest prices had not been reached. As a result he was heavily “short,” and he could not “cover” at a profit, because prices had advanced very slowly, but very steadily.
One day a big gambler in Chicago, bolder or keener than his Eastern brethren, thought the time was ripe for a “bull” or upward movement in general, and particularly in Consolidated Steel Rod Company’s stock. He was the chairman of the board of directors. Mr. William G. Dorr decided upon a plan whereby the stock would be made attractive to that class of speculative investors, so to speak, who liked to buy stocks making generous disbursements of profits to their holders. Mr. Dorr’s plan was kept a secret. The first step consisted of sending in large buying orders, handled by prominent brokers, and synchronously the publication, in the daily press, of various items, all reciting the wonderful prosperity of the Consolidated Steel Rod Company and its phenomenal earnings; also the unutterable cheapness of the stock at the prevailing price. Mr. Dorr and associates, of course, had previously taken advantage of the big “slump” or fall in values to buy back at 35 the same stock they had sold to the public some weeks before at 70. Having acquired this cheap stock, they “manipulated”—by means of further purchase—the price so that they could sell out at a profit.
It so happened, however, that once before dividend rumors about “Con. Steel Rod” had been disseminated, with the connivance of Dorr, and they had not come true, to the great detriment of credulous buyers and the greater profit of the insiders, who were “short” of the stock “up to their necks”—a typical bit of stock-jobbing whereat other and more artistic stock-jobbers had expressed the greatest indignation. Instead of putting the stock on a dividend-paying basis, the directors had decided—at the last hour—that it would not be conservative to do so, whereupon the stock had “broken” seventeen points. The lambs lost hundreds of thousands of dollars; the insiders gained as much. It was a “nice turn.”
Hayward remembered this, and when the stock, after several days of conspicuous activity and steady advances, rose to 52, he promptly sold “short” 5,000 shares—believing that the barefaced manipulation would not raise the stock much above that figure, and that before long it must decline. Only a month previously it had sold at 35 and nobody wanted any of it. He was all the more decided in his opinion that the “top” had been reached by prices, because Mr. Dorr, in a Chicago paper, had stated that the stockholders would probably receive an entire year’s dividend at one fell swoop by reason of the unexampled prosperity in the steel rod trade. Such an action was unprecedented. It had been talked about at various times in connection with other stocks, but it had never come true. Why should it come true in this instance?
Hayward, familiar with Dorr’s record, promptly “coppered” his “tip” to buy, banking on Dorr’s consistent mendacity. But Mr. William G. Dorr, shrewdest and boldest of all Western stock gamblers, fooled everybody—he actually told the truth. That week the directors did exactly as he had predicted. When a speculator of his calibre lies he fools only one half—the foolish half—of the Street. When he tells the truth he deceives everybody. Before Wall Street could recover from the shock the price of the stock was up 5 points, which meant that Hayward was out $25,000 on that deal alone. But, in addition, the general list was carried upward sympathetically. The semi-paralyzed bulls regained confidence as they saw the successful outcome of the Chicago gambler’s manœuvres in Consolidated Steel Rod. Money rates and bear hopes fell; stock values and bull courage rose! Hayward began “covering” Steel Rod. He “bought in” 5,000 shares, and after he finished he had lost $26,750 by the deal. He was still “short” about 12,000 shares of other stocks, on which his “paper” losses, at the last quoted prices, were over $35,000; but if he tried to buy back such a large amount of stock in a market so sensitive to any kind of bull impetus, he would send prices upward in a jiffy, increasing his own losses very materially.
He went to his office that morning in a tremor. He consulted the cashier, and found he had only $52,000 at the bank, of which two thirds belonged to his customers. He was already, morally speaking, an embezzler. He was ruined if he didn’t cover, and he was ruined if he did. His “seat” on the Stock Exchange was worth possibly $40,000, not a cent more; and as he personally owed his out-of-town correspondents nearly $38,000, he could not avoid being hopelessly ruined. Moreover, his bankruptcy would not be an “honest” failure, for, as he told himself bitterly, after the harm was done, “I had no business to speculate on my own hook with other people’s money.”
He had felt it rather than had seen it coming, for, gambler-like, he had closed his eyes and had buried his head in the sand of hope, trusting in luck to protect him from punishment. But now he was face to face with the question that every gambler dreads: “If I stood to lose all, how desperate a risk would I take in order to get it back?” The answer is usually so appallingly thief-like that the numerous Haywards of the Stock Exchange and the Board of Trade forthwith stop thinking with a suddenness that does credit to the remnants of their honesty. But it haunts them, does the ominous question and the commenced but unfinished answer.
As he left his office to go to the “Board Room” he put to himself the fateful query. But he would not let himself answer it until he had stopped at “Fred’s,” the official barroom of the Stock Exchange, and had taken a stiff drink of raw whiskey. Then the answer came.
He was ruined anyhow. If he failed without further ado, that is, without increasing his liabilities, he would be cursed by twenty-five of his customers and by fifteen of his fellow-brokers who were “lending” stocks to him. But if he made one last desperate effort, he might pull out of the hole; or, at the worst, why, the number of cursing customers would remain the same, but the fellow-brokers would rise to twenty or thirty.
He took another stiff drink. The market had become undoubtedly a bull market. The bears had been fighting the advance, and there still remained a stubborn short interest in certain stocks, as, for example, in American Sugar Company stock. Now if that short interest could be stampeded it might mean an eight or ten-point advance. If he bought 10,000 or 15,000 shares and sold them at an average profit of four or five points, he would put off the disaster, and if he made ten points he would be a great operator. He had, to be sure, no business to buy even 1,000 shares of Sugar; but then he had no business to be on the verge of bankruptcy.
The liquor was potent. Sally said to himself, aggrievedly: “I might as well be hung for a flock as for one measly old mutton.”
He walked a trifle unsteadily from “Fred’s” across the narrow asphalted New Street to the Stock Exchange. He paused at the entrance. There was no escape. Unless he could make a lucky strike, he would fail ignominiously.
“Pike’s Peak or bust!” he muttered to himself, and walked into the big room.
“Good-morning, Mr. Hayward,” said the door-keeper. Hayward nodded absently, caught himself repeating, “Pike’s Peak or bust!” and walked straight toward the Sugar post.
He began to bid for stock. One thousand shares at 116; he got it. Another thousand; it was forthcoming at 116⅛. A third thousand; somebody was glad to sell it at 116½. So far, so bad. Then he bid 117 for 2,500 shares, and it was promptly sold. But when he bid “117 for any part of 5,000!” the crowd hesitated; the brokers were not altogether sure Hayward was “good for it”; his ability to pay for the stock was not undoubted. So Sally, taking advantage of the hesitation, bid 117¼ and 117½ for 5,000 Sugar, at which price “Billy” Thatcher, a two-dollar broker, sold it to him. It made 10,500 shares Hayward had bought, and the stock had risen only 1½ points. The shorts were not frightened a wee bit. But Sally was. He rushed out of the crowd to his telephone and made a pretence of “reporting” the transactions to his office, as he would have done had they been bona fide purchases. He was followed by a hundred sharply curious—and curiously sharp—eyes. They saw him hold the telephone receiver to his ear with an expression of great interest, as if he were listening to an important message. But the only message he heard was that of his heart-beats, that seemed to say, almost articulately: “You have played and you have lost; you have played and you have lost. Therefore, you are that much worse off than before. You must play again—and not lose!”
He left his telephone and rushed back to the Sugar crowd. He was less excited, less like a drunken man; his face was no longer flushed, but pale. And anon there flashed upon him, as if in candent letters, the words Pike’s Peak or bust! But Pike’s Peak glowed dully, feebly, while the alternative was of a lurid splendor. And he blinked his eyes and made a curious impatient motion with his hand, as one waves away an annoying insect.
He gave an order for 5,000 Sugar to his friend, Newton Hartley.
“Is this for yourself, Sally?” asked Hartley.
“No. It’s for one of the biggest men in the Street, Newt. It’s all right. Absolutely O.K.”
And thus reassured, Hartley bought the stock. The price was 118. The seller would hold Hartley responsible for the purchase money if Hayward “laid down”—refused to pay.
Sally wiped his forehead twice, quite unnecessarily. The shorts were not stampeding. Any attempt to sell out the 15,000 shares he had bought would result only in depressing the price, five points at least. It was worse than bad, the outlook for him.
He gave another order to buy 5,000 shares to “Billy” Lansing, an old and reliable two-dollar broker, but Lansing declined it. He tried another, but the order was not accepted. They mistrusted him; but he could not even bluster, for they excused themselves on the ground of having important orders elsewhere. So he had recourse to another personal friend—J. G. Thompson.
“Joe, buy 5,000 Sugar.”
“Are you sober?” said Thompson, seriously.
“See for yourself,” answered Sally, laughingly. He had nerve. “Old man, I’ve got a very big order from one of the biggest men in the Street. Some important developments are going on.”
“Sally, are you sure you’ve got an order from some one else?” asked the unconvinced broker. His incredulity was obviously in the nature of an insult, but it was pardonable, for there was too much at stake.
“Joe, come over to the office and I’ll show you—Really, I can’t tell you. But I can advise you, as a friend, to buy Sugar for all you are worth.” And as he uttered the lie he looked straight into Thompson’s eyes.
“Hayward, are you sure? Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?” He wanted the commission of $100, but he did not feel certain of his friend.
“Oh, hell, no. I’ve got a lot more to buy. It’s all right. Go ahead, Joe.”
And Joe went ahead. He bought the 5,000 shares. The stock rose to 119½, and Hayward, warned by his experience with Hartley and Thompson, did not ask either friend or foe to buy another 5,000 shares for him. What he did was to distribute buying orders for 10,000 shares in lots of 500. Brokers now accepted his orders, for they were not so large as to be dangerous. And the stock rose to 122¾. A few shorts were frightened. He might win out after all; he might make Pike’s Peak. He began to bid up the stock. He even bought “cash” stock, that is, stock for which he paid cash, had to pay cash outright, receiving the certificates forthwith, presumably to hand over to some investor of millions. Everybody on the “floor” was talking about Hayward. The entire market had risen in sympathy with Sugar.
But at 124 it seemed as if the entire capital stock was for sale. He ceased buying. He had accumulated 38,000 shares. To pay for the stock necessitated about six and one-half millions! But if he could unload on an average of only 122 he might “come out even” in his other troubles.
He gave an order to sell 10,000 shares to a broker to whom he had always been a good friend. It was a fatal mistake. The broker, Louis W. Wechsler, had previously sold 1,000 shares to Hayward for “cash” at 122. He suspected what was coming, and declining the order, he himself went to Hayward’s office and asked for a check. The cashier sought to put him off with excuses, and Wechsler now being certain of the true state of affairs, returned to the Board and began to sell Sugar short for his own account. If a crash came he would make instead of losing it. Hayward was sure to be ruined, and Wechsler told himself sophistically that he was only profiting by the inevitable. In the meantime Sally had sold the 10,000 shares through another broker, and the price had declined to 121¾. But Wechsler’s 5,000 shares put it down to 120½. And somebody else sold more, and the shorts recovered from their fright, and the fatal hour was approaching when Hayward would have to settle. Pike’s Peak or bust! He did, indeed, need a veritable Pike’s Peak of dollars to pay for the 28,000 Sugar he had on hand. So he busted.
He threw up his hands. He acknowledged defeat to himself. The tension was over. He was no longer excited, but cool, almost cynical. On one of the little slips of paper on which brokers jot down memoranda of their transactions he scribbled a message in lead pencil. It was his last official lie, and would cost Hartley and Thompson and other friends, as well as his customers, many thousands of dollars. It was as follows:
“Owing to the refusal of their bank to extend the usual facilities to them, Hayward & Co. are compelled to announce their suspension.”
“Boy!” he yelled. And he gave the bit of paper to one of the Exchange messenger boys in gray. “Take this to the Chairman.”
And he walked slowly, almost swaggeringly, out of the New York Stock Exchange—for the last time—as the Chairman pounded with his gavel until the usual crowd gathered about the rostrum, and listened to the announcement of the failure of “Sally” Hayward, who began as a nice little telephone-boy and ended as a stock-gambler.