St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-09-09
A WALL STREET BOOK.
Henry Clews Reviews Els Experiences
at the Money Center.
THE MEN OF "THE STREET"
Speculation as Business---Commodore
Vanderbilt Daniel Drew, Jay Gould
and others.


and Others.
@ ELDOM does a
AM7 good actor make
.lIH/LEAS a success full
HlEfE( * EII- dramatiSt. There
WS\Y-IEN4I never yet was an
MN SDES example of a
$~ brilliant soldier
SSSANtN making an able
NATM&NN historian of his
MIAF .A<At own &C hieve-
ASozP1s ments. By parity
M(E V&L1R III OF reasoning it
WEM will not be sur
nN%V prising that in
HESSAse Twenty Eight
HF Years in Wall
VIA Street" driving
Publishing company Henry Clews, the
banker, has made rambling, dun,
turgid book out of theme with which
he is as thoroughly familiar as any liv-
ing American. 1t is now thirty years
since Henry Clews found his way TO
Wall street. 1t was on the heels of
the financial panic of 1857 that
he made his advent in the street,
but Mr.. Clews does not tell us how ne
came to go there or what he did after he
went there. He does say, however, that
the panic of 1857 was called the ''West-
ern blizzard" Was it? The mention OF
the crash that preceded Mr.. Clews'
debut in the street recalls to his reflect
i've mind the operators and methods of
thirty years ago. The old-fashiOned
business men who did business in Wall
street at that time seem to have in
spired the enterprising operator
with a sort of cOntemptuOuS re-
spect. Although Jacob Little made
and lost nine fortunes in his day, and
Anthony Morse, ''the lightning calcu-
lator," cOnjured up 81 ,000, 600 with assets
as unsubstantial as those of Ferdinand
Ward and saw it disappear with a
magic that would Startle Keene him
self, those old-timers-the antique ele-
ment," Mr.. Clews calls them-knew
nothing of the blessings of corners"
and "blind pOols' and kept on "chOk-
ing off salutary enterprise by doing
business in a Legitimate way. And
yet it seems to be the old fellows after
all that make money in Wall street.
Few persons gain sufficient experience,
Mr.. Clews informs us, to command
success until they have one tOOtin the
grave, but when that happy time comes
bHCoc Olu NCbCId VI IlIC oblCOb alO
seen "hObbling down on their canes to
their brokers' offices" in times OF panic
to secure a big "rake-in." According
to Mr.. ClewS' accounted them they are
a cross between Dives and the devil,
but all the same Henry Clews is terribly
shocked at that clerical Obliquity of
Judgment that has led the Rev. L. De
Witt Talnage and others ignOrantly to
yilify Wall street.
80
According to the peculiar morality of
Henry ClewS gambling is not gambling,
but Specializing, and Specializing" is
business" 1t is no wonder, therefore,
that the men of Wall street have "be-
come world-renowned for their straight
forward DEALING" and that ''there is no
place on earth where adventurous
thieves have fewer sympathiZers." But,
all the same, ''the great captain of the
Unions salvation was as helpless as a
babe when Ferdinand Ward and James
d. Fish moved upon his works." and
there is nothing immoral in the Sin
comparable capacity for wriggling out
of tight place. OF Jay Gould; Mr.:
CleWs firmly believes in the morality of
corners" and his idea of business ca
pacity seems to be skill in their manip-
ulatiOn. The art of embedding is the
practice of a virtue by which this skill
is tested. As a matter of course the
authors long experience in Wall street
enables him to illustrate his peculiar
moral code by many interesting
and suggestive anecdotes. Among
these is an account of old Commo-
dOre Vanderbilt'S liable device of I'M
loading while forcing the bears to cover
at high figureS"-a pious device into
which that good old man was forced
against his Will, but which enabled him
to get the ''bulge" completely on all
the other parties connected with it. 1t
is pathetic story that Mr.. Clews tells
of this particular cOrner-it is ''Some-
what romantic" also, he tells us. The
commodore was summing himself on a
pile of logs on the Jersey side of the Hud-
son when he was informed that wicked
and unregenerate clique' of bears
had cOnspired to sell Hudson ''short,"
The good old man at once left the
Jersey wOod-pile for the sanctuary, the
drOppings of which delight the soul of
Henry Clews. There he found that
the bears had secured nearly all the
Hudson stock in existence. 1t is with
immense satisfaction that MIR. CleWS re-
lates how, with the corner thus
forced upon him, the commodore
managed the trick of getting the bears
to turn the stock for him and then
caught them.
-
Another good man of whom Mr..
ClewS relates many anecdotes is the late
Daniel Drew, who founded theological
seminary and died a pauper. Mr.. Clews
makes the point that the success of both
Vanderbilt and Drew was due to their
illiteracy. "Never tell nobody what yer
goin' to do till yer do it," was the favor
ite maxim of the old commodore.
"Gimme them sheers," was Drew's way
of designating the shares he wished to
purchase. Daniel Drew at one time
could command more ready money than
any man in Wall street. His wealth
was estimated at s13,0o0,000. This
money not only brought him financial
fame, but cringing admiration. Be-
cause he got rich by the ruin of other
man no WAS Winpd and dinad &C n p1,h