Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-02-27
Especial Telegram to the Globe. !

cinity of the cathedral to-day, stepped
into Enos Gargeans brokers' parlors, di
agonially opposite the Vanderbilt resi-
dences. I stepped down the brown stone
steps and into the series of painted sa-
looms, the telegraph operator being hidden
out of the way in a sort of dark alcove.
inquired of two or three gambling custom
ers, who seemed to be taking up the tape
string as if they were going to eat it, what
the situation was.
"Well,' said one herculean person with
a Southern accent, 'the tendency is gener-
ally downward, though we have little
booms every two or three days that cozoe
and sink. The trouble is there are no
more customers outside of those who have
nothing else to do but speculate"
''Are stocks generally much reduced!"
eyes, almost everything is way off.
Even VanderbiIts stocks have fallen many
per cent. in the last month";
''What is the matter with Vanderbilt
"His credit.It suffered great injury when be
sold }out his followers in that Western
! Union deal two or three years ago. You
| see there were a large number of people
who went in and bought what Vanderbilt
held, and in the Western Union matter
some of these inquired what they should do
with their stock. He said: am holding
| all mine. / shan't sell single share. They
all held, and the first thing they knew he
was out of it. That class of custom ers
had been followers of his father.
They shook their heads and said:
We don't like this at all
this is new thing for Mr.. Vanderbilt to
do; and from that moment large per
centage of the Vanderbilt customers have
stayed out of speculation, believing that
there is nobody honest in the street. A
little later came Mr.. Vanderbilt's system
of pegging up Lake Shore until it got to
120, when he suddenly slipped out of it,
and let it fall out. Fully half of the re-
the market disgusted, to return no more;
consequently his stocks are no
longer held up to the notch they
were. He is not stroug enough
himself to take his whole line of stocks
and carry them to certain figure, and he
always relied on those who believed in him
and his family to carry the other end of
the burden. The absence of that public
accounts for the steady depression of his
Michigan Central, the flop of his Lake
Shore, and even the relative weakness of
his New York Central. A high character
in men can no more be trifed with
than pure character in a woman.
The man who represents many, whose
responsibility is reat,makes a slip in rec
titude from which he can recover only by
years of we'll doing"
Said to the moralist: "What is the sit
uation of James Keene now?"
''Well, we don't know. This is sure that
he is no longer an influential quantity on
the stock market. He is said to have an
interest in some new pipe line company to
bring oil to the seaboard, and some
think he is also speculating
in wheat and produce, but in the stock
market he is gone goose, one of the ''has
beens'' My moralistic friend then said:
Nothing is SO entirely dead as bursted
leader of Wall street. He is not like
man of any special talent or information
who fails in business, and still possesses
his skill and brains. The Wall street
operator is mere gambler, and when he
goes under he is as much on the pavement
as faro gambler, who is out of a stake and
out of friends. Keene came here we'll off,
and took hold of the street in quiet way,
and then began to get interested. Finally
it was thought he had made great deal of
money. The present idea is that he has
lost great deal of money. In the last two
or three weeks he has probably made some
money, but it cannot amount to much
compared to what he was supposed to be
worth two or three years ago."
''What has he lost his money in?"
swell, pretty much in everything. Here
and there he lost considerable, and the
aggregate has been enough to weaken him
as an authority, and as he is not
celebrated for anything else but specnla-
tion, to fail in that is to go out.''
Said l to my informant, who was mean
time studying the tape measure very
closely: ''Do you anticipate hard times?'
mo, 1 do not; but the outside public is
a little seized with that idea, and talk |
about this being repetition of 1873. In |
my judgement the only black spot in the |
country is the speculative market of New
York city. Things have been rushed too
hard, and duplicity has been general, and
this great army of brokers, LOO to 1900 !
in number, has awakened and found them
selves maneuvering on barren plain with |
no spectators, nobody in sight. There |
seems not to be the least inducement to |
anybody to go into Wall street now. Yet !
the prospect for crop is good, while the |
foreign prospect is said to be very bad. !
There seems to be no place where |
any great failure can happen. In |
1873 there were half-a-dozen rail
road enterprises being doomed on the |
American public on the gov
ernment loan plan, that is, the
banking houses all through the |
country we're filed with Northern Pacific,
g. Ohio, Mobile d Ohio, and !
similar bonds, and after certain time
they would not sell, and therefore contracts
which had been made for railroad build
ing could not be paid for, and bills went
to protest, and the people were staggered,
because they had thought the three or
four banking houses behind these
schemes were sound. At the
present time there is no banking house
responsible for any railroad.
Most of the new railroad enterprises are
backed by the old trunk lines, which have