Hardly had Mullins been dismissed when another of the syndicate’s agents came in to report and was hurried off to some other part of the city. In some cases the men received an allowance of five per cent. on all the money they handled. In other cases it was a little more. So the work went on all that day and the next. Ten men were kept at work in ten sections of the city seeing that paper money replaced the silver, nickels and coppers in the tills of the small shops. Few, if any, of the shopkeepers realized that anything was amiss. The agents were all instructed to do their work without arousing any suspicion. They had orders every time they rode on a surface-car or patronized the Elevated roads to offer a dollar bill in payment of their fare. Wherever they saw an opportunity to get a bill changed they took it.
A clerk of the Safe Deposit Company reported at noon to Mr. Connors that 12,071,624 pennies, 437,589 nickels, 366,427 dimes, 444,886 quarters and 139,553 half-dollars had been turned in by the assiduous collectors. Telegrams received from Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and various other cities showed that the efforts there had met with equal success. With the $3,000,000 in small change that Mr. Connors had succeeded in amassing in the preceding weeks through banks and money brokers, he was well satisfied.
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon there was not a bank in the city that had not had its store of small change much depleted by the raids of the dry-goods and department stores. Half an hour later an organized descent was made on all the big department stores by the agents of the syndicate. Ninety of the collectors—the others being still engaged elsewhere, according to orders previously issued, their movements being known only to Mr. Tom Connors—visited in succession the biggest stores in the shopping district, making in various departments a series of purchases of articles advertised at four cents or six cents, or some other small sum that meant at least ninety cents in change from a dollar bill. When Friday evening came the syndicate had succeeded in stripping the shopping district of all its small change.
The work of collecting on Saturday was necessarily much slower, but when Saturday evening came the syndicate had nearly $9,000,000 in fractional currency in its possession and everyone was wondering what made change so scarce. The grand coup was effected at midnight Saturday night. Agents of the syndicate were waiting with paper money at the headquarters of all the penny-in-the-slot machines. More than a million dollars, mostly of pennies, was hurried in guarded trucks to the Safe Deposit offices.
On Sunday afternoon there was another conference in the Senator’s rooms. Connors submitted his report. He told how the markets, the car-barns, the “L” stations, the department stores, the five-and-ten-cent shops had been skilfully but legally looted of all their small change. Not only in one city but in all cities of over ten thousand inhabitants had this been done successfully. There was triumph in his tones as he read the final figures: “Cost of collection, $482,621. Total small change in vaults, $9,464,867.63.”
The Senator smiled a satisfied smile.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I think we can safely say that our corner is complete. We have cornered the small change. The department stores, the street railways, business everywhere will be at a standstill tomorrow. Small change is essential to modern business. The business men must have it. They must come to us for it. If business stops for a single day, there is hardly a large establishment that can survive. We have them at our mercy! How merciful we are to be, Mr. Martin, I think we should leave to you.”
The others nodded assent.
Mr. Martin adjusted his glasses. He took Mr. Connors’s report and glanced at it with deliberation.
“As the Senator observed,” he began, “the retail business houses must have small change. They must have pennies. Even on Saturday afternoon they were trying to get them. They were offering premiums. As high as six dollars was offered for five dollars in pennies. By Monday noon, with disaster, with suspension, with failure before them, they will gladly pay any price for small change.”