DOWN WITH THE SULLIVAN TRUST COMPANY
By this time I was "all in" physically. I had a cyst, of fifteen years' growth, on the back of my head. It had become infected. I was threatened with blood-poisoning. I suffered much pain. I had been on the desert for nearly three years, without leaving it for a day. My associates insisted that I go to Los Angeles immediately for treatment and a rest. Believing that the trust company was secure, I made preparations to go. Before leaving I busied myself with the preparation of a dozen full-page reading-matter advertisements on Sullivan properties, which the Salt Lake Tribune and Salt Lake Herald had contracted to publish in their New Year's Day editions. These are an annual feature of those newspapers. I decided to "make" Salt Lake on my return trip from Los Angeles and be there on New Year's Day with our mailing-list, to superintend the mailing of the papers to all stockholders in Sullivan properties. On account of the great value which we attached to the mailing-list, I would not trust anybody but myself with the job. I spent Christmas in Los Angeles and arrived in Salt Lake on New Year's Day, ready for work.
I was busy in the Salt Lake Herald office next day when affable Peter Grant, a partner of Mr. Sullivan, with whom Mr. Sullivan had at the outset divided his interest in the Sullivan Trust Company, walked in. I asked Mr. Grant, who had remained at the helm with Mr. Sullivan while I was away from Goldfield, about business. He assured me that the loan from the State Bank & Trust Company would not only be forthcoming, as needed, but that Cashier Lindsey had informed him that we could have $500,000 instead of $300,000 additional, if we actually had to have it, and that the bank would back us to the extent of a million in all, if necessary.
On calling next morning at the office of James A. Pollock & Company, our Salt Lake correspondents, I was astounded to learn that rumors had been telegraphed to them from San Francisco that our paper was being held up in Goldfield.
"That's nonsense!" said Mr. Grant. "Why, Lindsey has given me his word, and there can't be a question about it."
"Maybe he has 'laid down' on us," I said, "and that would be ——!"
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Grant. "I'll telegraph him that in addition to honoring our Goldfield paper with the money we have borrowed from him, he must wire $150,000 to our credit in San Francisco, and you and I can jump on the train to-day and go to San Francisco and support the market right on the ground. If those rumors have spread around San Francisco a lot of short-selling will take place and the market will need support."
I agreed.
So confident were Mr. Grant, James A. Pollock & Company, and I that everything was right with us that we gave and they accepted a big supporting order to be used on the San Francisco Stock Exchange during the succeeding day while Mr. Grant and I should be on the train to the Coast city.
We arrived in San Francisco late at night. A number of brokers met us and conveyed the news that the State Bank & Trust Company had "laid down" on us. In the meantime despatches to us from the cashier of the Sullivan Trust Company had piled up at the hotel. He explained the situation, which was this:
All the trains carrying drafts in the mail to Goldfield had been stalled by snowstorms two days before New Year's. The next day was Sunday. Monday was New Year's Day, a legal holiday. Thus five days' mail had accumulated, and on Tuesday the delayed drafts were presented, all in a bunch.
L. M. Sullivan, president of the trust company, who was supposed to be on deck at Goldfield, was in Tonopah, where he was reported to be in imminent danger of arrest on the charge that during a New Year's brawl he had nearly brained a chauffeur with a butt-end of a revolver.
The bank people became alarmed.
In requisitioning the $300,000 we had stated that we would call for it piecemeal, as had been our custom in the past. The five days' mail had piled up drafts totaling nearly the entire amount. I was absent from Goldfield. Mr. Grant was away, and so was Mr. Sullivan. Employees were running the business. Cashier Lindsey concluded that we were "overboard." On top of it all, Donald Mackenzie, the heaviest depositor of the State Bank & Trust Company, had that very morning drawn out a large sum, said to aggregate $400,000, and had it transferred to San Francisco. Our wires from Goldfield stated he had been frightened by rumors that the Sullivan Trust Company was in trouble and that the State Bank & Trust Company would be involved.
That settled it. The enterprise that I had built up from such a meager beginning into a $3,000,000 trust company crumbled in a heap and left us stranded on the financial shoals of an over-boomed mining camp.