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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
asked time and again to take charge of pools. I am told that in these pool operations he
never asked or accepted a fee, but paid for his share like the other members of the pool.
The market conduct of the stock, of course, was exclusively in his charge. Often there
was talk of treachery on both sides. His feud with the Whitney-Ryan clique arose from
such accusations. It is not difficult for a manipulator to be misunderstood by his
associates. They don't see his needs as he himself does. I know this from my own
experience.
It is a matter of regret that Keene did not leave an accurate record of his greatest exploit
the successful manipulation of the U. S. Steel shares in the spring of 1901. As I
understand it, Keene never had an interview with J. P. Morgan about it. Morgan's firm
dealt with or through Talbot J. Taylor & Co., at whose office Keene made his
headquarters. Talbot Taylor was Keene's son-in-law. I am assured that Keene's fee for
his work consisted of the pleasure he derived from the work. That he made millions
trading in the market he helped to put up that spring is well known. He told a friend of
mine that in the course of a few weeks he sold in the open market for the underwriters'
syndicate more than seven hundred and fifty thousand shares. Not bad when you
consider two things: That they were new and untried stocks of a corporation whose
capitalization was greater than the entire debt of the United States at that time; and
second, that men like D. G. Reid, W. B. Leeds, the Moore brothers, Henry Phipps, H. C.
Frick and the other Steel magnates also sold hundreds of thousands of shares to the
public at the same time in the same market that Keene helped to create.
Of course, general conditions favoured him. Not only actual business but sentiment and
his unlimited financial backing made possible his success. What we had was not merely
a big bull market but a boom and a state of mind not likely to be seen again. The
undigested-securities panic came later, when Steel common, which Keene had marked
up to 55 in 1901, sold at 10 in 1903 and at 8-7/8 in 1904.
We can't analyse Keene's manipulative campaigns. His books are not available; the
adequately detailed record is nonexistent. For example, it would be interesting to see
how he worked in Amalgamated Copper. H. H. Rogers and William Rockefeller had
tried to dispose of their surplus stock in the market and had failed. Finally they asked
Keene to market their line, and he agreed. Bear in mind that H. H. Rogers was one of the
ablest business men of his day in Wall Street and that William Rockefeller was the
boldest speculator of the entire Standard Oil coterie. They had practically unlimited
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