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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
and that is valu-able in a trader. He varied his methods of attack and defense without a
pang because he was more concerned with the manipulation of properties than with
stock speculation. He manipulated for investment rather than for a market turn. He early
saw that the big money was in owning the railroads instead of rigging their securities on
the floor of the Stock Exchange.
He utilised the stock market of course. But I suspect it was because that was the quickest
and easiest way to quick and easy money and he needed many millions, just as old
Collis P. Huntington was always hard up because he always needed twenty or thirty
millions more than the bankers were willing to lend him. Vision without money means
heartaches; with money, it means achievement; and that means power; and that means
money; and that means achievement; and so on, over and over and over.
Of course manipulation was not confined to the great figures of those days. There were
scores of minor manipulators. I remember a story an old broker told me about the
manners and morals of the early '60's. He said:
"The earliest recollection I have of Wall Street is of my first visit to the financial district.
My father had some business to attend to there and for some reason or other took me
with him. We came down Broadway and I remember turning off at Wall Street. We
walked down Wall and just as we came to Broad or, rather, Nassau Street, to the corner
where the Bankers' Trust Company's building now stands, I saw a crowd following two
men. The first was walking eastward, trying to look unconcerned. He was followed by
the other, a red-faced man who was wildly waving his hat with one hand and shaking the
other fist in the air. He was yelling to beat the band: 'Shylock! Shylock! What's the price
of money? Shylock! Shylock!' I could see heads sticking out of windows. They didn't
have skyscrapers in those days, but I was sure the second- and third-story rubbernecks
would tumble out. My father asked what was the matter, and somebody answered
something I didn't hear. I was too busy keeping a death clutch on my father's hand so
that the jostling wouldn't separate us. The crowd was growing, as street crowds do, and I
wasn't comfortable. Wild-eyed men came running down from Nassau Street and up from
Broad as well as east and west on Wall Street. After we finally got out of the jam my
father explained to me that the man who was shouting 'Shylock!' was So-and-So. I have
forgotten the name, but he was the biggest operator in clique stocks in the city and was
understood to have made and lost more money than any other man in Wall Street with
the exception of Jacob Little. I remember Jacob Little's name because I thought it was a
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