CHAPTER XXVIII
ON 'CHANGE
In Wall Street, the most gigantic gambling Mecca the world knows, wheremillions change hands every hour of the five of howling delirium thatconstitute a stock-exchange day, the two parties, "bulls" and "bears,"wage a financial war.
Each has its general, recognized leader as well as a dozen lesser ones,who organize pools and cliques, manipulate news, issue statements thatare pure fiction, pay for items in the press that are fairy tales,gather their moneyed forces into aggregation for practical robbery ofothers, and bend all energies of brain, experience, and knowledge ofconditions to one focal point, and that either to depress or enhance thevalue of securities. Each main army has its general method, controls itsbanks, pays enormous tolls to telegraph companies, fixes rates ofinterest at will, pays for and colors the daily utterances of its ownnewspapers, and buys truth and falsehood with equal readiness at so muchper line.
This describes the two parties generally; yet the men who constitutethem are daily changing, and out of a thousand who may be among thebears to-day, half might be found with the bulls a week hence. Some maybe on both sides at once, pushing one stock up and another down, akaleidoscopic jumble of half insane human beings, whose statements as tovalue, conditions, and their own intentions bear no relation to thetruth and are not expected to do so. It is a contest of cunning, a warof falsehood, a battle of deception. And those who fall by the waysideexcite no pity, receive no consideration, and if they rise not by theirown exertion, they are kicked out of the way.
Professionally speaking, lawyers have been called legal liars, butcompared to stock manipulators they are walking examples of truth andveracity. A lawyer may lie and can if necessary, but a stock operatorlies all the time; from sheer force of habit. A lawyer might lie tojudge, jury, or his own client, but there is some chance that he maytell the truth to a brother lawyer; while stock brokers will lie to eachother on all occasions, and if necessary swear to it.
And this is business in Wall Street!
A few other great cities have their lesser Wall streets, and whereWeston & Hill, like a deadly upas tree, flourished for a time, a mimicWall Street existed. It had its clique of bulls and bears, its _MarketNews_, its leaders, large and small, its daily contest of lies and moneypower, and though Weston & Hill were not among its members, theirbroker, Simmons, was--an active and unscrupulous mouthpiece, ready tofleece all fellow-brokers, or the firm he acted for, if necessary. Hehad bought or sold Rockhaven stock, as its prime mover, Weston,directed; circulated lies galore for three months; and by the occultprocess of manipulation had slowly worked the price up from one to tendollars per share, and had so colored his lies and so managed thedeal--now selling a thousand shares quietly, then buying them backostentatiously--that, as the phrase goes, "the street was kept guessingall the time."
Some believed it was a good investment; more felt sure it was a"wildcat," and that soon or late the bubble would burst and the stock godown to rise no more. Only Simmons and Weston knew what was to be theoutcome, but neither was likely to tell. More than that, they knew howmuch stock was in actual circulation or held by the street, and beyondthat, a close approximation of how great a short interest had accrued.Each day since Rockhaven had been quoted at all, Simmons had made entryof all recorded sales, and knowing how much had been issued and how muchbought in by himself, endeavored to keep track of it. It was fallacious,for the same stock might be bought and sold a hundred times, and thelong and short disparity remain the same. One thing he knew,--how muchhad actually been sold, and out of this (a matter of thirty thousand)fully twenty thousand, he believed, would never be heard of on thestreet.
But he reckoned without Winn Hardy.
Rockhaven had been jeered and sneered at by the bear party; its backers,Weston & Hill, were known to be sharpers; their broker, Simmons, borethe same reputation; prediction that it was a wildcat and they unloadingit on to the street had been repeated a thousand times; the _MarketNews_ items were considered unreliable, and on the strength of all thishotbed of lies the knowing ones had sold the stock all the way up. Somehad covered it at a loss, and smarting from that had sold again at ahigher price, firmly believing it must fall some day; and when poorduped Winn, unconscious of the situation, was steaming toward thebattleground, a dozen growling bears were selling Rockhaven at everypoint advance. Only bears sold to bears, however; for those who heldwhat was out owned it at a lower price, and so long as it kept up theyparted with none. It had opened that morning at ten and one-half, bynoon rose to twelve and one-quarter, and at the delivery hour of two wasfirm at fourteen. Simmons had bought a few hundred when it had dropped ahalf point, just to cheer up the game, and knowing those who sold hadnone to deliver. A few bulls who owned it at five and six started astory that a corner had been engineered, and predicted that it would goto thirty inside a week. And when the gong sounded that day, and themarket closed with Rockhaven at fifteen and one-quarter bid and sixteenasked, a few of the fur-coated liars looked askance at one another andwent out and drank liberally to keep their courage up.
And that night Weston and Simmons held another conference. It was avital one; for before it closed some ten thousand shares of generalsecurities Weston & Hill either owned or held in trust passed intoSimmons's possession, and when the two conspirators separated, one wasricher by nearly two hundred thousand dollars, based on the market priceof these securities, and the other gloating over the prospectiverobbery of his hated partner.
But a halt came the next day, for Simmons bid sixteen for a block ofRockhaven, a few conservative bulls unloaded and the price dropped twopoints, while the bears took courage.
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