The third man was Joshua Wolff. He was probably the best know of all the traders. For twenty years everybody had know him as one of the plungers on the floor. In bidding up stocks or offering them down he had few equals, for ten or twenty thousand shares meant no more to him than two or three hundred. Before I came to New York I had heard of him as a plunger. He was then trailing with a sporting coterie that played a no limit game, whether on the race track or in the stock market.
They used to accuse him of being nothing but a gambler, but he had real ability and a strongly developed aptitude for the speculative game. At the same time his reputed indifference to highbrow pursuits made him the hero of numberless anecdotes. One of the most highly circulated of the yarns was that Joshua was a guest at what he called a swell dinner and by some oversight of the hostess several of the other guests began to discuss literature before they could be stopped.
A girl who sat next to Josh and had not heard him use his mouth except for masticating purposes, turned to him and looking anxious to hear the great financier’s opinion asked him, “Oh, Mr. Wolff, what do you think of Balzac?”
Josh politely ceased to masticate, swallowed and answered, “I never trade in them Curb stocks!”
Such were the three largest individual holders of Consolidated Stove. When they came over to see me I told them that if they formed a syndicate to put up some cash and gave me a call on their stock at a little above the market I would do what I could to make a market. They promptly asked me how much money would be required.
I answered, “You’ve had that stock a long time and you can’t do a thing with it. Between the three of you you’ve got two hundred thousand shares, and you know very well that you haven’t the slightest chance of getting rid of it unless you make a market for it. It’s got be some market to absorb what you’ve got to give it, and it will be wise to have enough cash to pay for whatever stock it may be necessary to buy at first. It’s no use to begin and then have to stop because there isn’t enough money. I suggest that you form a syndicate and raise six millions in cash. Then give the syndicate a call on your two hundred thousand shares at 40 and put all your stock in escrow. If everything goes well you chaps will get rid of your dead pet and the syndicate will make some money.”
As I told you before, there had been all sorts of rumours about my stock-market winnings. I suppose that helped, for nothing succeeds like success. At all events, I didn’t have to do much explaining to these chaps. They knew exactly how far they’d get if they tried to play a lone hand. They thought mine was a good plan. When they went away they said they would form the syndicate at once.
They didn’t have much trouble in inducing a lot of their friends to join them. I suppose they spoke with more assurance than I had of the syndicate’s profits. From all I heard they really believed it, so theirs were no conscienceless tips. At all events the syndicate was formed in a couple of days. Kane, Gordon and Wolff gave calls on the two hundred thousand shares at 40 and I saw to it that the stock itself was put in escrow, so that none of it would come out on the market if I should put up the price. I had to protect myself. More than one promising deal has failed to pan out as expected because the members of the pool or clique failed to keep faith with one another. Dog has no foolish prejudices against eating dog in Wall Street. At the time the second American Steel and Wire Company was brought out the insiders accused one another of breach of faith and trying to unload. There had been a gentlemen’s agreement between John W. Gates and his pals and the Seligmans and their banking associates. Well, I heard somebody in a broker’s office reciting this quatrain, which was said to have been composed by John W. Gates:
The tarantula jumped on the centipede’s back
And chortled with ghoulish glee:
“I’ll poison this murderous son of a gun.
If I don’t he’ll poison me!”
Mind you, I do not mean for one moment to imply that any of my friends in Wall Street would even dream of double-crossing me in a stock deal. But on general principles it is just as well to provide for any and all contingencies. It’s plain sense.