Wall street proper,—street with a small s,—is a thoroughfare. Wall Street in another way of speaking,—street with a big S,—is a district, the money district, eight blocks deep by three blocks wide by anything from five to thirty stories high. It is bounded on the north by jewelry, on the northeast by leather, on the east by sugar and coffee, on the south by cotton, on the southwest by shipping and on the west by Greek lace, ship chandlery and Trinity churchyard. It grew that way. The Wall Street station of the elevated railroad is at Rector Street, and Rector Street is a hand-wide thoroughfare running uphill to Broadway under the south wall of Trinity graveyard. When you are half way up you begin to see over the top of the wall, rising to it gradually, and the first two things you see are the tombstones of Robert Fulton and Alexander Hamilton. A few steps more and you are in Broadway. Rector Street ends there.
Trinity church is on the west side of Broadway, thirty paces to your left. Standing with your back to Trinity church door you look straight down Wall street, with a little s. All of this is Wall Street with a big S. You are in the midst of it.
If it is nine-thirty or a quarter to ten you may see here and there in the preoccupied throng groups of three bearing wealth,—in each case two men with a box carried between them and a third walking close behind with one hand resting lightly upon something in his outer pocket. These are the trusted clerks of big banking and brokerage houses. They go each morning to fetch the strong box from one of the great Wall Street safety deposit vaults. At four o’clock they take it back for the night. The third man walking behind is probably unnecessary. If the box were not too heavy one man unarmed might bear it safely to and fro. Banditry,—that is to say, taking by force,—is here unknown. There is a legend to account for this fact. It is that the police keep a dead line around the money district which thieves dare not cross. Every crook in the world is supposed to know and respect the sacred taboo. It may be so, more or less. One need not believe it whole. A much more probable explanation is what any highwayman knows. He might make off with a dozen of those strong boxes and then be no richer than he was before. They contain no money at all, but stocks and bonds, numbered and registered, which represent wealth reduced to an impalpable, theft-proof form. A railroad may lie in one of those boxes. But if you ran away with the box you would have neither the railroad nor anything you could turn into cash. The lost stock and bond certificates would be cancelled and new ones issued in their place; and after that anyone who tried to sell one of the stolen certificates would be instantly arrested.
I walked a little way into Wall Street, somewhat in awe of it, almost expecting to be noticed and challenged for trespassing. The atmosphere was strange and inhospitable and the language unknown. Two men were quarreling excitedly, one standing on the edge of the sidewalk, the other down on the pavement. One seemed to be denouncing the government for letting the country go bankrupt.
“It is busted,” he shrieked. “The United States Treasury is busted.”
The other at the same time spoke of the color, the shape, the bowels and religion of men who were exporting gold to Europe. I could make nothing of it whatever. Nobody else so much as glanced at them in passing. Everybody seemed absent, oblivious and self-involved. When two acquaintances met, or collided, there was a start of recognition between them, as if they had first to recall themselves from afar. Incessantly from within a great red brick building came a sound of b-o-o-ing, cavernous and despairing. This place was the Stock Exchange and the noise was that which brokers and speculators make when prices are falling.
A few steps further down the street a dray stood backed against the curb, receiving over its tailboard some kind of very heavy freight. “Ickelheimer & Company—Bullion and Foreign Exchange,” was the legend on the window; and what the men were bringing forth and loading on the dray was pure silver, in pigs so large that two strong men could carry only one. The work went on unguarded. People passed as if they didn’t see it. Precious money metal flung around like pig iron! The sight depressed me. I walked slowly back to Broadway feeling dazed and apprehensive.
No. 130 Broadway was an office building. The executive offices of the Great Midwestern Railroad occupied the entire sixth floor. Room 607, small and dim, without windows, was the general entrance where people asked and waited. High-backed wooden benches stood against the walls. The doors opening out of it were ground glass from the waist up, lettered in black. The one to the left was lettered, “President,” the one straight ahead, “Vice President-Secretary,” and the one to the right, “Private.” In one corner of this room, at a very tiny desk, sat a boy reading a book. He was just turning a page and couldn’t look up until he had carried over; but he held out his hand with a pencil and a small writing pad together, meaning that I should write my name, whom I wished to see and why. I gave it back to him with my name and nothing more.
“Your business, please,” he said, holding it out to me again.
I let it to him tactfully that my business was private. If necessary, I could explain it to the president’s secretary. Might I see his secretary first?