The Washington times., 1901-07-21
SOME COSTLY 1NGRoDUcT1oNs.
Large Sums Paid I'm England for a
Social Handxhake.

According to an article on costly intro
ductions, which appeared in a London
| weekly, $4,000 is the record sum paid for
the privilege of shaking somebody's hand.
This was the price paid on one occasion
| for hankshake with the late Colonel
North. and that bluff old financier was 50
| enraged when he heard of the transaction
| that he cut his friendship with the intro
| ducer then and there and paid the money
back to the man who had sought the in
| troduction-paid It out of his own pocket
But If all the tales one hears in the
| city are true, and Colonel Ncrth had un-
dertaken to reimburse all the sums which
had been taken to obtain his handshake
he would not have died so rich as he did
Twenty, thirty, and fifty pounds were fire.
quently paid for introductions to the nj
trate king by persons who expected him
to help them make their fortunes. Need
| less to say. the money was practically
thrown away in most cases.
When T. E. Hooley was in the zenith
of his meteoric success there was hardly
a pushing man of inventions or business
who did not seek the famous financier,
and the consequence was that Mr.. Hooley
had to draw Gordon around himself to
keep the wildcap schemers away. or he
ness
Mr.. Hooley's intimate friends might
have amassed fortunes in fees for intro
ductions. for all sorts of sums were Of
fered for such service. In one case $4,000
was offered and declined, while a fee of
1900 was paid for a handshake with Mr..
Hooley by Midland county merchant,
who wanted his business floated, only
week or two before the crasn~came.
Of course Mr. Hcoley was no party to
these bribes. of which he may be totally
ignorant TO this day. If half the bribes
that were offered for introduction to the
meteoric financier were accepted Mr.
Hooley's friends made more out of him
than he made out of himself.
1t has been limited that another IA
nous financier. who was madly sought
after by hundreds of people who want
ed him to finance their schemes en-
ployed a friend to accept all bribes Of
fered in this manner, and that the two
shared the amounts. which were not in
frequently very considerable.
The truth is the fnancier discovered
that certain friend was making a very
handsome thing by introducing to him
people with schemes and concerns and
that he threatened the friend with ex-
with a complete list of the names of per-
sons from whom he had accepted bribes
for introductions and fully repaid all
such sums. The friend laughed at the
threat, refused to comply with either
OF the demands and declared that he
would give out that the amounts had all
been shared with the fnancier himself IL
the latter mentioned the matter to any
one.
The financier dared not imperiI his rep
utation by being slandered in this way |
and was, therefore. compelled to keep ST.
lent But after his death. when it be-
came known that his friend had intro
duced persons to him at so much time, |
the introducer declared that It had al |
ways been done with the knowledge of |
the fnacier, who had had half of all the |
sums obtained in this way. Hence the
rumor, which is absolutely without found |
alton.
The introducer admitted that he had |
made $4,000 by introducing people to the
hnancier, which shows the bald improba-
bility of his assertion that he only took
half the proffered bribes, since it was
hardly likely that $50 OOO was forthcom-
ing for mere introductions to the finan-
cier.
A millionaire money lender once offered
one of the aristocratic clients the return
of all the latters promissory notes,
amounting to nearly $4,000, If he would
introduce him socially to three titled gem
tlemen, and he faithfully redeemed his
promise. on another occasion the same
millionaire offered to knock off $500 of
a debt owed him by a client II the latter
gave dinner to some of the smarter of
his friends and invited the money lender.
The money lender was so pleased with
the success of the dinner that he increas-
ed the deduction to s., ,0O0-Tit-