Then my thoughts carried me farther. Suppose I could get my expenses down to my income, how about the people we were helping in another way, whose income would be seriously affected by my retiring?
There was one of our friends at Knollwood. He was employed on a moderate salary, and when his wife inherited nine hundred dollars he brought it to me and asked me to make some money for him. Now, as a result, he was living in a house he had bought for eleven thousand dollars and to cancel the mortgage of a few thousand he relied upon me. There were those three old gentlemen in Connecticut whose income from their investment with us was allowing them to pass in comfort their declining years. Could I cut this off? No; and there were many others.
It was clear to my mind that my labor was not yet at an end. I must still keep at the helm, but I made a resolution that on my fiftieth birthday I would retire.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE PANIC OF NINETY-THREE
In the year 1893 there was one great controlling feature in our market that was to culminate on July first.
For years the commodity in which we dealt had been duty free. The McKinley Tariff Bill imposed a duty of four cents per pound, to go into effect on July 1, 1893, for a period of two years. It was the one senseless clause in an otherwise excellent bill and had been inserted as the only means of securing the necessary votes in the Senate. The sole object of the clause was to influence the speculative value of shares in a certain corporation which is now in the hands of a receiver.
When this corporation was first organized I subscribed for some stock and was in its first board of directors and its vice-president. If there was to be a new source of supply of the commodity I dealt in so largely, it was important I should know of it. As soon as I became satisfied that it was nothing but a scheme to make money by the sale of stock, I resigned and disposed of my holdings to one of the promoters at a profit of eight dollars per share.
Efforts to have the clause repealed had been unsuccessful, and as the duty was certain to be imposed, we thought it wise to import largely prior to July first. Others did the same, and when that date arrived the stock in New York was very large. We held on our own account about one-third of the entire stock and in addition a very large quantity which we had sold to our customers for delivery in July.
Of course, our purchases had been made of our London friends, and during this period our remittances were unusually large, running into several millions. An incident of our correspondence at that time was a postscript in one of their letters calling our attention to the fact that the letter from us, to which they were then replying, had been underpaid in postage and cost them six pence. They requested us to see to it in future that our letters were properly stamped. Think of that, from a concern with whom we were doing a business of millions!