The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1877-02-07
The First Purchase of Railroad Stock.

1t was about 1857 that the late Com
modore Vanderbilt begun to be con-
vinced that railroads, and not steam
boats, were his element, and he dropped
his steamboats, as quietly MS years before
he had given up sailing vessels to adopt
them. He had large cash accumulatlons.
He begun with New Jersey Central and
in 1868 he bought Harlem modestly.
Harlem was in no very promising condl-
ton at the time. The bears were feeding
Oh it and it had got down to three cents
on dollar. Wall street misiudged the
commodore, and considering him of like
passions as itself, set out to treat him ac-
cordingly, and with some resentment that
new hand should venture to lay hold OF
so old bone at the start. But Wander
bilt was in no sense q speculatOr. He
believed in himself and in all his works
and proposed to have whatever he was
interested in prosper. He worked his
railroads for the uses of them, and not
for the uses of the street, and from the
first stood by them in good report and
evil report and forced success out of all
of them. Indeed, when he was making
his beginning with Harlem the street
soon found out this new fellows method,
and with more or less grief to itself has
had reasons of renewing the discovery
ever since. Harlem stood at three. He
begun to buy it and brought it up to
fifty-seven. "I've got few millions
lying idle" he said to wondering ac-
quaintance, "and Harlem is going up to
par if we give it time. If I don't get the
benefit of it, my children will This
amused the brokers. Buying Harlem
for an investment was so downright ab-
surd, and they accommodated him freely
He bought all winter. In April there
begun to be reports that Harlem had got
something street franchise down
Broadway to the Battery, some said, but
couldn't find anything of the sort III the
charter, and it looked rather improbable,
and this franchise was just what it had
always hungrily lacked. April 81, in the
evening, the common council with great
haste made precisely that grant, and
when the news got to the brokers away
went Harlem up to seventy-tive. The
commodore had calculated on this much,
but foresaw storms as well, and deter
mined to hold up his stock in all Ca
lamity. A large '"bull element in the
street helped him, and during that sum
mer what is remembered for its sudden
disastrous alterations of ebb and flow rs
"The Charlottesville Rise 3" Of stocks
followed. Late in June a queer thing
begun to happen, namely, that the COM
mon councilmen who had been so gener-
ous of their franchise begun to sell Har-
lem short. Then they rescinded their
generous ordinance, as the commodore
had all along expected, though they
thought they were being scampish
enough to take him in. Before that
Judge Brady, in common pleas, had en-
Joined the laying of rails in Broadway,
and on the whole it looked like disaster
for the commodore's stock. So the
merry brokers sold short, and the stock
dropped to seventy-two, and rebounded
and fell again in its new summer fashion.
The commodore had two motives now
one the safety and success of his stock
and the other the bitter punishment of
it's assailants. 81 bide my time" he
said, and he silently bought block after
block of the stock. When settling days
came there was TO stock to he had; the
commodore's small assailauts Of the COM
mon council were ruined and their allies
of the street in dire straits, for up went
Harlem to 115, 100, 130, $50, 1SO
"Short of Harlem" and smashed y
were synonyms the rest of that season.