Year: 1864

hS ASAnPatShtss


A Washington correspondent of the Gin
cinnati Gazette gives the following account
OF the theory and practice of gold and stock
speculation, as managed at the capital of the
nation:


whether in gold or stocks, everything in
Wall street depends upon having the earliest
news, and consequently there is not leading
stock dealing firm in New York that does not
have from one to half dozen correspondents
in Washington, charged to spare no pains or
expense in furnishing them by telegraph, and
generally in cipher, the earliest intelligence
OF any success or disaster in the field, any i'm
portant action of the Treasury Department,
any rumor OF foreign complications-in short,
anything likely to affect the hopes or fears of
the community, which fiud their barometer in
the wavering OF the gold market.


These correspondents are generally men
supposed to have the confidence of high Of
ficals, or access to early dipsatches and, for
obvious reasons, their engagement is kept as
secret as possible. Last summer one New
York banking house, in boastful moment,
claimed that il could always have news with
in an hour after the President had it; and
another was said to have numbered among
Its correspondents the chief Of staff of great
army in the field.


OF course the services of such men are not
enlisted without consideration, proportion
ate at once to the risk they run in furnishing
the desired news, and to the nature and ac-
curacy ofthe news itself. In general, this
consideration depends on what is made out
of their information. Some are promised
fixed share OF the profits; others are simply
let ln,' as the phrase goes, for fifty or a hun
dred thousand dollars, in any extensive opera
tion based on the news they furnish.


Thus-news comes Ola great disaster. 1t
will shock public confidence, and send gold
up two, three, five, and even ten per cent
One of these correspondents of great New
\ ork stock operating house gets ii few hours
before 1t becomes public. He instantly pre-
pares some previously agreed upon Dispatch
Mary is very much worse, and the doctor
gives the case up;' or John is very i'll and
will not be able to travel for some days yet
and telegraphs this innocent looking message,
not to the firm in New York. for that would
arouse suspicion, if there were a censor at the
telegraph office, but to the private address o.:
some one OF its members, or to the conaden-
tlal clerk, or even, in some cases, to the wife
ofsome one OF the house. They begin buy
ing gold at once, cautiously and through as
many third parties as possible, to avoid crea-
ting panic; and, among their ether pur-
chases, make one OF fifty or a hundred thou
sand for the man who has furnished the news.


Next day, or perhaps within a few hours,





per cent. II the correspondent has been let
in for hundred thousand, he pockets five
thousand dollars as his share of the operat tion


Occasionally one of these correspondents
makes such a lucky strike-much more often
he furnishes news for weeks and months with
out its having such an effect on the market as
TO bring him more than the merest dribbets
of profits. But the chance Of something bril-
liant has Its fascinations, and the stock opera.
n M in fnlt. pan Ia
formed people to furnish them all the news
they get.


These men haunt every lobby and commit
tee room. conference committee reaches
conclusion on some important question, af-
fectng gold, or stocks, or whisky, or any 9TH
er article Of speculation. They imagine it
profound secret, aud are startled day or two
afterward to flud that some operator In New
York had it within a few hours after its adop-
ton, and that fortune has been made out of
the intelligence. The Supreme Court makes
a decision; before it is pronounced ring in
New York has operated on its effect, and
made enough to set every one connected with
Ii up in the world. A bureau of the govern
ment resolves to recommend a tax on a par
tcular article; before the recommendation
reaches Congress, certain parties in New York
have bought up all the article they can posi-
bly, get, and when the rise comes they pock-
ct the proceeds.


1t seems utterly impossible to prevent this.
When news of important battles is coming ia,
government has sometimes attempted it, but
the effort was as idle as ii was foolish. A
censor has been established at the telegraph
Office, and he has wisely suppressed every
dispatch saying word about the war. But
servant girl comes in with a hurried scrawl
on a torn sheet of delicately scented paper, in
a lady's hand:


Geo. II. Montgomery, Fifth Avenue Ho-
tel, New York. Do come home at once
Mary cannot live twenty-iour hours. Laura
Montgomery


How can he stop that? But Geo. III.
Montgomery is a myth, and Ma-ys illness
means Hooker's defeat, and the hotel clerk
has been instructed to send any such dispatch
by the speediest means to somebody's bank
down town; and the firm makes the money,
aud that government censor keeps blinking
like an owl over the dispatches, and rigidly
stopping everything relating to the war ,
and Mr.. Stanton felicitates himself on having
made those newspaper pests send their ac-
counts by mail rather than by telegraph =
How little sense it takes TO run govern
ment,' said some wise mani


Once, during last summer, a leading news
paper editor got disguised, and determined
that the gold gamblers should not monopo-
lie all the early news. So he went into the
cipher business too, but being rather raw at
1t, his first effort was not quite so good as
subsequent ones. He forwarded the cipher
10 his leading Washington correspondent
Pretty soon the operators in this city, who
knew him solely as devoted newspaper man,
were astonished at receiving for him this dis
patch from Washington:


Have sold for you fifteen thousand BUSH
els Of corn at 3j. The market looks squal-
ly.'


The paper announced, the next morning,
that the main body of Lees army had cross
ed the Maryland line, and was moving into
Pennsylvania; and his chief rival got very
mad and complained to the war department
that he was bribing the telegraph company
but it was whispered about among his friends
that so and so was neglecting his business
aud going Into very rash speculation, and
lie changed his cipherw