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XXXVIII

HOUGH far beyond the Scripture limits by this time, and lonesome because of Jimmy's death, I was still able to find my way around in Wall Street smart and handyas Jay Gould himself had to allow. For it was about this time that I gave him and Hen Smith that squeeze in Erie which they won't forget for some time.

I saw, by my reading of the tape and from the reports that came to me around the Street, that Jay and Henry were selling Erie for future delivery. I calculated that they were overdoing the thing. Because at this time, out of the seven hundred and eighty thousand shares of the capital stock of the road, fully seven hundred thousand shares were held abroad. So, with the help of a German banker, I got control of the floating supply of the stock here in the New York market. Then I waited.

Soon the time to make their deliveries came around. The short operators, Smith and Gould among the rest, were unable to get the stock. Then I set about. I had a good holt on them. I loaned them the stock. But it was at a rate which milked them fine as anything.

"I've known those two boys," said I to my broker, ! "a good long time. I guess we won't charge them 3 per cent. a day. We will just make it one and a half. They will give down freer then, and, more than that, they will feel better."

It wasn't pity in me so much as good business policy, to set the rate at one and a half instead of three. Because those two men, Jay and Hen, were so powerful, that if I'd squeezed them too tight, they might have gone into litigation and made it hard for me to collect anything. Even as it was, a cent and a half a day means a rate of 600 per cent. a year; and that's a decent enough profit for anybody. And they had to pay it. I had those fellows by the scrooch of the neck. The way they squiggled to get loose made me chuckle all over. (I always did have a knack, anyhow, of seeing the fun of the thing.) And just now they were squirmy enough. But I held on tight. In fact, I made them squiggle still more; for I wasn't through with this deal yet. After I'd got the stock all loaned out, I waited until the moment was ripe. Then, going down to the Street one morning, I issued orders to my brokers: "Call in now all of that stock that has been loaned out."

I knew that so unlooked-for a move would make a big howl in the Street. And, in order not to be pestered by the yells and cries of the operators when they suddenly found themselves caught, I

drove away up town, and stayed there all day. So, when the traders on the Exchange came to my office that day to beg for an extension of their loans, I wasn't there. "Mr. Drew's gone away for the day," was the only thing the clerks could say.

A hungry horse makes a clean manger. I finished this deal up good and thorough. Some of the traders were sold out by order of the Stock Exchange Board. Prices caught as pretty a tumble as anyone could ask for. And I took a slice out of the boys that day which I guess they remember yet.

This was 'long about the end of September, soon after I had come back from my summer's rest in the country. About a month after, Gould came around to my office one day. He chatted for a while, and then said he'd stump me to go in with him and singe the Street by a Bulling movement in Erie. I ought to have been on my guard; because it was so soon after I had caught Gould in the corner I have just wrote about. And to hold that fellow for any length of time, was like trying to ride a cat in a wheelbarrow, he was that squiggly. But Jay had a persuasive way with him. You never could tell from his face what he was thinking about inside. And now he put on such a friendly tone of voice that it made me think he was kindly affectioned towards me. "We'll rocket that Erie stock," said he, "higher than Gilderoy's kite. Anyway, Dan, you and I ought to be together in our Wall Street doings.

Let's forget some of the late unpleasantnesses — we're about even, now, I reckon - and start over again."

I was sort of tickled at the idea of getting back into partnership with him. Gould had a way of making a success of the things he went into. I knew him for a good mouser, one that never misses. So I said I'd go in with him. We agreed to buy Erie stock and hold it for a rise.

I

The thing went along for a while, smooth as a pan of milk. The price of the stock got up to 56. That was high-water mark compared with what Erie had been selling for a little while before. With that level reached, a lot of shares came dumping onto the market. In order to keep the price up, had to take them. I didn't know at the time that it was Gould who was unloading on me. I trusted the man. I took all the shares that were offered, and locked them in my safe. It was about this time that Gould came over to my office and paid me another visit. He said that the market in Erie, from what he had noticed in reading the tape, seemed to be softening most unexpectedly. (Jay had so innocent a way of saying it, that I now believed he was as much worried as I over the sag in Erie.)

up

"Most

"Tell you, Dan, what I suspect," said he. like as not the Street has got onto our Erie move and has begun to fight us. We must throw them off the scent. What do you say to going in on a side

play in Northwestern' for a while, as a kind of blind for our Erie movements?"

The idea sort of took hold of me. I knew that Jay was getting rich hand over fist, and so felt I could trust his judgment. Besides, he put up some good arguments. He showed how the price of Northwestern stock was 'way above what it ought to be.

"You remember, Dan," said he, "how not very long ago that farmer out in Wisconsin gave a thousand shares of 'Northwestern' stock for a shanghai rooster; and now it's selling clean up at 75. It's a ridiculous price. We can go in, sell the market short at that figure, and play for at least a ten-point drop in the next three weeks."

I said I guessed it was safe to go short of "Northwestern"; and that it might tickle the boys to speckilate for a spell in something new. So I sent word to my brokers and they put out a line of shorts in "Nor'west" to the extent of twenty thousand shares.

I ought then to have watched that "Nor'west" deal more closely than I did. Because, as I found out afterwards, at the very time that Gould was getting me to go short of it, he was engineering a pool to Bull that same identical stock. For a report was around that Vanderbilt was after the road in order to get a western connection through to Chicago, and Jay was giving out to that Bull clique of his that it was, therefore, a good time to operate for a rise. I didn't know these facts. I was so busy watching