The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-12-11
KING OF THE. WHEAT PIT
JOSEPH LETTERS SUDDEN RISE IN
THE WORLD OF SPECULATION.
A ChicagOan with a Remarkable Chin
Who Has Found "a KIOndilke on
the Board of Trade.
Chicago Times-Herald.

veterans who in other times have won
through sheer force of money, and have
slaughtered opponents in the grain arena
without mercy or pity, find themselves face
to face with new giant, whose check
covers one of the richest estates of the
world. 1t has been a battle of pluck,
shrewdness, persistence and determination.
The dealers over the way pitied his verdure,
the sublime simplicity which brought the
greenhcrn into their paths. They were
chuckling over the big price which the
young man would contribute for his lesson
and experience. They counted him about
the incest, juciest victim they ever had
set their eyes upon. They neglected to look
at his chin.
Joseph Letter is a most peculiar man-not
peculiar in the sense of eccentric or in any
other disparaging sense There probably
never lived man just like him. He is not
even like his father. A son unlike father
is apt to be unlike any one. 1t never will
be possible for the biographers to say of
him that he was a self-made man, self
made the self-made men tell. His sue
cess has come to him because he was capa-
BILE enough to succeed to the management
of vast properties. This management did
not come to him until he had shown that
he was able to plant dollars where they
would grow, blossom and yield him two
fold. He came from Harvard five or six
yeards ago with a degree. 1t was some
what of disappointment and surprise to
two sorts Of friends of his that he went into
business at all. All the men and women
who had known him picked him to assume
at once the profession of a gentleman of
leisure. He kept the big house in Tower
place going. 1t is reported that he had a
valet. 1t would have regularly followed in
the natural order of things that he should
have froWned upon markets and rentals
and leases. The people who thought trash
like that failed to look at his chin.
HIS START IN LIFE.
The father did not know exactly the stuff
that was in the son. He remembered that
he went through years of training-very
humble at times-to arrive at his age of
financial discretion. Joseph had no such
experience. He never hal sold goods over a
counter nor worked from a clerkship to a
commercial dictatorship. His early life had
been spent in private schools and 1T the
university-a course very different from pio-
neer life in bringing out the qualities which
make Skillful money handlers He never had
been against the hard wall of making ms
own way. The father concluded to go Slow
ly-SloWly as a man of his wealth would eS-
innate it, He placed $1,OO0OOO in his son
hands. 1t was a lot of money for an mex
perienced Hasty Pudding mana beardlesS
Delta Kappa Epsilon brother-to start with.
1t was such piece. of good luck that there
were men on all sides crazy willing ls So so
down with advice and suggestions. The
young graduate never had found that the
Bible meant pretty nearly what II salo
when it declared that all men were more or
less liars. His plunges went awry for
long time. 1t began to look like another case
of rich mans sons in the philosophers
pVP 10 nhilOSOnhprc studied that
chin.
Joseph Letter learned a great deal during
his first years among the wolves. His eX-
periences taught him that it was a poor in
vestn4ent to put too much confidence in a
proposition which the Jother side made.
There came an intimatiQp to him that the
fact that the other man had a game was
pretty conclusive proof that the best side of
the game was on the gamester's side. All
at once there was a change and the iar-
ward graduate took new tack. His plan
to study the details of the things he
wanted to have anything to do with. One
line of stocks he liked was the City Rail-
way He thought it would not be amiSs for
ambitious man in that line to get facts
about street railways, the cost of operation
powers and all other minute and technical
inside information There is no one who
tell who his tutor, but Joseph
Letter can tell you offhand the compare
tive amount of resistance which flat rails
offer to the wheels as compared with the
groove rails. He has had time 10 learn the
amount of electric current that is diSSi-
pated in its transit over the wires. Older
heads marveled at his sudden insight into
mechanical standpoint. He was made di-
rector. 1t was like letting camel into the
tent. He is likely soon to walk off with the
tent He may be president in the spring
when the company is reorganized. He wants
to be; The directors are beginning to no
tice that chin.
elder Letter became convinced that the son
had inherited the skill which it had taken
him hard life to acquire The, $1,000 600
nest egg had attracted hens with golden
eggs. 1t was at one time on the verge of
being smashed, but the, risky risks had
turned as the man thought they would, and
he came from the shadow with flying colorS
and more money than he started with IL
then became the greatest joyiof Levi Letter
to buy block for his son or to turn over
blCck-block of buildings or railroad or irin-
ing property-to the exclusive care of the
son. 1t seemed that the magic touch had
grown more magic in. the second genera
ton. More and more the father went into
retirement and the son took up the business.
The son realized the responsibility. He put
the same attention for a time to mining that
he had put to street railways. All kinds of
ores, good bad, Indifferent and slated, were
collected for examination. He became an
expert, and if there is mine owner looking
for young man with millions to invest and
the mine is a bit shady, he knows enough to
keep away from Joseph Letter. 1t is said he
can guess at the value of a rock or shaft
as accurately as any man but an aSsayer. A
man tried to interest him the other day in a
hole out West. The man said he had been
told by another man that the ground was
yellow with gold at that particular point
Mr. Letter begged to disagree. He not only
knew the ore was poor but that the terri
tory had no good ore, and gave the second
man the location of the fairy mine from
which the sample had been taken. 1t is no
place for the bunco or the gold brick man
that chin.
A "COINER' OF MONEY.
1t was this cleverness to win that fattened
his own holdings and those of his father. 1t
is considered on the~street a comparatively
conservative estimate to put the properties
under his control-and he is only thirty-at
$50 900 600 1t makes s., 900 900 for each year CT
his lfe-probably makes him the youngest
financial king in the world. The fortune is
divided among the best institutions of the
city, extends into the big railroads, out into
ranch holdings in the far West and great
pits of wealth in the hills of the ore coun-
tries. The more he spends the more he earns,
and the men who help him TO operate claim
that one of the best reasons for his phe-
nomenal progress is his devotion to the eS-
sential little things of his various interests.
His own fortune has grown TO great proper
taken to neglect the smallest demands of
the property of his father 1t is related that
the other day he was called up by phone
TO sanction or stop prospective deal which
needed 600 cash. The order was needed
on the instant to check the move of a giant
side of the board. A man came into the Of
fice-a modest tenant of one of his fathers
buildings. Mr.. Letter recognized him, as the
man insisted he could not wait q minute.
The king asked to be excused from the
phone and caused the trade to stop until
he finished the transaction with the tenant