River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1913-03-13


market short He would be content
with the big jump the market would
make upward when it started
AS the noon hour drew near the doc
tors heart was beating like a sledge
hammer. Bivens' program had been
carried out to the letter Stocks had de-
clined for the first hour point, and in
the second hour suddenly smashed
down two more points amid the widest
excitement on the exchange.
'he moment to buy had come. The
tor was sure of it. Stocks had
,uched bottom. The big bear pool
would turn bull in a moment and the
whole market would rise by leaps and
bounds.
He called old Dugro.
"Buy for me now Amalgamated Cop.
per, the market leader, for all I'm
WORTH
The broker glared at him.
Buy! Buy in this market? Man,
are you mad"
Il said buyp' was the firm answer
whats the limit?"
mot a share without a stop loss or.
der under it,
well, with the stop?"
I'll buy you 400 shares on four
point stop"
And when it goes up five points?"
the doctor asked eagerly.
"I'll double your purchase and raise
your stop. and every five points up I'll
keep on until you are a millionairev
The old broker smiled contemptu-
ously, but it was all lost on the doctor.
''Do it quick"
The order was scarcely given before
it was executed. Dugro handed the
memorandum to Woodman with a
grunt-
at don't take long to get 'em today!
The words had scarcely left his lips
when a hoarse cry rose from the crowd
hanging over the ticker.
Copper had leaped upward a whole
point between sales. A wild cheer
swept the room. For ten minutes every
stock on the list responded and began
to climb.
The doctors face was wreathed in
smiles. Men began to talk and laugh
and feel human for the first moment
in two weeks.
Dugro grasped the Doctors hand.
and his deep voice rang above the
roar:
You're a mascot! You've broken
the spell! For Gods sake stay with
usI'
Suddenly another cry came from the
crowd at the ticker. The boy at the
board sprang to the instrument with
a single bound, his eyes blazing with
excitement. His cry of DOWN. pierre
ed every ear in the room with horror.
The panic had come.
In ten minutes stocks tumbled five
points, and the doctors last dollar was
swept into space, while the whole mar
ket plunged down. down, down into the
abyss of ruin and despair.
Men no longer tried to conceal their
emotion. Some wept, some cursed,
some laughed; but the most pitiful
sight of all was the man who could
do neither. the man with white lips
and the strange, hunted expression in
his eyes who was looking death in the
face for the first time.
A full quarter of an hour of the panic
had spent itself before the dazed
crowds in the brokers' offices read the
startling news that caused the big
break The ticker shrieked its message
above the storms din like a little
laughing demon.
THE Van Dam Trust Company Has
Closed Its Doors and Asked For the
Appointment of a RECEIVER
Bivens had not kept his solemn
pledge The great bank had stood the
run for two hours and closed its doors
And the work of destruction had just
begun.
At 8 o'clock the doctor walked out of
Dugro's Office without a dollar He
felt almoot happy by contrast with the
fools he left shutting over the floors of
Dugro's Office.
His own sense of loss was merely a
blur The revelation he had just had
of the mad lust for money which had
| begun to possess all classes was yet so
fresh and startling be could form no
adequate conception of his own posi-
ton
1t was not until he entered his own
door and paused at the sound Of 'Har
riet's voice that he began to realize
the enormity of the tragedy that had
befallen him.
Continued next week.