The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1885-03-14

ward mankind was to break jay Gould.
and offered their advice and influence.
Keene made money fast as long as
prices advanced. He bought with great
freedom and courage, and his name
was in every ones mouth. But when
the tide turned Keene was loaded He
did not have the sagacity and celebrity
of Gould, who has knack of turning
even misforttines TO good account but
kept on getting in deeper and deeper
until the inevitable raped at his door,
and he found he had lost all. Keene's
error seems to have been the error COM
mon to beginners in Wall Street. He
wanted to trade all the time. The cool
headed operator waits until the market
suits him. Three or four times every
year all hands in the street agree that
stocks are very low. There has been
furry, and prices have gone down ten
or twenty per cent; they are sure to re-
act within comparatively short time.
Then it is that the prudent man comes
to the front with his cash. But the man
who goes down into the street every day
and buys or sells for q short tttrti feels
as though he must do something every
day, and that kind of trading never fails
to wreck the longest purse: Keene was
always in the market, and he was always
buying. The sharp set of fell
lows who manipulated Denver and Rio
Grande up to 10 or Whereabouts sold a
great lot Of stock to Keene, and he was
compelled to take more to hold the
price against their raids when they had
sold it short. He never was cunning
enough to conceal his operations, and
the sharks of the street marked him
from the first. He was indiscreet
enough TO quarrel with Jay Gould and
to threaten him, and Gould thereafter
did not count him as friend. 1t is
very much better for a young Wall
Street man to have Goufd's friendship
than his enmity. And so Keene
floundered until his money was gone
He bids fair to become what the boys
call ghost of Wall Street.
That thoroughfare is full of ghosts
OF men who have been rich and who
now are penniless. They march down
to the street every morning regularly as
do the millionaires, and wander from
one brokers' Office to another, bending
over the tape and talking all day long
about the market and predicting its
course. Once in while they put up a
five-dollar bill in bucket-shop and
strut around like fighting cocks if they
increase it to ten dollars; but that is the
end. for they Immediately stake the ten
dollars and lose it. There are ex.railroad
Presidents and ex-bank Presidents and
ex-everybodys. 1t is sad to see them
and sadder to hear them talk; but it is
the old story of fortunes thrown away
in gambling-for Wall Street operating
as usually conducted on margin is
gambling simon pure, and you can not
make anything else of it. Nineteen out
OF twenty of the men who engage in it
leave money. They always have some
good explanation of why they fail, but
the fact remains that they do fail. And
that should be convincing and should
serve as warning. Three-quarters of
the Wall Street operators of to-day are
striving not to increase their fortunes,
but to get back what they have lost.
There is fascination about winning a
few hundred dollars that overbalances
the regret of losing few thousand. A
man will lose four times running and
yet go in the fifth time with an assurance
within him that he can win back
all he has lost. If he chances to
win $1,000 after he has lost 81, 900 he
instantly believes that he can make his
fortune. He never loses that belief
while he has hundred dollars remain
ing, and when the hundred is broken
he repairs to bucket shop-having
become ghost of Wall Street-frm in
the belief that on cash capital of $40
or 800 he will recuperate enough to
take him back into regular broker
office, where he will pile up the money
until he is rich again. And so he gam
bles every cent on which he can put
hands.
The Wall Street game as played at
present is losing game, and the sooner
man who is behind the game sewers
all connection with it, the better off he
will find himself in the immediate here
after. Jay Gould did not make his
money trading in the fluctuations of
stocks. He did it by buying entire rail-
roads, recognizing them, watering
their stock, consolidating them, and
putting them on the public at an enor-
nous advance from first cost or cost to
himself His gigantic schemes have
been originated by him. The theory
has been to get possession of bankrupt
roads and consolidate them and give
them the appearance of prosperity. The
Wabash system is made up of some
twenty different roads, not more than
three of which were paying running ex-
penses when Gould bought them. Yet
he threw them together and ran the
price of preferred stock up to 80, and
the common stock up to so, at which
prices the public relieved him of them
and he moved on to fresher pastures
and put up fresher jobs. His amalga-
nations and his consultations have
been on most stupendous scale, and
have demanded the output of millions;
but they have brought him back tens of
millions. The same is true, but to a
lesser extent, of Vanderbilt. He has
increased the fortune that his father
left him, not by specializing in stocks,
but by solid investment and by the in
crease in values of the properties that
came into his possession. The men who
have made fortunes through stock spec
ulations are indeed few. The men who
have lost fortunes in the same manner
are numbered by thousands.-M Y. Cor.
st. Louis Globe Democrat.
LOVE.