"Thinking these things over of late, I determined to make a final demand on astute and relentless Wall Street for my accumulated deposits—a kind of please-give-me-back-my-losses demand. I carefully loaded up two weeks ago to the extent of 20,000 Sugar in the thirties, and feeling the atmosphere was redolent of opportunities, last Friday I bought 20,000 more, the last 5,000 of which in a rather open and frank way that seemed but fair to my scalping New York friends. Well, you know the rest. It took fire. I cleaned up something over $700,000, and put out a short line of 30,000 shares, the last of which I have covered to-day at something over $350,000 profit. Strange as it may seem, I was quit. I have struck a balance with Sugar, and it gets no more of my money.
"I am one of the few Bostonians who are contented to live in the knowledge that Wall Street is too big and bright and cute a metropolitan centre for country boys to monkey with, and you can say I am so tickled to get back my bait that I will never again, never, wander away from home. There is one moral that may be drawn by Wall and State streets from the last few days in Sugar. It is this: It is not necessary to-day, any more than it was in old days, to work deals with false stories or fakes. In doing what I did in Sugar I depended on no fakes nor stories. I simply followed Charley Osborne's old admonition: 'If you want to bull stocks, buy 'em. If you want to bear 'em, sell 'em.' I bought 'em and I sold 'em. These are Sugar facts as far as my movements have affected them!"
For years after, even up to to-day, this yarn turned up in the press in different parts of the world, and every time I read it I chuckled to myself, for I see a big manly fellow, president of a bank now and asking no odds of any, for he can buy 2,000 shares of Sugar at any time and draw his check to pay for it against a bank account honestly earned since the day his wife wrote that letter.
And I see a grateful mother teaching three youths to say a certain prayer, and then I forget the critics' scathing sermons against stock gamblers. It does not pain me when my own children ask, "Why do they say such awful things about the stock operator?" I answer: "Oh, they mean no harm; they don't know the stock gambler they write about."
one of the system's shadows
That my readers may not drop this chapter with a false idea of the results of the stock-broker's efforts to "live and let live," I will give them an illustration of one of the counterbalances of the law of compensations.
In the same year with the Sugar transaction, in an evil moment my mail brought me the following letter:
Dear Sir: I have read with interest your proclamations about "Coppers." I am not a rich man, but I have about $20,000 lying idle which I should like to add to, and will put it into anything you advise.
The writer received the following answer from my secretary:
Mr. Lawson instructs me to say he received your letter of —— and he knows no better investment than the stock of the Amalgamated Copper Company, which will be offered for public subscription next week. In the advertising which will accompany the offer you will note that it is to pay 8 per cent., is now earning 16, and should sell at $150 or $200 per share. It will be offered at par. Not only does Mr. Lawson personally believe in every word in the advertisements, but they are vouched for by such men and institutions as the National City Bank of New York, Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller and others, whose names are synonymous with success in business affairs. Mr. Lawson does not hesitate to advise you to invest your $20,000 in this stock, provided you are not looking for an investment that is absolutely safe, that is, one that should not, in these times, pay you over 3-3/4 or 4 per cent.; but if you are looking for a semi-speculative investment, that is, one that will pay you over 6 per cent., and where the chances are good for large profits, he recommends this stock.