"You see what the papers say," I said. "That gives you all the information I have, for although you may not think it, I have been spending the night just as the rest of you have—in lands where all flotations sell away over par. I'm going down to Wall Street just now. After a while I'll have more to tell you."
The flutter of an eyelash, a hair-breadth of hesitation, a mumbled word and there may be born in the mind of the investor that instinctive distrust which is the beginning of panic. In a stock market as in a powder magazine there are always dread possibilities of explosion, and he who would survive must have incombustible nerves and an ice-packed brain; asbestos assurances and an unblushing swagger have averted many money conflagrations and set prices hill-climbing.
My little congregation had all the fluttering fugitiveness of the investor-out-for-quick profits, and after a few generalities, I got down to the one question they all longed to ask but none dared to voice—"What can I sell my subscription for if I want to part with it?" Raising my voice a trifle and looking straight at them:
"Don't get excited about what you read in print these next few days," I said, as though some one had asked me the question, "for there will be hogsheads of rumors unhooped, and remember that rumor prices are never real money. The papers this morning say that any one can sell at 40 to 60 per cent. profit, but that hardly seems reasonable to me; in fact, if I were any of you who have been allotted stock and could get such profit as that overnight, I'd take it. All I'll do just now is this: I will give 110 for any amount any of you want to sell, provided you sell right now—and 10 per cent. profit is not so bad when you come to think it's 40 per cent. on what actual money you have put up."
In the vernacular of stocks this process I used is called "moulding public opinion" and "making a market," and it had the expected effect on that bright May morning which followed the closing day of the Amalgamated flotation. I was not offered a share; in fact, there was a loud guffaw, and it was a hundred to one wager that as I passed on to another group each listener tumbled over his neighbor to get in first. "110! That's a good joke! I wonder if he takes us for children! Evidently he is out early this morning to catch any stray worms napping! 110 for something worth 160!"
Inside of ten minutes it was all over the Waldorf and on the wires, "Look out for Lawson! He's trying to get Amalgamated at 110." And by the time I got to the Holland, a block down the Avenue, the brokers and investors gathered there were ready to give me the laugh with "You're out early, we see, to pick up a bundle of easy money."
My first task had been accomplished to my own satisfaction. Inside of an hour it would be flashed over the world that there was a firm reliable market at 110 bid and almost any price asked for Amalgamated, and while 110 was not anything like the wild 140 to 160 that rumor gossiped of, it represented such a good profit that it was sure to set the market off with an all-round chipperness.
My readers must bear in mind that as yet there was no real Amalgamated stock which could be sold, and no place to sell it if there had been, for until each subscriber received official notice no one really knew for certain that he had been allotted any stock, and until the Amalgamated shares were listed on the Stock Exchange, there could be no reliable market, although they could be traded in on the curb.
At the Holland House, I quickly outlined to my chief brokers my plans for the day. Then together we started for Wall Street.
The hours that followed were busy ones, and confusing as well. Wall Street was a-buzz with curiosity and from all sides poured questions. "The Street," it was evident, had awakened to the fact that the situation in Amalgamated disclosed a different line-up of conditions from that which it had anticipated. As to whether the change was good or bad no one dared hazard a guess. For the first time in my experience, Wall Street was completely at sea. The shrewdest plungers and manipulators, men to whom the tape yields up its secrets as the penitent to the priest; to whom the ticker babbles the inner mysteries of directors' meetings and deep-down deals—these men whose eyes, ears, and noses decades of stock-play had trained to supernatural acuteness were as impotent to track the truth as the veriest tyro. All admitted that the conditions were unusual, that the subscriptions had far exceeded expectation, that time would be required to get them straightened out. Because of this it was natural that the market should be slow and in the absence of definite facts it might easily look one price and be another. If the subscription really were 412 millions and if each subscriber would have a fifth of his allotment, then there was the usual chance for trick playing and "Standard Oil" might be scheming to gather in this valuable stock at 110 when its proper price mayhap was 140 to 160 or more.