Mr. Thomas W. Lawson was the mover in the deal, and his orders for 20,000 shares early in the day excited other buying, which encompassed the astonishing rise. What point Mr. Lawson had to trade upon is his own asset, if he had any point, and it would not matter so far as the event was concerned whether he had a point. The market was in a position to respond to orders of these dimensions, and it did respond.
[From the New York Journal, March 17, 1899]
The frenzied brokers fought like madmen around the Sugar post. The wildest sort of excitement prevailed throughout the day. The rest of the floor was practically abandoned, and brokers crowded, pushed, elbowed, and yelled frantically in their efforts to fill orders. There was no warning. The sudden jump of the stock almost threw the brokers into a panic. Men became ferocious in their efforts to fill orders. Those on the outside made wild rushes to get into the whirlpool. Men who are generally calm fell over each other in their excitement. Scores of arms whipped the air, and men yelled themselves hoarse. So great was the din and so compact the yelling crowd that those on one side of the post did not know the bidding on the other. At one point Sugar was going at 159, and five feet away it was bringing 164. While almost at arm's-length farther away it was going at 160, and farther around the post at 162.
The excitement became general among the offices of stock-brokers as the news flew on the ticker. Members of firms who were not on the floor gathered about the tickers in excited groups and watched the pyrotechnic fluctuations of Sugar to the exclusion of all other stocks. The quotations came out at two and three points apart. One minute the stock was away up, and the next it seemed to fall hopelessly. Then it would as suddenly soar upward again. It reached 170, and in five minutes it was down to 152.
[From the Boston Post, March 22, 1899]
Late in the afternoon Mr. Lawson was induced to give the following explanation of his movements in Sugar: "You know it is not conducive to the health of an active operator to talk on what he is doing, for if he expects to retain his hirsute adornment he must either keep jumping so lively that none of the expert scalpers who haunt the jungles of Wall Street can find him long enough in one spot to cut the floor from under him, or he must envelop himself in mystery so dense that all seeking for him will grow color-blind; but on this particular commodity—Sugar—I can depart from the standard formula.
"I have been twenty-nine years dodging the scalping-knives of Wall Street Comanches, and, although I am still here, I have many places on my head where the hair refuses to grow, and, strange to tell, almost all the bare spots are labelled 'Sugar.' I suppose that I have, during the past ten years, contributed money enough to Sugar to endow a fair-sized asylum for tailless bears. It has never seemed to matter whether I bought or sold, went long or short, the dollars which I secured by the employment of pick and shovel, brawn, muscle or gray matter, all seemed to follow one another into the relentless maw of that modern Saccharine Titanotherium.
"Way back in 1890 I invested the profits of my Lamson deal—$700,000—in 10,000 Sugar at 84, and in a few days, amid brilliant fireworks, I bade it adieu, when it gracefully dropped below 50. Again, four years ago, I decided I could make no better long-time investment of $700,000 or $800,000 Electric profits than to short Sugar from 61 to 70. In eleven days it took $1,500 more than my profits to even up my accounts.