Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

Broken in health, and looking weary and haggard, he tried to sell, and this set every one of his followers selling like a flock of sheep, and prices tumbled from bad to worse under the general rush to realize. Fort Wayne fell at the morning session of the board on that fatal Monday of the Morse panic, on the 18th of April, 1864, from 153 to 119. Then Morse left the room for the last time, and, going to his office, said to his partner, “The game is up!” Reading had also fallen that morning nineteen per cent.; Pittsburg, seventeen; Hudson River, twenty-three; and all other active stocks about as much.

This monetary tornado, that found Morse overloaded with stocks, there and then swept him out of the Stock Exchange, for, knowing that he was hopelessly ruined, he wrote an announcement of the suspension of Morse & Co., and sent it to the board a few minutes after he had left it. The failure proved a very bad one, and the firm was unable to settle or resume. Morse was no longer the leader of Wall Street, and many of his customers, in a semifrantic condition, rushed in upon him and denounced him bitterly. The king had been dethroned, never to regain his crown, nor ever to get a fresh start.

Pandemonium reigned during the rest of the day, and at the Evening Exchange uptown at night Speculation had been so widespread, and Morse had been so implicitly trusted as a leader, that the collapse ruined thousands, including many women, and a raving, cursing mob crowded into the Evening Exchange and overflowed into the Fifth Avenue Hotel. There was a night of horror in hundreds of homes. Morse was upbraided and cursed, and many of his customers, as is usual when they lose their money in a broker’s office, blamed him for their losses.

Then for a year Morse disappeared. When he returned he looked more haggard than ever, and he died poor soon afterwards. No one ever accused Morse of being dishonest, therefore his Waterloo defeat gained him widespread sympathy. Few Wall Street magnates had more friends than Anthony W. Morse from start to finish of his career.

John M. Tobin, who had been a ferry gatekeeper for Commodore Vanderbilt on Staten Island, figured largely as a speculator in the gold room, and also as a stock operator, during the two years of the Morse campaign, and saw many ups and downs. He began to loom up still more after Morse sank below the horizon in 1864. He was known to be the agent of Commodore Vanderbilt in cornering Harlem stock, and shone in Vanderbilt’s reflected light, although a large operator on his own account.

The Harlem “corner” was a memorable event. Through the winter of 1863-64 the stock had been selling at about 60, and Vanderbilt was a director and large stockholder, and, moreover, determined to make what he called “a big thing” out of it. The road was, however, generally considered of little account except for carrying milk. So, in connection with his street-railway projects for improving its value, he engineered the stock up to 117. He counted upon getting a charter from the Common Council; but its members tricked him, and after passing a favorable resolution they sold the stock “short” and then rescinded the resolution, and it fell to 72. So they made money at his expense.

JOHN D. ARCHBOLD.

He then applied to the Legislature at Albany for a Harlem franchise to lay rails in Broadway; and the legislators saw there was room for stock speculation in this. They made a favorable report on a bill granting Vanderbilt’s application, and on this Harlem stock rose sharply to 150. Then they and their friends, including the New York Common Councilmen, sold it short largely, thinking they had a sure thing; and Tobin bought for Vanderbilt all that was offered. On March 25, 1864, they voted, by prearrangement, against the bill, and Harlem stock fell to 101.

The sellers of Harlem rejoiced, for they had large profits on paper; but Tobin still continued to buy the stock, and under his purchases it rapidly recovered. The commodore was determined to punish them. Within ten days Harlem was up to 150 again. A week later it touched 185, and thereafter, for ten days, fluctuated between 175 and 200. Daniel Drew sold calls on it for 30,000 shares, thinking it could not stay up long, and the professional speculators, both in and out of the Stock Exchange, took a hand in selling it “short” on the same theory. The Morse panic swept over it in April, but still it stood up, like a pyramid in the desert, and Tobin still continued buying for Vanderbilt.