Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

Not until the last course was removed, the Burgundy on the table, the cigars lighted, and the waiter excused from further attendance, did the great capitalists approach the real object of their meeting. Mr. Claybank observed that they might need writing materials, and, stepping to Morning’s desk, he seated himself thereat, and pulled what he supposed to be a bell cord that would summon a waiter. No waiter appeared in answer to the supposed summons, and Claybank, taking a notebook and pencil from his pocket, remarked that they would serve his purpose.

These three gentlemen had dined well, and should have been in a pleasant frame of mind toward the world, for good dinners are, or ought to be, humanizing in their tendencies. Yet there are natures which will remain unaffected even by terrapins, Maryland style, and roasted canvas-back duck, assimilated with the aid of Lafitte and Pommery Sec., and no tigers crouching in the jungle were ever more merciless and conscienceless in their rapacity than these three black-coated capitalists.

Mr. Arnold Claybank was the leading spirit of the conclave. His wealth was popularly estimated at $100,000,000. He had inherited none of it. At thirty-five years of age he was a dry goods merchant in an interior city in Ohio, possessed of less than $100,000. During his frequent visits to New York to purchase goods he was in the habit of “taking a flyer” in the stock market. These flyers proved so continuously successful, and added so largely to his capital, that in a few years he closed out his dry goods business, removed permanently to the metropolis, bought a seat in the stock board, and soon became known as one of the boldest and shrewdest operators in the street.

He was rapid and usually accurate in judgment, and always possessed of the courage of his convictions. He was as cunning as the gray fox, to which he was often likened. He was suave in manner but merciless in the execution of his plans. He was identified in the public mind with several of the boldest and most unscrupulous operations in the history of Wall Street, and his millions had steadily and rapidly increased, until now, at sixty years of age, he was one of the acknowledged kings of New York finance.

Isaiah Wolf was, as his name indicated, of Hebrew origin. He was about the same age as Claybank, and had many of the qualities of that gentleman, lacking, however, his courage and his quickness of comprehension and movement. He was a gambler by birth, education, and instinct, and a gambler who never failed to use all advantages possible.

Thirty years before he had been a clothing merchant and dealer in city, county, and legislative warrants at Portland, Oregon. He furnished the impecunious legislators, when they came down from the mountain counties, with an outfit of clothing; he discounted their salaries at three per cent per month; he was usually the custodian of the lobby funds, and he could always introduce senator or assemblyman to a quiet game of “draw,” where, whenever a huge “pot” was in dispute, Isaiah could usually be found safely entrenched behind the winning hand.

When the Comstock mines began to yield their great output of silver in 1875–77, the Wolf Brothers located in San Francisco, made their homes on Pine and California Streets, and gambled in mining stocks from the vantage-ground of secret knowledge, for in every mine were one or more miners under pay, not only from the mining company, but from Isaiah Wolf. In 1879, when the transactions in the stock board of San Francisco had dwindled to a tithe of their former magnitude, and when the sand-lot agitators succeeded in grafting their ideas of finance and taxation upon the organic law of California, Isaiah Wolf and his brother Emanuel gathered their assets together and joined the exodus of millionaires. In New York City they opened a bankers’ and brokers’ office, and were now accounted as jointly the possessors of $80,000,000, the management of which was left almost exclusively to Isaiah.

John Gray was an insignificant-looking old man of seventy. From his unkempt beard, watery eyes, shrinking manner, and small stature, he might have been taken for a congressional doorkeeper who had seen better days. In truth, there was, under his ignoble exterior, one of the broadest, wiliest, and best-informed minds in America. He was the acknowledged leader of Wall Street in ability and resources. His wealth was estimated at quite $150,000,000, and it had been created by himself in about forty-five years.

He began life as a Vermont peddler, but at the age of twenty-five carried his New England education, his capacity for calculation, his retentive memory, his frugal habits, and his tireless energy into New York City, where he began as porter and messenger in the office of a broker. He soon learned the history and methods of the principal operators of the Wall Street of that day, and his savings were shrewdly, quietly, and boldly invested on “points” which he picked up while delivering messages or awaiting replies. He soon accumulated a large sum of money, yet he kept his humble place, and his employer never suspected when he paid the faithful porter his $40 at the end of each month, that the quiet and deferential young man could have purchased not only his employer’s business, but the building in which it was conducted.

Gray remained as porter and messenger for five years, declining all offers which were made to him of promotion to a desk and a higher salary. The place he held gave him opportunities which could be obtained in no other way. None suspected the quiet and stolid-looking man, who seemed so dull of comprehension when any verbal message was intrusted to him; and words were dropped and conversations held in his presence which, when fitted by his quick and comprehensive brain into other words and conversations held in other offices, often enabled him to forecast events. The man who by any means is accurately advised of the real intentions of the leaders of Wall Street a day or even an hour before their execution, has a key to wealth, and Gray used this key, conducting all his operations through one broker, who was pledged to secrecy.