The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-13
Come Out of Nall Street Storm
 With Profits UngaTnersd
GOSSIP OF THE HNANCIERS
When Secret History Of Coal stril0 Comes to Light 1t May be That Origin Was In Battle Be-
 tween Big Roads.
BY w. e. NICHOLAS.

BY w. c. NICHOLAS.
 New York, October 12-(special )-The speculative pools known as the "Gould pools' seem to have been the only ones that came out of the storm in Wall street with profits garnered. They began unloading before the top was reached three weeks ago and are supposed to have realized more nearly than any of the others the benefit of the preceding rise in the market. During the later days of the slump the brokers who had been conducting the operations for the Goulds were loaning great sums of money in the street" sure indication of prosperity.
 There is fairly good authority for the statement that leading railroads of the country will have chance to take stock in the Morgan Shipping trust. in fact that Is a part of the deal that such dis position shall be made of very consid- erable portion of the shares. The theory upon which this operation in high finance Is to be worked Is that the Atlantic steamship lines should legitimately be considered as an extension of the rail- road service and should belong to the railroads. Those who profess to be ad- vised somewhat on this subject are look ing forward with curiousity to the an- nouncement of the allotment of stock for railroad absorption. The east and west trunk lines will of course come in for the heaviest amounts although interior connecting lines will be given a chance. It is almost needless to remark that roads given this opportunity will not turn their backs on 1t. To do SD would be to invite discrimination and loss. The inner circle of the mighty transportation l trust will have the distribution of the stock which Is to be taken up by rail- roads and no one will care to incur enmi-
 ty in that quarter.
 About Truot shares. 1 People wonder why steel trust shares do not show more buoyancy in view of the enormous earning, That is easily account ed for. For a year or more after the cor poration was organized the Underwriting syndicate and large individual holders of the securities of the company were per- 1 sstent sellers. Of the 1e.s100o0 shares (s1, ,OOO. 900. OOO) it is estimated that at least 100000 shares of inside stock were un-
 
 which was sold Is still .'undigested." and tens of thousands of spectators hold steel through their commission houses on margins. Investors have not yet come | forward in sufficient numbers to take l the floating supply out of the street. l The progress of digestion is going on all | the time, however, the number of share | holders in the corporation having ir- creased from 10000 at the beginning to more than 50 900 at the present time The public may get some idea of the amount of this inside stock which has poured out by recalling the recent operations of some of the leading men in the great corpora tion MT. Gates and his associates bought Louisville and Nashville, putting up S2o,- 000,0O0, 1t iS said. MT. Prick has put $10- 0Oo.000 or more into sky-scrapers and other forms of real estate in and about Pittsburg. The .tin plate party" invested $50, 100000 in the purchase of Rock ls- land, and there were numerous other in- stances showing what the "big people,, did with a goodly proportion of their steel trust holdings. Their course did not mean a lack of confidence in the future of tho property, but It Is only human nature to '.get safe" and not have all the eggs In one basket. In the case of Moore Broth CTS. D. O. Reid and " D. Leeds. compos- ing the "tin plate party and in fact al- most all the others of the rich men in the steel trust, they were obliged to in- vest their money in something outside of industrials, being barred by sense of business morality from re-entering that field or in any way competing with the corporation of which they had been a party. and in whose organization they participated
 Secret of Coal Strike.
 When the secret history of the great coal strike Is written 1t may reveal that f1a t.oa rferff, fr, frfr for the control of one or more of the great anthracite coal carrying and coal mining railroads. That expl- ation has been broadly intimated in the inner cir cles of Wall street for many a long day and it is also suggested that 1t is tho real reason why the strike was so my steriously protracted. The suggestion is sinister. I would be an ugly blot on the fair names of several people of interna- tional financial reputation should it ever be proved that they had made the suf- erings of 500.000 in the coal regions and the comfort and convenience of half the people in the United States subservient to a deal in the stock market. It is not improbable that congress may attempt to probe this matter to the bottom. but whether the facts will ever be learned is doubtful. Congressional investigations of Wall street intrigues are rarely fruit full of practical results.
 Russell Sage, the venerable fnancier, is giving signs of breaking down. He has had several ''bad spells lately and his friends fear that at any time he may be seized with fatal illness MT. Sage is reputed to be worth at least $7b. 0O000- He has very few relatives to whom he can leave his fortune. and what disposition he will make of the vast estate is one of the mysteries of Wall street.
 On one of the slumpy days in the stock market this week the report circulated on the exchange and was carried through the entire financial district that J. Peir- pont Morgan had called for police pro- lection and that twenty policemen were surrounding his banking house to guard the financier from some mysterious dan- ger. Hundreds hurried to the spot only to find that they had been the victims of hoax. True enough the police were massed about the banking house but it was because a parade was forming and they were getting into position for-thf march