In his lecture on “The Masters of the Situation” Mr. James T. Fields has said:
“There is a faith so expansive and a hope so elastic that a man having them will keep on believing and hoping till all danger is past and victory sure. When I talk across an ocean of three thousand miles with my friends on the other side of it, and feel that I may know any hour of the day if all goes well with them, I think with gratitude of the immense energy and perseverance of that one man, Cyrus W. Field, who spent so many years of his life in perfecting a communication second only in importance to the discovery of this country. The story of his patient striving during all that stormy period is one of the noblest records of American enterprise, and only his own family know the whole of it. It was a long, hard struggle.”
After a painful experience was past he never cared to recall it, and for that reason the world never knew to what straits he and his family were often pushed. Not a luxury was allowed, and during those twelve years any wish that might be expressed could only be gratified “when the cable was laid.” All waited for that day, but not always patiently, for one or another was often heard to explain, “Oh, if that old cable was only at the bottom of the ocean!” and to this he would invariably answer, “That is just where I wish it to be.”
Neither does the world know what his books tell, that at this very time his hand was stretched out to both his relations and friends. The surrogate was so impressed with his management of a trust estate that he could not believe his statement, and said that he must take the papers home and verify them, for he had never before known that such an increase was possible.
It was in London, in March, 1868, that he told of the strange fluctuations he had seen in the stock of the two telegraph companies in which he had so long been interested.
“It is within the last six months only that we have received the first return from the money we had put at the bottom of the Atlantic. I do not believe that any enterprise has ever been undertaken that has had such fortune: that has been so low, and, one might almost say, so high. I have known the time when a thousand pounds of Atlantic telegraph stock sold in London at a high premium. I have known the time when a thousand pounds of the same stock was purchased by my worthy friend, the Right Honorable Mr. Wortley, for thirty guineas. At one time when I was in London trying to raise money to carry forward this great enterprise, a certificate for ten thousand dollars (£2000 sterling) in the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company sold at the Merchants’ Exchange in New York by public auction for a ten-dollar bill (£2). On my return home the gentleman handed the certificate to me and asked me if it was worth anything. I said to him, ‘My dear sir, what did you pay for it?’ and to my mortification he showed to me the auctioneer’s bill for ten dollars. I said to him, ‘I shall be happy to pay you a good profit on your investment.’ He replied, ‘No; what do you advise me to do with it?’ I rejoined, “Lock it up in your safe. Do not even think about or look at it until you receive a notice to collect your dividends.’ The holder now receives a dividend of eight hundred dollars per annum or (£160) in gold for his investment. If any gentleman here has ever possessed a more fluctuating investment I should like to hear it.”
Later in the evening the Right Honorable Mr. Wortley said:
“I have been a shareholder from the first, and I am somewhat proud of my original £1000 shares, and of those shares to which you have alluded, which I truly bought at £30 each. I am anxious, however, that those gentlemen who heard that statement should understand that I have not yet made a fortune out of the cable. The vicissitudes we have gone through have prevented us from doing much financially, and, indeed, we have had difficulty at times in keeping the enterprise afloat.”
The following telegram and letters are among those received at this time: