NIPISSING ON THE TOBOGGAN
The price of Nipissing tobogganed from $33 to under $6 with terrific speed. W. B. Thompson and his associates, who had unloaded their holdings on the way up, were reported to have taken advantage of the Beatty report and to have sold the market short on the way down, making another "clean-up" of millions. The stock hit a few hard spots on the descent, but when the wreckage was cleared away and the dead and wounded assembled, there wasn't hospital or morgue space to accommodate half of them. The final carnage and mutilation was shocking beyond description.
The public had once more been landed with the goods. It had eaten up Nipissing stock on a $43,000,000 valuation which broke to $7,000,000 or $8,000,000 within the space of a few days. This $35,000,000 slaughter represents only a fraction of the actual losses, for fabulous amounts were sacrificed in marginal accounts. The daily aggregate of open accounts in Nipissing during the months of keenest excitement probably averaged not less than five times the total capitalization. Actual losses were therefore far larger than would appear from a merely superficial calculation. The public contributed $75,000,000 to $100,000,000 to its Nipissing experience fund.
There has always been more or less mystery as to just what John Hays Hammond said orally to the Guggenheims to lead them into the crowning humiliation of their business career. It did not appear in his written and published report, for in that document is to be found a neat little hedge to the effect that "if" conditions as revealed to him were maintained, the values would be, etc., etc. That little "if" was the Hammond saving clause, although it did not save that $1,000,000-a-year job of his, about which some of his admirers have liked to talk in joyous chorus, nor did it save the public from massacre.
Another Nipissing mystery is the sustained professional and personal cordiality still existing between the eminent John Hays Hammond and the scarcely less eminent A. Chester Beatty. For a little while after Mr. Beatty had to turn down his chief their relations appeared to have been strained. But this was not for long. Mr. Beatty also severed connections with the Guggenheim pay-roll, and the two great engineers were soon again, and are now, on the best of terms.
On rainy days when the tickers drone along and there is no exciting news, evil-minded derelicts of the memorable Nipissing campaign are prone to figure how much a man might have made in the market with a foreknowledge of the two adverse reports and to figure on the sporting chances for a "double cross" that such a situation would hold.
Scandal mongers, too, who have watched closely the friendship which exists between W. B. Thompson and John Hays Hammond often ask unkindly what has cemented the bond between the two. Recently, when the Rocky Mountain Club needed a new club-house, Messrs. Hammond and Thompson subscribed an equal amount—a goodly sum it was—to build it.
They are seen much together in public and seem to have many tastes in common. Mr. Thompson, whose strangely fortunate campaign in Nipissing on the New York Curb was helped to a triumphant promotion climax by the Hammond report to the Guggenheims, bears Mr. Hammond no ill-will for that—and who would blame him for the kindly feeling?