The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York

by William Ingraham Russell

CHAPTER XXVI

AN IMPORTER AND DEALER

While during 1888 we were nominally brokers, a considerable portion of our business was actually in the nature of that of an importer and dealer. This position was really forced on us by circumstances beyond our control. To protect ourselves from loss in our sales for London account we had to take from time to time an interest in the market and this made us dealers. To complete our sales we were compelled to import the material and thus became importers.

With the opening of the year 1889 we found ourselves possessed of fairly large capital and a firmly established credit with bankers. These facts, combined with the best facilities for doing the business, decided us to eliminate the brokerage phase entirely, except in our transactions with our speculative clients. From that time on we bought and sold for our own account.

We had a very large trade with consumers throughout the country, and we knew we had but to say the word to increase this by calling back all the small buyers with whom we parted company in 1884. As brokers we did not care for that small trade, but as dealers it was an entirely different proposition.

Of course as soon as the New York dealers learned of our new departure they would give us sharp and active competition for the orders, but we felt so strong in our position we did not fear it.

We made no public announcement, but quietly bought the necessary spot stock in the cheapest market, and as soon as we were ready, when the orders came to us, filled them ourselves instead of passing them on to the dealers as heretofore.

Only a few days passed before the dealers, missing the orders they had been accustomed to receive through our hands, commenced to investigate. When questioned we told them frankly what we were doing. At first, argument was used to dissuade us from such a policy, but when we were told we had no right to the business I replied that we were not dealing in a patented article and I knew of no law to prevent us from trading as dealers if we so desired.

That ended the argument, and men who for years had been in close business intimacy and friendship with us, became our enemies.

I knew well what that meant. Henceforth I was to get my share of the personal animosity that in this trade superseded the spirit of fair competition.

Those men held up before the world as models of Christian piety, who never missed a church service, whose names appeared in the papers as subscribers to charitable and mission funds; those Sunday-school teachers who would not have in their homes on the Sabbath day a newspaper, who would not take a glass of wine at dinner because of the example to their boys, and yet in their efforts to injure a business rival never hesitated to break the Ninth Commandment—not in words, oh no, too cautious for that, nothing that one could put his finger on; but the shrug of the shoulder, the significant raising of the eye-brows, the insinuation, the little hint to unsettle confidence. Bah! on such Christianity.

And now those men were to train their guns on me.

I had been twenty years in the trade and knew how others had fared. I grant, in many cases, it was tit-for-tat, the man injured had done his best to injured others. With few exceptions the entire trade were "birds of a feather."

We had not long to wait for the first shot and it fell very flat, the honors in that engagement all being with us.

A broker had offered us a parcel for future delivery at a price he thought cheap and we accepted it. Later he called and said when he gave up our name as the buyer, the seller declined to confirm unless we would deposit with him, the seller, five thousand dollars as security.

This concern knew we were perfectly responsible, but took this method of discrediting us, expecting that the broker would help the matter on by gossiping through the trade about it.

We heard his story and then said to him, "Go back and say to your principal that we will not deposit with him one dollar; but if he will deposit with any trust company five thousand dollars, we will deposit twenty-five thousand against it."

The seller declined to deposit anything and the sale was cancelled. The broker did gossip about it, but as his account of the incident was correct, it added to our prestige.

Every now and then we would hear of something that one or another of our competitors had intimated to our discredit, but treating all such rumors with silent contempt, we kept up the even tenor of our way and closed the year with a profit of seventy-two thousand dollars.