“The best paper in town was done yesterday at 2 per cent. per month,” pursued Mr. John Sharp to his brother broker Mr. Growlem, as they cogitated over their morning’s correspondence. “My letters throw out some inuendoes about certain houses heretofore considered undoubted,” pursued that gentleman, as with a keen glance he peered over his spectacles at his companion.
“Hum—don’t know. In such cases caution is desirable, and so don’t say much; but if stocks continue to fall as they have done for a few weeks past, shan’t consider any man undoubted unless I know him to be short of the whole list, and even then he may be caught.”
“As how, pray?” suggested his companion.
“By buying in before delivery day, and then finding his man smashed, gone, and he himself likely to be in the same pleasant position.”
“You always look at the bright side of things.”
“Certainly I do; especially when the prospect is so charming all round as it is now. Thank God I am pretty well up. I haven’t a contract that has not security up. ‘My man,’ you know, always required it. And as for any stocks I hold, why they are all paid for and I may as well hold on for better times, as I don’t see how I can better myself by putting them in some fellow’s note, who will, in all probability, pay just five cents in the dollar.”
“I am a good deal of your way of thinking. But if this crash goes on when will the revival come?”
“Just as soon as the banks break, and not before.”
“But how can their breakage benefit the matter? I confess my ignorance.”
“My dear fellow, considering your name and experience, I consider you very flat this morning. Are you so green as to think I mean them to stop, as you and I would if we could not meet our engagements. By no means. They will do no such vulgar thing as fail—they will merely suspend; and then, you know, as paper is cheap and engraving not very expensive, we shall have money as plenty as dirt; that is, as soon as presidents and cashiers can sign their names to pieces of paper promising to pay—in what? I don’t know. Do you? Certainly not in the ‘current coin of the realm.’ And yet, by the way, these promises will be the current coin. Mark what I say. He that can hold on until this time will get through—plucked, ringed, well battered—but still he will get through. He that can’t must go to the wall, there to be ground between the upper and the nether mill-stone.”