Our first fears of failure were soon succeeded by apprehensions of a different nature. By Tuesday noon it was evident that the flotation would far exceed the low expectations of Rogers and Rockefeller, and I knew that if the people's interest continued to develop at the rate the subscriptions indicated, the totals would be far ahead of my own most sanguine anticipations. Every hour the excitement intensified. The crowds on the street and in the brokers' offices; the rush of investors to the City Bank—all demonstrated a feverish condition of the public mind, a state of unrest that fills the conservative banker with dread lest something happen to precipitate a disorder and a panic. The acute sensitiveness of a body of investors to extraneous influence, however slight, is familiar to any one who has had to do with market manipulation. In a theatre or church one strenuous spirit can quell a tumult with some ringing assurance, but long before the leader of a financial movement has got word to his following, wide-spread over the country, it has taken alarm, the rout has begun, and the field is strewn with corpses. A great financial excitement, like a rocket, should soar triumphantly into the air, leaving behind it a comet-like trail of glory, climaxing in a shower of gold; diverted from its course, it runs a mad, brief, tragic career along the earth, spreading ruin and disaster in its path.
There comes a time when all great enterprises must emerge from the nursery and be exposed to the sunlight and the breezes of every day. We were crossing the ominous tract which divides the trenches of preparation from the sheltering fortress of attainment, and the hosts of failure were rallied to dispute our passage.
At this juncture any accident to our venture might affect the whole American business fabric, and no one realized the danger of the situation better than Mr. Rogers and myself. During the anxious days that were passing we canvassed the dire possibilities that the situation contained, just as children tell each other ghost stories when left alone in the darkness of the night. The great catastrophes of finance, we remembered, had all been born of the unexpected—of unforeseen contingencies—far beyond the range of human foresight. Who knew but that the hours were pregnant with some terrible potentiality—the assassination of a king or president, a Chicago or Boston fire, an epidemic of cholera, a belligerent message from the President, such as Cleveland's Venezuela ultimatum, a great bank defalcation, the suicide of an important operator, the death of an eminent capitalist—a breath of one of these world cyclones would crumble our structure into the dust and take along with it the neighboring edifices on both sides of the street. There were also the hidden possibilities of betrayal, of treachery, for we knew that scores of Wall Street's most ingenious minds were bent on unravelling and exposing the secret threads of our enterprise.
On Wednesday morning soon after ten o'clock Mr. Rogers, on his way downtown, came to the Waldorf. He was plainly excited.
"Lawson," he said, "this is something unheard of, unprecedented. The bank is being buried under subscriptions. Stillman says he is adding scores of clerks, but that he cannot possibly keep pace with the subscriptions. Mr. Rockefeller is very nervous, and I must confess to feeling a bit of 'rattle' myself. It now looks as though the total would run into fabulous figures. The Lewisohns are being swamped with orders from Europe. They alone will probably put in more than ten millions. Wall Street has lost its head entirely, and our people at 26 Broadway are coming in asking advice and doubling and trebling their subscriptions. If we don't keep our heads something bad may happen, for it looks now as though the cash the subscription is tying up would make a money-pinch. This affair must not be allowed to run away with us. What do your reports from Boston and the country show?"
"The same as yours. The people have simply gone wild. Calls come in ceaselessly to me from Wall Street men. The hotel is so full of brokers from out of town that they are placing cots in the big rooms. I went down into the office just now to talk to them and was nearly mobbed. Already they are talking of a premium of $40 to $60 per share, but if we keep to the line we have laid down, I don't think we need fear bad consequences."
We discussed other aspects of the affair, the intense interest developed in Europe, and the effect of the excitement on the price of the metal. As he started to go down to his office, Mr. Rogers said, as though by way of an after-thought:
"Lawson, if the people are so hungry, why should we not take some advantage of it?"
The suggestion, with all it implied, stunned me for a second.
"What do you mean, Mr. Rogers? Take advantage—how?"