Part 34

I came back to New York, not knowing what would happen. Indeed, more than once during the trip I feared nothing at all would happen and that I’d be out my railroad fare and my time. I could not guess that I was about to have the most curious experience of my entire life.

Lucius met me at the station and did not waste any time in telling me that he had sent for me at the urgent request of Mr. Daniel Williamson, of the well-known Stock Exchange house of Williamson & Brown. Mr. Williamson told Lucius to tell me that he had a business proposition to make to me that he was sure I would accept since it would be very profitable for me. Lucius swore he didn’t know what the proposition was. The character of the firm was a guaranty that nothing improper would be demanded of me.

Dan Williamson was the senior member of the firm, which was founded by Egbert Williamson way back in the ’70’s. There was no Brown and hadn’t been one in the firm for years. The house had been, very prominent in Dan’s father’s time and Dan had inherited a considerable fortune and didn’t go after much outside business. They had one customer who was worth a hundred average customers and that was Alvin Marquand, Williamson’s brother-in-law, who in addition to being a director in a dozen banks and trust companies was the president of the great Chesapeake and Atlantic Railroad system. He was the most picturesque personality in the railroad world after James J. Hill, and was the spokesman and dominant member of the powerful banking coterie known as the Fort Dawson gang. He was worth from fifty million to five hundred million dollars, the estimate depending upon the state of the speaker’s liver. When he died they found out that he was worth two hundred and fifty million dollars, all made in Wall Street. So you see he was some customer.

Lucius told me he had just accepted a position with Williamson & Brown--one that was made for him. He was supposed to be a sort of circulating general business getter. The firm was after a general commission business and Lucius had induced Mr. Williamson to open a couple of branch offices, one in one of the big hotels uptown and the other in Chicago. I rather gathered that I was going to be offered a position in the latter place, possibly as office manager, which was something I would not accept. I didn’t jump on Lucius because I thought I’d better wait until the offer was made before I refused it.

Lucius took me into Mr. Williamson’s private office, introduced me to his chief and left the room in a hurry, as though he wished to avoid being called as witness in a case in which he knew both parties. I prepared to listen and then to say no.

Mr. Williamson was very pleasant. He was a thorough gentleman, with polished manners and a kindly smile. I could see that he made friends easily and kept them. Why not? He was healthy and therefore good-humored. He had slathers of money and therefore could not be suspected of sordid motives. These things, together with his education and social training, made it easy for him to be not only polite but friendly, and not only friendly but helpful.

I said nothing. I had nothing to say and, besides, I always let the other man have his say in full before I do any talking. Somebody told me that the late James Stillman, president of the National City Bank--who, by the way, was an intimate friend of Williamson’s--made it his practice to listen in silence, with an impassive face, to anybody who brought a proposition to him. After the man got through Mr. Stillman continued to look at him, as though the man had not finished. So the man, feeling urged to say something more, did so. Simply by looking and listening Stillman often made the man offer terms much more advantageous to the bank than he had meant to offer when he began to speak.

I don’t keep silent just to induce people to offer a better bargain, but because I like to know all the facts of the case. By letting a man have his say in full you are able to decide at once. It is a great time-saver. It averts debates and prolonged discussions that get nowhere. Nearly every business proposition that is brought to me can be settled, as far as my participation in it is concerned, by my saying yes or no. But I cannot say yes or no right off unless I have the complete proposition before me.

Dan Williamson did the talking and I did the listening. He told me he had heard a great deal about my operations in the stock market and how he regretted that I had gone outside of my bailiwick and come a cropper in cotton. Still it was to my bad luck that he owed the pleasure of that interview with me. He thought my forte was the stock market, that I was born for it and that I should not stray from it.

“And that is the reason, Mr. Livingston,” he concluded pleasantly, “why we wish to do business with you.”

“Do business how?” I asked him.

“Be your brokers,” he said. “My firm would like to do your stock business.”

“I’d like to give it to you,” I said, “but I can’t.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“I haven’t any money,” I answered.

“That part is all right,” he said with a friendly smile. “I’ll furnish it.” He took out a pocket checkbook, wrote out a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to my order, and gave it to me.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“For you to deposit in your own bank. You will draw your own checks. I want you to do your trading in our office. I don’t care whether you win or lose. If that money goes I will give you another personal check. So you don’t have to be so very careful with this one. See?”

I knew that the firm was too rich and prosperous to need anybody’s business, much less to give a fellow the money to put up as margin. And then he was so nice about it! Instead of giving me a credit with the house he gave me the actual cash, so that he alone knew where it came from, the only string being that if I traded I should do so through his firm. And then the promise that there would be more if that went! Still, there must be a reason.

“What’s the idea?” I asked him.

“The idea is simply that we want to have a customer in this office who is known as a big active trader. Everybody knows that you swing a big line on the short side, which is what I particularly like about you. You are known as a plunger.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said.

“I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Livingston. We have two or three very wealthy customers who buy and sell stocks in a big way. I don’t want the Street to suspect them of selling long stock every time we sell ten or twenty thousand shares of any stock. If the Street knows that you are trading in our office it will not know whether it is your short selling or the other customers’ long stock that is coming on the market.”

I understood at once. He wanted to cover up his brother-in-law’s operations with my reputation as a plunger! It so happened that I had made my biggest killing on the bear side a year and a half before, and, of course, the Street gossips and the stupid rumor-mongers had acquired the habit of blaming me for every decline in prices. To this day when the market is very weak they say I am raiding it.

I didn’t have to reflect. I saw at a glance that Dan Williamson was offering me a chance to come back and come back quickly. I took the check, banked it, opened an account with his firm and began trading. It was a good active market, broad enough for a man not to have to stick to one or two specialties. I had begun to fear, as I told you, that I had lost the knack of hitting it right. But it seems I hadn’t. In three weeks’ time I had made a profit of one hundred and twelve thousand dollars out of the twenty-five thousand that Dan Williamson lent me.

I went to him and said, “I’ve come to pay you back that twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“No, no!” he said and waved me away exactly as if I had offered him a castor-oil cocktail. “No, no, my boy. Wait until your account amounts to something. Don’t think about it yet. You’ve only got chicken feed there.”

There is where I made the mistake that I have regretted more than any other I ever made in my Wall Street career. It was responsible for long and dreary years of suffering. I should have insisted on his taking the money. I was on my way to a bigger fortune than I had lost and walking pretty fast. For three weeks my average profit was 150 per cent per week. From then on my trading would be on a steadily increasing scale. But instead of freeing myself from all obligation I let him have his way and did not compel him to accept the twenty-five thousand dollars. Of course, since he didn’t draw out the twenty-five thousand dollars he had advanced me I felt I could not very well draw out my profit. I was very grateful to him, but I am so constituted that I don’t like to owe money or favours. I can pay the money back with money, but the favours and kindnesses I must pay back in kind--and you are apt to find these moral obligations mighty high priced at times. Moreover there is no statute of limitations.