I 'phoned our brokers and they reported that they had bought 5,000 shares of stock at $1.35 at the opening and had withdrawn support. "Too much stock was pressing for sale," they said.
"This is hell. You should not have permitted the market to break that way. Support the stock!" I said. "Buy 7,500 shares at the market!"
In a few moments this firm of brokers reported that they had rallied the market to $1.16. The recovery was only temporary, however. Another drive broke the stock to 60 cents.
Our brokers had bought 7,000 shares at from $1 to $1.16 and then stopped. The member of their firm who had been handling our orders throughout this campaign said the purchase of this fresh block of stock exhausted our cash balance on deposit with his firm. They had a number of drafts out for collection, attached to stocks sold to Western brokers, that had not yet been credited to us. There was also a big block of Coalition stock due us from them. This was the stock they had bought on our supporting orders. They refused, however, to consider either the drafts or the stocks as a credit.
We had cash on deposit and credit with a number of other brokers. I promptly telephoned several of them to buy large blocks of the stock at a limit of 95 cents. This was 35 points above the quotation that was given me. Not a single share was reported bought on these orders.
I jumped into a taxi and rode to the office of the brokers who had been handling our orders.
The situation was critical. I realized fully that a sharp break of this character in the market price of a stock that had been so widely exploited must prove shocking to investors. I feared that public confidence would be shattered completely.
"This is an outrage!" I protested. "Buy 5,000 shares at 95!" I tendered five $1,000-bills as payment in advance.
It was five minutes to twelve when I gave the order. At noon they reported that they had purchased 2,000 shares, for which I gave them the money. The market closed 95 bid for a "wagon load."
On the face of things it appeared that the market had rallied from 60 to 95 on the purchase of 2,000 shares. This was another convincer that there must somewhere be much that was rotten about the play.