William Mellen approached the ticker, and passed the tape through his fingers with a deftness that betrayed practice.
“I think you are right,” he said softly. “Green River general 4s, 87!”
“I should think the insurance companies—” began George Mellen.
“Richard has already sold them all they can take,” returned his brother kindly, as though he were anxious to please brother George.
“Also the savings-banks, and about three hundred estates,” added the president, with a slight touch of pride.
“I’m going to tell Freer, Morrison, Stuyvesant, and one or two others,” announced George Mellen with a trace of defiance. He anticipated opposition, but the richest man in the world said:
“I should tell them this much only: That for certain reasons you cannot divulge, you are selling out your bonds, and that I’ve already sold mine.”
“The last is unnecessary. They’d guess it without my telling them,” and George Mel-len left the room abruptly. Mr. Dawson began to write selling orders, copying the names of the bonds from the list before him. Then he summoned his trusty brokers and bond specialists, and gave them the orders, exhorting them to use caution; also much haste.
Under the new selling pressure the market acted crazily. The inexplicable declines in bond prices of that memorable week had brought into Wall Street deluded “bargain hunters,” who bought the securities at “ridiculously low figures,” but, values went still lower, until the bonds were so very cheap that they were dear—too dear for people to buy who did not know why they should be so cheap. Therefore, the speculators in bonds, who had bought, now sold at a loss, thereby adding to the general uncertainty. But as some sold, others bought, and quotations of gilt-edged issues, usually so staid and slow of movement, fluctuated as violently as, in other times, the manipulated and highly speculative stocks had been wont to do. On the whole, the public bought more bonds than it sold, and sold more stocks than it bought. Yet, bonds fell, and fell, and stocks rose and rose. And there still remained the pet investments of George B. Mellen’s intimate friends; men who, accustomed to risking much on the turn of the wheel of the ticker, yet kept a portion of their fortune safe beyond peradventure by buying bonds which were unassailable by demagogues and socialistic legislatures, unaffected by hard times or strikes, or crop failures; absolutely safe just so long as the United States remained a nation of Americans—or, until such time as aërial navigation supplanted steam railroads. Also, so long as the gold basis endured, and no longer!
Grinnell had stopped outside and spoken to the assistant cashier.