“Do you include Casson and Pritchard in the cataclysm?”
Casson nodded slowly and suddenly commenced to weep.
“But we sold our rice——”
“I know we did—on ninety days. Now the people we have sold it to are wiped out and cannot pay for it. The damned Cubans are responsible. They deliberately wrecked the market. Overnight they made up their minds they had rice enough. The cargadores went on strike and refused to handle any more rice. The port of Havana is glutted with rice. It’s on every dock and on every barge. They jammed the docks with it and loaded all the barges and then quit. Now the rice is being rained on; the ships that brought it are lying under heavy demurrage because they cannot get discharged; the rice brokers and wholesalers have treacherously refused to accept delivery on bona fide orders because the Havana market broke immediately when some frightened owners of cargoes cut their prices in order to unload at any price. Panic, I tell you—worst rice panic imaginable. Rice was up to twenty-one cents and overnight it broke to five cents.”
Dan sat down. This was exactly what he had feared might happen. The war was ended, but profiteers, still hungry for exorbitant gains, had put the screws on rice, the staple food of Cuba. They had cornered the crop there, such as it was, and the crop that year had been meager. Then they had filled Havana harbor with ships loaded with Oriental rice and had steadily jacked the price up to the point of saturation. And then the Cubans, maddened at this brutal and perfectly legal form of brigandage, had sprung their coup and, overnight, had smashed their oppressors by the very simple method of refusing to handle longer the commodity which was so necessary to their existence. They knew they could get rice when they needed it, and get it at their price. These ships had brought rice to Havana; now that Havana would not accept it or handle it, where could another ready and highly profitable market be found? And would these ships, chafing at the delay, agree to go elsewhere with their cargoes, save at a prohibitive freight rate? Rice freights from the Orient would collapse now, and that collapse would be followed by a debacle in other lines.
In a flash Dan saw that the post-war slump had started—an economic avalanche, traveling swiftly toward bankruptcy and ruin. “I see,” he said quietly. “Beautiful work, beautiful. Three cheers for the Cubans. I didn’t think they were up to a brilliant stroke like that. And now you’re cussing them out, Mr. Casson, because they refused to let the rice bandits take the food out of their mouths. Well, you deserve this, Mr. Casson, but I’ll be hanged if I do. You dragged me into this, without my knowledge or consent—you damned, silly, egotistical, brainless idiot—Mrs. Casson, I forgot you were present. I crave your pardon for my rudeness and I shall not again offend. I—I—think—I—shall—sit down.”
He did, looking quite white and strained. His eyes burned like live coals. “Well, Mr. Casson,” he said presently, “suppose we start in at the beginning. To begin with, we had half a million bags of California rice stored in warehouses here and there, and you hypothecated the warehouse receipts and bought Philippine and Chinese rice. Well, we sold our rice in warehouse at a huge profit, half cash, balance in ninety days. How about Banning and Company, who bought it?”
“The chief clerk telephoned me today that they had filed a petition of voluntary bankruptcy. They must be cleaned out because Banning blew his brains out an hour after filing the petition. He had half a million dollars’ worth of life insurance, without an anti-suicide clause in it. His family will doubtless get that. I suppose he wanted to do the decent thing.”
“Well,” said Dan, “Banning and Company jarred us but they didn’t put us down. Lucky for us I sold that Shanghai rice, ex. steamer Chinook, for cash. You raved at my idiocy when I made an eight thousand dollars’ profit on that deal and accused me of throwing away a potential profit of a quarter of a million dollars. As a matter of fact, I threw away a potential loss of about a million dollars. We’ll take a loss of more than a dollar a bag on that million bags of California rice, however. I’ll tell ’em you’re a smart business man, Mr. Casson. Well, how about that eight thousand tons at Manila—the lot we sold to Katsuma and Company at the market, against sight draft with bill of lading attached, payable at the Philippine National Bank?”
“Our Manila agent cabled that the bank had refused to honor the documents. I called up Katsuma and tried to get him to do something about providing funds or a credit to meet that draft, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t——”