With this London connection secured I had taken the last step necessary for doing business on the broadest scale.
The wheel had been built starting from the hub, the tire was elastic, and as the spokes lengthened the circumference became so large that we were gathering force with each revolution and all the business in sight was coming our way.
Up to this time I had done nothing in the way of seeking speculative customers and I now began to think seriously of doing so.
The field was large, the only difficulty was to get people who had been accustomed to speculate in grain, cotton, and petroleum to try a new commodity. I knew the opportunities for money making, but it was necessary to convince the speculator that the chances of gain were better, the possibility of loss less than in the well-known great speculative commodities of the age.
I commenced the preparation of educational literature with which I meant to circularize the country. I did not want the small fry, the little speculator with only a few hundreds or thousands of dollars. What I was after was men of financial ability and the nerve to go into large operations and see them through to a finish.
Before I made a move, our first speculative client put in an appearance.
He was in the trade, senior partner of the largest firm in Baltimore, and no argument from us was necessary. Calling at the office he gave us an order for his individual account, the transaction to be carried in our name.
It was not a large order, the margin he deposited with us being but two thousand dollars.
When the transaction was closed and we returned him his margin, we had the pleasure of including in our cheque thirty-nine hundred dollars profit, after deducting our commissions, which amounted to five hundred and seventy-five dollars.
This experience gave me a hint I was quick to take. If an individual member of one firm in the trade would speculate, why not members of other firms? The ethics of the case, the propriety of a partner speculating on his own account in a commodity in which his firm was dealing, did not concern me.