The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-06-03
A MONETARY sALMAGUNDL

Stock Campaigns-Rooms OF Mill
ionaires That Cost Fortune to Fur
nish-The Famous Bill Travers and
Els Methods
NEW YORK, June 2-"There is monkey
and parrot time ahead for those who be-
iieve in higher prices for stocks" said Add
son Cammack, now one of the most promi-
nent stock operators.
His opinion is of no special Importance;
he is quite as likely to be wrong as right,
and vet Wall street now closely watches his
movements and listens to his words as it
might to an oracle. He is the successor of
''Baronn Woerishoffer who suggested
medieval robber baron of the Black Forest
of Germany riding booted and spurred to
perpetual attacks on great properties which
he mad sold in advance at his own valuation,
in other words a persistent and almost
chronic bear Cammack, or Cam" as
he is Familiarity called, is, however, of a
very different temperament. There Is
nothing of the soldier in his composition: he
is an adept at running-he was a blockade
runner 1t seems during the war trading with
Nassau, and he sails into the market now
like one of the old rakish-looking war
blockade steamers, painted gray and setting
well down in the water, stealing past the
Union gun-boats and men-of-war in a
Southern harbor on a dark night to secure
cargo of cotton worth 81 900 a bale, and
then with lights out and amid death-like
stiffness creeping out again at o'clock III
the morning past the frowning port holes of
the iron-clads to the open sea and an lnylt-
tng tropical market.
Cammack never shows fight; he never
had the pluck to enter the Southern ranks
and carry musket-he would rather, it IS
generally understood, rHa the blockade; he
carries no guns; he puts on full steam and
takes TO his heels at the first sign of spec
ulative man-of-war that might blow him
out of water. In other words if he finds he
is on the losing side he runs at once.
He tries the stock market as boy would
try the ice on a skating pond to see whether
it will bear; he tests the market by putting
his foot on it. If it will easily bear his
whole weight-that is, his largest ''short"
sales-he covers" at once and takes the
other stock. If the ice breaks he pounds 1t
until it is deep on the 'bear" side 1t was
as bear that he made large part of his
fortune of six or seven millions. Such an
operator thinks very little of carrying 80,
900 shares of stock.
He is a large man with large square fea-
lures, which do not usually relax into
smile unless the value of other peoples
property is falling. He is in middle life
and was bachelor until year or two ago,
when he married a young wife. He is very
brusQue in his manners and is therefore not
generally liked. One of the strange stories
told about him is that he once lent Jay Gould
$1,000, 900 without scrap of paper as Sc
curity, and that Mr.. Gould returned the
money. / mention Cammack because one
hears his doleful representations quoted so
often now in Wall street. He stands like a
wrecker, glass in hand on a rock-bound
coast, watching richly freighted ship that
hehopes will be driven ashore in some nurri-
cane and delight his itching fingers with the
spoil
Almost daily he may be seen in brokers'
Office in Broad street sharply cycling the
tape as it reels off the story of the specula-
tive fight, and in the evening he PAGES the
tessellated marble floor of the Windsor
Hotel Office and talks with grim satisfaction
of the trouble which he thinks is coming
upon the railroad companies because of a
lack of freight and the cutting of rates and
the dizziness of trade. His speculative
strategy is unconsciously based ON the Fabian
policy; he always retreats rather than in
cur big risks; he does not undertake to fight
the market as the operator with few hun
dred dollars always does; he simply tries to
find out which way it is really headed and
then he tails in" after it. He has made
it pay.
The famous William R. Travers pursued
much the same policy. After the famous
Trent affair in the late war when Confed-
crate Commissioners Mason and Slidell
we're taken from an English steamer by a
Union commander, MIR. Travers, who slut
tered, said:
"Bb-boys, sell 'em s-s-short."
War with England seemed inevitable; the
danger kept the stock market agitated for
months. There was then no Atlantic cable,
and the only communication with Europe
was therefore by steamers which arrived
aboucOhce week. They always brought
the London Times, which breathed out
slaughter like a green-eyed dragon of
fairy tale, belching fire from mouth and
nostrils and frightening the stock specula-
tors as the scaly-coaUed monster of the
wonder-book does the little dumpling-face
frequenters of the nursery. or course, it
now seems ridiculous and cowardly buster,
but the North In the agonies of a Titanic
struggle could not attend to John Bull at
that moment, and was glad enough that a
stout little lady who was friendly to the
United States happened TO be on the British
throne to keep British statesmen with hun
cry eyes on America in check. And among
the number, by the way, was Gladstone.
Every time steamer arrived Travers had
some one on hand to secure the English
newspapers, and he often paid large fees to
pursers for copies in advance of anyone
else Then he would rush around to the
Stock Exchange and either put out fresh
lines OF short sales or else cover" as cir
cumstances seemed to require. But ne sold
short every time the market rallied until the
Trent affair was settled He acted on the
theory that when there is a cloud on the
market it is good policy to sell short aud
continue to do so until the cloud is entirely
dispeled.
Speaking of the fact that William K.
Vanderbilt" said a well-known club man
the other evening, "has room i'll his house
which cost $175,000 to furnish, recalls
something not generally known-that you
can give an order to an agent in New York
and secure some rare old furnishings from
the palaces of the nobility Of Europe In
many of the houses of New York million
aires there are rooms with furnishing once
owned by European nobility-the same
antique furniture, the same tapestried cell
ings, and paneling and richly-caryed ma
hogany wainscoting, feet high, and can
vas ceilings adorned with beautiful oil
paintings. Sometimes a room is an exact
facsimile of one that New York man has
happened to see in some palace of Europe,
and the cost is often enormous The peer
age are not averse TO selling A few years
ago the Duke Of Marlborough sold 81 600
90 worth of valuable furnishings
The & Id of American millionaires seems
a more positive farce than line of 100
belted earls or the bluest of Norman blood.
OSCAR WmLoUGHBY RIGGS.