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Stories Of Wall Street

Stories Of Wall Street image
Parent Issue
Day
30
Month
January
Year
1880
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

There is now in "the strcsf' a man whocame fcorn Connectícut & few wars ago, and made $900,000 in six months. He had $7,000 to start with, partly j thai he had saved and the rest borrowed. In whatever direetion lio reached money seemod to answer the ■ I i-L; lurk went b ' and fairly bewildered tije town whence r.'.ii' Of thi iook the fever e ',;; thcir employmeut and came o the city, mal ing here a little bunch of speculatora like many another tliat may bo found !n Wall Street, draws (ógether by like caisos f rom parta of tie country. It is just as wiirn somebody draws a prizo in a lottery, straightway half the people in the neighborhood a;o to buying lottery tickets. And for tho sanie reaaons you muy f'md in small eities or towns remóte from New York communities wlio soem reabent for.stoek speculatioss. Ask why, and you usually will discover tb at somebody trom that town has gone to New York and taken np the stock W at somc time lias made a Ámonp,' those vvlio foltowed tlio man from Comiecticut was ayoung fellow who had about 80,000, his share of a fortuno left by a relativo. This made him rich in a country town, but he was dazzled by the then rapidly inereasing fortune of his successful fellow-townjBman. He began putting small bitea of his $80,000 into the Wall street shark'a mouth, and lost steadily, butnotenough to alarm him, for he had no doubt his lnck would turn and c;ive him as much money as the man who had strack it rich I . He met tlic fortúnate individual in tho street and said: " You've got $900,000- enough for anybody to live on; why don't you take it and got out and keep it?" "Bec.iuse I want to make it a round $1,000,000; then Til clear out." In less than two months helost everv dollar of the $900,000. Luck went as persistently against him as it had been tor him, and in a desperate endeavor te regain his losses ie stacked up his margins until the whole reat fortune had melted away. ït took tlie man with 880,000 a year tb lose his money; hc e smaller and more catitious operations, but he lost i t all tin; same. He couldn't withstandthefascinationof tho street, and now he is the cashier of a small banking concern, at a salary of 1,800 a year. The S900.000 man stuck to ít, too. Sometimos lio was well ciad, and again not so well. Occasionally he made a little strike of a few hundred, and speedily lost it all. Whcn lie was particnlarly hard agronnd he would slipup homo and stay away awhile, but he would soon reiurn with a small capital and try again. On August 4 last he appeared with $100, which he put up as a margin with a broker who had handled hundreds of thousands for him in his flush days, and bogan to buy stocks. Ho struck the first of this great floodtide that has inimdated the, country and came in with it. As his profits increascd he kept on buying steadily, putting in all he had with the nerve of a soldier; and witli wisdom gained of previou.; cNpcrier.eo. lie stopped short three tiaya ago, hen the taafke bocame choppy and uncertain, and rested on his oars with 8300,000 in bank. This safely invested in fonr per cents, would give him an income of 812,000 a year, enough for a man of simple tastes to live on con-fortably; but he sticks to the street, and is still going in to make it a million, and in all human probability he will keep at it nntil he is down again, and will wind up by joining the small army of curbstone brokers who lead a wretched existence, and finally fade

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Argus