He had come to Wall Street to see what he could do, and finding Pacific Mail stock down to the 40’s in 1871, he began to bull it with a vigor that excited some wonder; and the wonder grew when it was found that he had secured stock and proxies enough to elect his own board of directors. He elected them and himself by a vote of 118,000 shares, and became Commodore Stockwell at a bound. His wish was law to his codirectors, and the irreverent called it a dummy board.
With the assets of the Pacific Mail Company under his control, and acting for it, he soon managed to get control, and become president, of the Panama Railway Company. He began, on this acquisition of the Pacific Mail Company, to bull Pacific Mail stock anew by making splendid promises. In October, 1872, while the company’s steamers were foundering and burning with alarming frequency, he claimed that it had increased its property by large purchases, and was earning more than eleven per cent. a year in excess of the Government subsidy. This, he said, would enable it to pay twelve per cent. on its capital stock from January 1, 1872. Then he asked for authority from the Legislature at Albany to reduce its capital stock from twenty millions to ten, which was granted; but the company never availed itself of this authority, and to this day its capital remains at twenty millions.
The stock, that had been as low as 40, responded to his “bull” statements and manipulation, for Wall Street saw that the intention was at least to put the stock up. It rose, after a good deal of see-sawing, to about 107, and Commodore Stockwell was the sensation of the time in Wall Street. He became, like Leonard W. Jerome, what was called a “big swell.” He had one of the largest houses in Madison Avenue and one of the showiest turnouts in the city, and yet he had been commodore for less than a year.
He did not confine himself to Pacific Mail and the other interests mentioned, but took hold of that railway cripple, Boston, Hartford and Erie, and bought 30,000 shares of Atlantic and Pacific Railway preferred at 25, a stock of uncertain legal status, although the certificates had been printed by the company, because there was no legal authority for its issue. But this did not prevent the stock from being made active for a short time in Wall Street at prices a good deal above cost.
Before long, however, it became discredited, and so also did Boston, Hartford and Erie stock, while Pacific Mail suffered under fresh losses and reduced earnings. The stocks of the three companies were vigorously attacked by the bears and they all went down together, Stockwell being unable to support them, and all that he had made was lost. This state of things involved him in a snarl about the 27,000 shares of the Pacific Mail Company’s treasury stock, and a compromise was the result, by which he is said to have given his note to the Pacific Mail Company for $1,140,000, indorsed by the Howe Sewing Machine Company.
Then, at the next election, he ceased to be its president, and a new board of directors was elected. He was also dropped from the Panama Railroad directorate and the Atlantic and Pacific board. He had lost his money and his prestige, and there were none so poor as to do him reverence. He led a precarious existence as a small speculator afterwards, and, not long before his death, failed for a small amount as a member of the Consolidated Exchange.
He was a man of popular manners, and, in describing his change of fortune, he humorously remarked: “When I first came into Wall Street, it was asked, ‘Who is that man Stockwell?’ But I was respectfully spoken of as ‘Mr. Stockwell’ after I had made a good deal of money bulling Pacific Mail; and when I was elected president of Pacific Mail, I was styled ‘Commodore Stockwell’ and ‘a Wall Street leader,’ and a great man generally. But when Pacific Mail broke, and broke me, I became ‘That red-headed cuss Stockwell.’” Thus are the ups and downs of Wall Street, and Wall Street opinion, illustrated in real life.
Of all the great operators of Wall Street, however, Daniel Drew furnishes the most remarkable instance of immense and long-continued success, followed by utter failure and hopeless bankruptcy. His early success as a stock speculator was all the more surprising because he was an illiterate man, who had barely learned to read and to write enough to be able to sign his own name in a sprawling, illegible hand.
He had been a cattle drover, and after that the keeper of the Bull’s Head Tavern, at the New York Cattle Yards, and was without any experience of banking or Stock Exchange affairs when he first came into Wall Street; and he never even read a newspaper. But he succeeded in making money from the start, and then joined others in putting capital into Hudson River steamboats; and his investments in these became large and proved very profitable, although he knew nothing about running steamers himself.
His shrewdness enabled him to make millions by stock speculation, and before long, without knowing anything of the stock brokerage business except as a customer, he entered into a Stock Exchange partnership, his firm being Drew & Robinson. For many years this house was prosperous and prominent, and Drew, after it was dissolved, and when at the summit of his prosperity, said to a friend who rated him at twenty millions, “I guess sixteen will cover it.”