I. The Bear -- Wheat at Sixty-Two | II. The Bull -- Wheat at a Dollar-Ten | III. The Pit | IV. The Belt Line | V. The Bread Line |
I. The Bear -- Wheat at Sixty-Two
As Sam Lewiston backed the horse
into the shafts of his buckboard and began hitching the tugs to
the whiffletree, his wife came out from the kitchen door of the
house and drew near, and stood for some time at the horse's head,
her arms folded and her aprong rolled around them. For a long
moment neither spoke. They had talked over the situation so long
and so comprehensively the night before that there seemed to be
nothing more to say.
The time was late in the summer,
the place a ranch in South-Western Kansas, and Lewiston and his
wife were two of a vast population of farmers, wheat growers,
who at that moment were passing through a crisis--a crisis that
at any moment might culminate in tragedy. Wheat was down to sixty-six.
At length Emma Lewiston spoke.
"Well," she hazarded,
looking vaguely out across the ranch toward the horizon, leagues
distant; "well, Sam, there's always that offer of brother
Joe's. We can quit--and go to Chicago--if the worst comes."
"And give up!" exclaimed
Lewiston, running the lines through the torets. "Leave the
ranch! Give up! After all these years!"
His wife made no reply for the moment.
Lewiston climbed into the buckboard and gathered up the lines.
"Well, here goes for the last try, Emmie," he said.
"Good-by, girl. Maybe things will look better in town today."
" Maybe," she said gravely.
She kissed her husband good-by and stood for some time looking
after the buckboard traveling toward the town in a moving pillar
of dust.
"I don't know," she murmured
at length; "I don't know just how we're going to make out."
When he reached town, Lewiston tied
the horse to the iron railing in front of the Odd-Fellows Hall,
the ground floor of which was occupied by the post-office, and
went across the street and up the stairway of a building of brick
and granite--quite the most pretentious structure of the town--and
knocked at a door upon the first landing. The door was furnished
with a pane of frosted glass, on which, in gold letters, was inscribed,
"Bridges & Co., Grain Dealers."
Bridges himself, a middle-aged man
who wore a velvet skull-cap and who was smoking a Pittsburgh stogy,
met the farmer at the counter and the two exchanged perfunctory
greetings.
"Well," said Lewiston,
tentatively, after a while.
"Well, Lewiston," said
the other, "I can't take that wheat of yours at any better
than sixty-two."
"Sixty-two!"
"It's the Chicago price that
does it, Lewiston. Truslow is bearing the stuff for all he's worth.
It's Truslow and the bear clique that stick the knife into us.
The price broke again this morning. We've just got a wire."
"Good heavens," murmured
Lewiston, looking vaguely from side to side. "That--that
ruins me. I can't carry my grain any longer--what with
storage charges and--and--Bridges, I don't see just how I'm going
to make out. Sixty-two cents a bushel! Why, man, what with this
and with that it's cost me nearly a dollar a bushel to raise that
wheat, and now Truslow--"
He turned away abruptly with a quick
gesture of infinite discouragement.
He went down the stairs, and making
his way to where his buckboard was hitched, got in, and, with
eyes vacant, the reins slipping and sliding in his limp, half-open
hands, drove slowly back to the ranch. His wife had seen him coming,
and met him as he drew up before the barn.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Emmie," he said as he
got out of the buckboard, laying his arm across her shoulder,
"Emmie, I guess we'll take up with Joe's offer. We'll go
to Chicago. We're cleaned out!" top
II. The Bull -- Wheat at a Dollar-Ten
....--and said Partyof the Second Part further covenants
and agrees to merchandise such wheat in foreign ports, it being
understood and agreed between the Party of the First Part and
the Party of the Second Part that the wheat hereinbefore mentioned
is released and sold to the Party of the Second Part for export
purposes only, and not for consumption or distribution within
the boundaries of the United States of America or Canada.
"Now, Mr. Gates, if you will
sign for Mr. Truslow I guess that'll be all," remarked Hornung
when he had finished reading.
Hornung affixed his signature to
the two documents and passed them over to Gates, who signed for
his principal and client, Truslow--or, as he has been called ever
since he had gone into the fight against Hornung's corner--the
Great Bear. Hornung's secretary was called in and witnessed the
signatures, and Gates thrust the contract into his Gladstone bag
and stood up, smoothing his hat.
"You will deliver the warehouse
receipts for the grain," began Gates.
"I'll send a messenger to Truslow's
office before noon," interrupted Hornung. "You can pay
by certified check through the Illinois Trust people."
Whe the other had taken himself
off, Hornung sat for some moments gazing abstractedly toward his
office windows, thinking over the whole matter. He had just agreed
to release to Truslow, at the rate of one dollar and ten cents
per bushel, one hundred thousand out of the two million and odd
bushels of wheat that he, Hornung, controlled, or actually owned.
And for the moment he was wondering if, after all, he had done
wisely in not goring the Great Bear to actual financial death.
He had made him pay one hundred thousand dollars. Truslow was
good for this amount. Would it not have been better to have put
a prohibitive figure on the grain and forced the bear into bankruptcy?
True, Hornung would then be without his enemy's money, but Truslow
would have been eliminated from the situation, and that--so Hornung
told himself--was always a consummation most devoutly, strenuously,
and diligently to be striven for. Truslow once dead was dead,
but the Bear was never more dangerous than when desperate.
"But so long as he can't get
wheat," muttered Hornung at the end of the his reflections,
"he can't hurt me. And he can't get it. That I know."
For Hornung controlled the situation.
So far back as the February of that year an "unknown bull"
had been making his presence felt on the floor of the Board of
Trade. By the middle of March the commercial reports of the daily
press had begun to speak of "the powerful Bull clique";
a few weeks later that legendary condition of affairs implied
and epitomized in the magic words "Dollar Wheat" had
been attained, and by the first of April, when the price had been
boosted to one dollar and ten cents a bushel, Hornung had disclosed
his hand, and in place of mere rumors, the definite and authoritative
news that May wheat had been cornered in the Chicago pit went
flashing around the world from Liverpool to Odessa and from Duluth
to Buenos Aires.
It was--so the veteran operators
were persuaded--Truslow himself who had made Hornung's corner
possible. The Great Bear had for once overreached himself, and
believing himself all-powerful, had hammered the price just the
fatal fraction too far down. Wheat had gone to sixty-two--for
the time, and under the circumstances, an abnormal price. When
the reaction came it was tremendous. Hornung saw his chance, seized
it, and in a few months had turned the tables, had cornered the
product, and virtually driven the bear clique out of the pit.
On the same day that the delivery
of the hundred thousand bushels was made to Truslow, Hornung met
his broker at his lunch club.
"Well," said the latter,
"I see you let go that line of stuff to Truslow."
Hornung nodded; but the broker added:
"Remember, I was against it
from the very beginning. I know we've cleared up over a hundred
thou'. I would have fifty times preferred to have lost twice that
and smashed Truslow dead. Bet you what you like he makes
us pay for it somehow.
"Huh!" grunted his principal.
"How about insurance, and warehouse charges, and carrying
expenses on that lot? Guess we'd have had to pay those, too, if
we'd held on."
But the other put up his chin, unwilling
to be persuaded. "I won't sleep easy," he declared,
"till Truslow is busted." top
Just as Going mounted the steps
on the edge of the pit the great gong struck, a roar of a hundred
voices developed with the swiftness of successive explosions,
the rush of a hundred men surging downward to the center of the
pit filled the air with the stamp and grind of feet, a hundred
hands in eager, strenuous gestures tossed upward from out the
brown of the crowd, the official reporter in his cage on the margin
of the pit leaned far forward with straining ear to catch the
opening bid, and another day of battle was begun.
Since the sale of the hundred thousand
bushels of wheat to Truslow, the "Hornung crowd" had
steadily shouldered the price higher until on this particular
morning it stood at one dollar and a half. That was Hornung's
price. No one else had any grain to sell.
But not ten minutes after the opening,
Going was surprised out of all countenance to hear shouted from
the other side of the pit these words:
"Sell May at one-fifty."
Going was for the moment touching
elbows with Kimbark on one side and with Merriam on the other,
all three belonging to the "Hornung crowd." Their answering
challenge of "Sold" was as the voice of one man. They
did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance.
(That was for afterward.) Their response to the offer was as unconscious
as reflex action and almost as rapid, and before the pit was well
aware of what had happened the transaction of one thousand bushels
was down upon Going's trading-card and fifteen hundred dollars
had changed hands. But here was a marvel--the whole available
supply of wheat cornered, Hornung master of the situation, invincible,
unassailable; yet behold a man willing to sell, a bear bold enough
to raise his head.
"That was Kennedy, wasn't it,
who made that offer?" asked Kimbark, as Going noted down
the trade--"Kennedy, that new man?"
"Yes; who do you suppose he's
selling for; who's willing to go short at this stage of the game?"
"Maybe he ain't short."
"Short! Great heavens, man,
where'd he get the stuff?"
"Blamed if I know. We can account
for every handful of May. Steady! Oh, there he goes again."
"Sell a thousand May at one-fifty,"
vociferated the bear-broker, throwing out his hand, one finger
raised to indicate the number of "contracts" offered.
This time it was evident that he was attacking the Hornung crowd
deliberatedly, for, ignoring the jam of traders that swept toward
him, he looked across the pit to where Going and Kimbark were
shouting "Sold! Sold!" and nodded his head.
A second time Going made memoranda
of the trade, and either the Hornung holdings were increased by
two thousand bushels of May wheat or the Hornung bank account
swelled by at least three thousand dollars of some unknown short's
money.
Of late--so sure was the bull crowd
of its position--no one had even thought of glancing at the inspection
sheet on the bulletin board. But now one of Going's messengers
hurried up to him with the announcement that this sheet showed
receipts at Chicago for that morning of twenty-five thousand bushels,
and not credited to Hornung. Someone had got hold of a line of
wheat overlooked by the "clique" and was dumping it
upon them.
Wire the Chief, said Going over
his shoulder to Merriam. This one struggled out of the crowd,
and on a telegraph blank scribbled:
"Strong bear movement--New
man--Kennedy--Selling in lots of five contracts--Chicago receipts
twenty-five thousand."
The message was despatched, and
in a few moments the answer came back, laconic, of military terseness:
"Support the market."
And Going obeyed, Merriam and Kimbark
following, the new broker fairly throwing the wheat at them in
thousand-bushel lots.
"Sell May at 'fifty; sell May;
sell May." A moment's indecision, an instant's hesitation,
the first faint suggestion of weakness, and the market would have
broken under them. But for the better part of four hours they
stood their ground, taking all that was offered, in constant communication
with the Chief, and from time to time stimulated and steadied
by his brief, unvarying command:
"Support the market."
At the close of the session they
had brought in the twenty-five thousand bushels of May. Hornung's
position was as stable as a rock, and the price closed even with
the opening figure--one dollar and a half.
But the morning's work was the talk
of all La Salle Street. Who was back of the raid? What was the
meaning of this unexpected selling? For weeks the pit trading
had been merely nominal. Truslow, the Great Bear, from whom the
most serious attack might have been expected, had gone to his
country seat at Geneva Lake, in Wisconsin, declaring himself to
be out of the market entirely. He went bass-fishing every day. top
On a certain day toward the middle
of the month, at a time when the mysterious Bear had unloaded
some eighty thousand bushels upon Hornung, a conference was held
in the library of Hornung's home. His broker attended it, and
also a clean-faced, bright-eyed individual whose name of Cyrus
Ryder migh have been found upon the pay-roll of a rather well-known
detective agency. For upward of half an hour after the conference
began the detective spoke, the other two listening attentively,
gravely.
"Then, last of all," concluded
Ryder, "I made out I was a hobo, and began stealing rides
on the Belt Line Railroad. Know that road? It just circles Chicago.
Truslow owns it. Yes? Well, then I began to catch on. I noticed
that cars of certain numbers--thirty-one nought thirty-four, thirty-two
one ninety--well, the numbers don't matter, but anyhow, these
cars were always switched onto the sidings by Mr. Truslow's main
elevator D soon as they came in. The wheat was shunted in, and
they were pulled out again. Well, I spotted on car and stole a
ride on her. Say, look here, that car went right around the
city on the Belt, and came back to D again, and the same wheat
in her all the time. The grain was re-inspected--it was raw,
I tell you--and the warehouse receipts made out just as though
the stuff had come in from Kansas or Iowa.
"The same wheat all the time!"
interrupted Hornung.
"The same wheat--your wheat,
that you sold to Truslow."
"Great snakes!" ejaculated
Hornung's broker. "Truslow never took it abroad at all."
"Took it abroad! Say, he's
just been running it around Chicago, like the supers in 'Shenandoah,'
round an' round, so you'd think it was a new lot, an' selling
it back to you again."
"No wonder we couldn't account
for so much wheat."
"Bought it from us at one-ten,
and made us buy it back--our own wheat--at one-fifty."
Hornung and his broker looked at
each other in silence for a moment. Then all at once Hornung struck
the arm of his chair with his fist and exploded, in a roar of
laughter. The broker stared for one bewildered moment, then followed
his example.
"Sold! Sold!" shouted
Hornung almost gleefully. "Upon my soul it's as good as a
Gilbert and Sullivan show. And we--Oh, Lord! Billy, shake on it,
and hats off to my distinguished friend, Truslow. He'll be President
some day. Hey! What? Prosecute him? Not I."
"He's done us out of a neat
hatful of dollars for all that," observed the broker, suddenly
grave.
"Billy, it's worth the price."
"Well, tell you what. We were
going to boost the price to one seventy-five next week, and make
that our settlement figure."
"Can't do it now. Can't afford
it."
"No. Here; we'll let out a
big link; we'll put wheat at two dollars, and let it go at that."
"Two it is, then," said
the broker. top
The street was very dark and
absolutely deserted. It was a district on the "South Side,"
not far from the Chicago River, given up largely to wholesale
stores, and after nightfall was empty of all life. The echoes
slept but lightly hereabouts, and the slightest footfall, the
faintest noise, woke them upon the instant and sent them clamoring
up and down the length of the pavement between the iron-shuttered
fronts. The only light visible came from the side door of a certain
"Vienna" bakery, where at one o'clock in the morning
loaves of bread were given away to any who should ask. Every evening
about nine o'clock the outcasts began to gather about the side
door. The stragglers came in rapidly, and the line--the "bread
line," as it was called--began to form. By midnight it was
usually some hundred yards in length, stretching almost the entire
length of the block.
Toward ten in the evening, his collar
turned up against the fine drizzle that pervaded the air, his
hands in his pockets, his elbows gripping his sides, Sam Lewiston
came up and silently took his place at the end of the line.
Unable to conduct his farm upon
a paying basis at the time when Truslow, the "Great Bear,"
had sent the price of grain down to sixty-two cents a bushel,
Lewiston had turned over the entire property to his creditors,
and, leaving Kansas for good, had abandoned farming, and had left
his wife at her sister's boarding house in Topeka with the understanding
that she was to join him in Chicago as soon as he had found a
steady job. Then he had come to Chicago and had turned workman.
His brother Joe conducted a small hat factory on Archer Avenue,
and for a time he found there a meager employment. But difficulties
had occurred, times were bad, the hat factory was involved in
debts, the repealing of a certain import duty on manufactured
felt overcrowded the home market with cheap Belgian and French
products, and in the end his brother had assigned and gone to
Milwaukee.
Thrown out of work, Lewiston drifted
aimlessly about Chicago, from pillar to post, working a little,
earning here a dollar, there a dime, but always sinking, sinking,
till at last the ooze of the lowest bottom dragged at his feet
and the rush of the great ebb went over him and engulfed him and
shut him from the light, and a park bench became his home and
the "bread line" his chief makeshift of subsistence.
He stood now in the enfolding drizzle,
sodden, stupefied with fatigue. Before and behind stretched the
line. There was no talking. There was no sound. The street was
empty. It was so still that the passing of a cablecar in the adjoining
thoroughfare grated like prolonged rolling explosions, beginning
and ending at immeasurable distances. The drizzle descended incessantly.
After a long time midnight struck.
There was something ominous and
gravely impressive in this interminable line of dark figures,
close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely still; a close-packed,
silent file, waiting, waiting in the vast deserted night-ridden
street; waiting without a word, without a movement, there under
the night and under the slow-moving mists of rain.
Few in the crowd were professional
beggars. Most of them were workmen, long since out of work, forced
into idleness by long-continued "hard times," by ill
luck, by sickness. To them the "bread line" was a godsend.
At least they could not starve. Between jobs here in the end was
something to hold them up--a small platform, as it were, above
the sweep of black water, where for a moment they might pause
and take breath before the plunge.
The period of waiting on this night
of rain seemed endless to those silent, hungry men; but at length
there was a stir. The line moved. The side door opened. Ah, at
last! They were going to hand out the bread.
But instead of the usual white aproned
undercook with his crowded hampers there now appeared in the doorway
a new man--a young fellow who looked like a bookkeeper's assistant.
He bore in his hand a placard, which he tacked on the outside
of the door. Then he disappeared within the bakery, locking the
door after him.
A shudder of poignant despair, an
unformed, inarticulate sense of calamity, seemed to run from end
to end of the line. What had happened? Those in the rear, unable
to read the placard, surged forward, a sense of bitter disappointment
clutching at their hearts.
The line broke up, disintegrated
into a shapeless throng--a throng that crowded forward and collected
in front of the shut door whereon the placard was affixed. Lewiston,
with the others, pushed forward. On the placard he read these
words:
"Owing to the fact that the
price of grain has been increased to two dollars a bushel, there
will be no distribution of bread from this bakery until further
notice."
Lewiston turned away, dumb, bewildered.
Till morning he walked the streets, going on without purpose,
without direction. But now at last his luck had turned. Overnight
the wheel of his fortunes had creaked and swung upon its axis,
and before noon he had found a job in the street-cleaning brigade.
In the course of time he rose to be first shift boss, then deputy
inspector, then inspector, promoted to the dignity of driving
a red wagon with rubber tires and drawing a salary instead of
mere wages. The wife was sent for and a new start made.
But Lewiston never forgot. Dimly
he began to see the significance of things. Caught once in the
cogs and wheels of a great and terrible engine, he had seen--none
better--its workings. Of all the men who had vainly stood in the
"bread line" on that rainy night in early summer, he,
perhaps, had been the only one who had struggled up to the surface
again. How many others had gone down in the great ebb? Grim question;
he dared not think how many.
He had seen the two ends of a great
wheat operation--a battle between Bear and Bull. The stories (subesquently
published in the city's press) of Truslow's countermove in selling
Hornung his own wheat, supplied the unseen section. The farmer--he
who raised the wheat--was ruined upon one hand; the working man--he
who consumed it--was ruined upon the other. But between the two,
the great operators, who never saw the wheat they traded in, bought
and sold the world's food, gambled in the nourishment of entire
nations, practiced their tricks, their chicanery and oblique shift
"deals," were reconciled in their differences, and went
on through their appointed way, jovial, contented, enthroned,
and unassailable. top