Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-02-17

while he was alive. Hawley was a
| man who was among the most expert
Practitioners with the financial lethal
weapons used i'll Wall Street but he
carefully avoided letting any one know
| more than he had to about his opera
| tons. From the most modest of be-
sinnings he piled up a fortune vari-
ously estimated at from $4,000, 900 to
| $100, 100000. He ordered his life and
laid out his work each day with math
ematical precision. To him business
was great institution. He played the
game all the time, and looked far into
the future. He made plans to with
stand assault: he always was cam
| paigning.
Secretly he Vas rather vain. He
wished to be a figure in the memory
OF men long time after his race was
run. His eyes We're fixed to the last
upon the great object of his life. which
was to be the king of a vast trans
continental system OF railways. And
Yet, at a time when he was embarked
in his biggest undertakings and was
stricken BY death. it was discovered
he left no valid will. Apparently he
had forgotten or had postponed sign
ing one that he had drawn up two
or three years ago. 1t now looks as
IL the great fortune he had piled up
would pass to his next of kin. to per-
sons who know less of his affairs and
Ambitions than even his acquaintance
IN Wall Street. It is one of the re-
markable "reversals of form that
Wall street sometimes furnishes
through its big men.
John w. Gates had a reputation OF
being rather careless and devil-may-
care. Yet when Gates died ii was
found he had given the most careful
study and attention to every detail as
TO the disposition of his great estate,
and the perpetuation of his properties
and industrial monuments for many
years after his death.
Though cases of forgetfulness like
Hawley's are few and far between,
other famous people down in the Wall
Street district have had lapses Of
memory that were more or less costly
To themselves. For instance: The ia =
vorite breakfast food of the Wall Street
man is statistics. There are myriads
of men in the financial region who
can give you the history of every cor
poration whose securities are dealt in
down there: they can tell you every
minute detail about it. from it's birth
up to the present day. They have huge
books in their office libraries. they
have books of ready reference on their
desks. A number of firms get out vol
umes every year relating to this set
or that set of corporations They have
specialists in railroad properties. in
or oil isc in
critics and in mercantile properties
And yet a beardless youth, who was
down in Wall Street some years ago.
put up a job on some of the sliekest
of the Wall Street operators and used
the rules of the Stock Exchange so
cleverly that if the men ne toyed with
had not thrown themselves on the
mercy of the Stock Exchange and in
duced its governors to abrogate the
rules so far as they We're concerned.
he would have ruined every last one
of them
The man was Henry S. Ives. He
worked a corner in Mutual Telegraph
stock All but 200 shares of Mutual Tele-
graph had been retired, Apparently Ives
was the only man who remembered this
He juggled Mutual Telegraph until he
had dozens of Wall street houses short
thousands of shares. Then he asked
them to deliver. If the rules of the
Stock Exchange had been enforced, ne
could have compelled these houses to pay
him any price he demanded. even
$l,0000o0 a share or go bankrupt In
stead of that they sent him to Jail
Another was the case where August
Belmont and the Rothschids lost con-
troll of the Louisville & Nashville Rail-
road through forgetting the fact that
when they sold short their new issue OF
L. & n. stock they We're imperiling the
control of the property. The new issue
was some s5,0O0O00, They sold more than
double that amount about 30 days before
the new issue could be placed on the
market. They thought L. & n. stock
was high at the time. and were tempted
to sell more than they should and reap
a greater profit.
John w. Gates remembered what they
10 tx,ha