Evening Star Newspaper, September 14, 1930, Page 92

g THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, B. ® SEPTEMBER T, TN | e 1arose and took Mds extended hand. He sr.iled, saying: “Congratulations, my boy! Bke good judgmemt.” ‘Was he rubbipg it in? “Cheer up,” he went on. “You have done gery well. Did you get my letter?” “No.” “Well, you will get it this evening. You told me to buy the stock at the market. I waited until the market was right and bought it at 8. It went off yesterday Wt 28.” I was breathing fast. “You bought it at 8! I exclaimed. “Yes. I saw & specialist in that stock, who told me that a siake-out was overdue. So I waited. When- the hurricane had passed I executed your order. You have learned some- thing that is worth more than the money you have made. Don't be playing tips. Soon -or late they'll break you.” I had learned something which no doubt has saved me a lot of trouble. The best bankers are eager to have all men save and increase their earnings. Most tips are put in cireula- tion by those who hdve stock to sell. The road to poverty is paved with tips. I had a con- vincing illustration of this great truth in a singular adventure. Association with Hepburn had excited my interest in security values. I studied them with care. When I got out of business, broken by a side issue, I was afraid of the future. It was full of uncertainty. I was trying my hand at literary work with small confidence. A friend of large means proposed that he would stake me with $20,000 for speculatinn. He would take all the risk and we would share the profits. It was pure generosity. He was willing to spend the money to give me a new sort of education. A great era of speculstion had followed the Spanish War. The pyramider had flourished in a season of enthusiasti» confidence in the future of the United Stater. It had been a halcyon time. Its best days were over. Still the great industrial awakening had just begun. The Far West was a growing factor. A dim consciousness of our coming commercial su- premacy was abroad in the land. Mr. Morgan was shaping his plans for the most prodigious corporation the world had known. There was a well founded confiidence in the future. There’s nothing I'r WAS a time favorable for speculation. I joined my friend in this speculative adven- ture. I proceeded on good advice in a con- servative manner and made money. Good stocks were cheap those days, with Southern Pacific at 40 and Union Pacific below 50. Suc- cess breeds optimism and self-confiidence and bravery. With that background one is never dispoced to take his profits, It looks easy and he keeps on. His source of advice is not always available. Anyhow, he begins to feel that he has no further need of it. &tep by step and very naturally he has entered & psychological situation that is full of peril. I had a thousand shares on han! when news of the Boer War fell like lightning out of a clear sky. Europe began to unload our securi- ties. Great Scott, how they tumbled in upon us! Prices melted away. That session cost us more than $2,000 an hour. We threw over a part of our load and limped through the war with the rest of it. We were hurt, but, work- “The cities are full of poverty makers. They are able guides in the wnward way.” ing cautiously, I got the account in a healthy condition. We now had hope of better things. We were feeling good when the Northern Pacific corner came as suddenly as an earth- quake in Italy. Again prices melted in a panic. What a roaring Niagara the market had be- come! The smooth river of success was as & seething torrent with ruin ahead. Men were struggling to get ashore. Some were going over the falls. It was a frightful, downsweeping current. I bucked it and made a landing, out of breath and nearly all in. I had not been as far out as most of them. For hours I watched the whirling tumult of the flood. I saw men with crazy faces stripped of all they had. They had been merry the day before. Now a black cloud overspread the land and the great “public” was under it, The day ended. Our account looked like a dead horse in the dooryard. Still, I had man- aged to save a few thousand dollars, “Did you ever see a lot of living dead men?” Mr. Edison once put this question to me when I was sitting in his study. “I have,” he went on. “I was in the office of Fisk & Gould at the close of the market on Black Friday. I was there to examine the ticker. All around the inner room sat a lot of men pale as a white horse. It seemed as if the hand of death had touched them suddenly. They were stern and silent. Mr. Fisk stood at a table in the middle of the room pouring champagne. He wore & blue velvet coat with a white carnation in its buttonhole. A darky was passing the tray. “Fisk lifted his glass and said, ‘Let us eat, drink and be merry today, for tomorrow we die. ” I suppose that many die in the tomorrow of these great convulsions, How many nobody will ever know. That kind of business was too exciting for me. I had had enough of it. I longed to quit the game. I had no heart left for that road of peril and perspiration. ONE day, soon after that, my friend called me on the phone. He had had “a tip”—he called it “good information”—that Third Avenue o — — stock would go below par. Would I please sell short 500 shares of it? I demurred. He was urgent, - 4 “All right,” I said, and the order went in to sell 500 shares short. If my memory serves me well, we sold at 133. That very day it began to climb. I saw it touch 173. That tip floored us and so our adventure ended. I am sure that the greatest peril that les in the way of success is margin speculation on tips, even if they proceed from honesty and sound judgment. I hazard the guess, after long observation, that it has filled more graves and created more nervous and financial wrecks than any other cause since the black plague. I delivered my orders in the office of a great broker who was a friend ©f mine. Always there were from 50 to 75 men in its chairs watching the board. Every three months or so & new crowd filled the room. A wise old speculator used to whisper to me: “Do you see how the faces change here? The old crowd is broke. By and by this crop of suckers will vanish. A new omne will spring up. They're born every minute.” I wonder what the wise old gambler had to say when I had vanished. No man who sits close to the ticker can have any judgment about values. Even his own psychology works against him. We have come to a time when there are mountains of money. Even the banks in the little town I came from have millions on deposit. The young hear far less of the old Victorian saying that character and intellect are better than money. Yet I am sure that the saying is as true now as it was then. These days we are likely to overvalue money. One night, after the final, exhausting dip of last November, I was awakened at 2 am. by a loud crash across the street from my open windows and by excited remarks among the taxi drivers in front of a great hotel. A young man, lately married, had hurled himself from a lofty window to the pavement. There he lay under the glimmering lights—a crushed, silent figure. He had made a large sum in speculation and had lost it all. It is significant that he could have put so high a value on his losses. He was a young man and had a good reputa- tion. I wonder if such an event would have been quite possible in the old Victorian time. In general, money was not the big thing those days. The marriage relation was on a different footing. I REMEMBER hearing. a man proudly tell what his wife had said to him after he had been ruined in the panic of Black Friday. It was about as follows: “My dear, I rejoice that the time has come when I can show you what it is to be loved and cherished. Money is not quite the main thing. Let it go. I love you. We have youth and strength and now the wisdom that comes of a great error. We can be happy without wealth.” It was an Inspiration to him. He became a rich and powesful citizen. The girls of today would be likely I fear, to call it foolish senti- ment, but no man who knows he can find this talk at home will go over the falls. After all, the best securities we know are honor and good faith and virtue and the privi- lege of living—and are they not now rather seriously depressed? e dt’s a Lawn Tennis That Has No Turning,’’ Says Sam Hellman 66 OW,” inquires Ira Mellish, “would you boys and girls like to shoot % a little tennis this afternoon?” “Not this Nordic,” says I “I've been off the game ever since I lost.my amateur standing and had to go to work for a living.” “You off the game!” sniffs the missus. “I'll bet you never played a set in your life.” “You do my grave an injustice,” I assures her. “In my youth I bowled a mean ball—I mean——" “You mean,” interjects Joe Davis, “that you used to be a good racketeer and got your split of the net.” “On the square,” says I, “there was little about tennis that was hidden from me, and that little not for long. I remember, as if it were tomorrow, how I won the hand-knitted foot fault at the Broken Glass Tennis Club—" “The what tennis club!” exclaims Ira. “The Broken Glass Tennis Club,” I repeats. “When I was a youngster we lived in the neigh- borhood of a glass factory and the company let us play in the yard where they threw out the broken bottles.” “That must've been some court,” observes Davis with hative shrewdness, .“SOMB courts K. O.,” I returns. “Believe me, you had to be a shifty with your dogs 10 keep from getting cut by a piece of jelly jar or the fragment of a bottle intended for ipecac or a suitable sauce for fried fish. Pieces of windowpane were the worst handicap, though.” “How s0?” inquires Joe coldly. “Well,” says I, “you slid on them—we used to call that a foot fault—and as like as not you'd crash into a mess of fruit compote dishes or a collection of shattered wassail bowls. Did you ever trip over a wassail bowl?” “I'm afraid not,” admits Davis, “but then I'm a stranger in this section of Arkansas pnd—" “Well,” I continues, “to make a long story the way I am most of the time, Eustace and I were battling along neck and neck—he seldom washed his, I might add in passing—when all of a sudden, as he was taking a serve of mine, he got tangled up in a jumble of imitation Ming vases and some fractured lamp globes and fell face forward into a melange of cordial glasses. That was a big break for me and it seemed to be all over but the shouting and the award of the big prize, when——" “I knows,” cut in Ira Mellish with a scowl. *You slipped on a pane of glass and ever since have been giving people part of the pain.” “The window of the factory opens just as I lifts my racket for the finishing wallop.” 66N0’r exactly,” says I. “Let me picture the scene to you. Surrounding the court was all the beauty and chivalry of the denaturing plant set, among them Mrs. Miffle’s Mary, and & beautiful thing she was that day in her blue gabardine with fichus of green lace and purple ruching set off by a stylish raccoon coat and a pair of shoes. I think she also had on stock- ings that day, but I can't be too sure.” “If you can’t,” suggests Joe, “you’d better not say & thing about it. I must have my details just so with my tennis.” “At any rate,” I resumes, “there she was, looking at me with yearning eyes and & hole in her stocking—a ripe peach ready to fall into the arms of the victor. Determined to win for her, I set myself to deliver the ecoup de main, as we say in New Hampshire. Just as I'm about to send over a slashing back-hand drive that would have speiled disaster to Eustace and his hopes of sending out his and Mary’s laundry in .the same bag, one of the windows in the glass factory open—" “Yes, yes,” breathes Davis, passionately. “Go on. The suspense is undermining my arches,” “You having trouble with your arches?” I inquires solicitiously. “Yes, indeed,” returns Joe, sadly. “I'm afraid I won't be able to get into the next war to prevent the last one.” “That's tough,” I admits. “You ought te go see Dr. Schimmelpfennig. He's a howling he-cat when it comes to arches. He's so good I hear they're sending him to Rome to fix up the Arch of Titus and & bunch of the other broken arches in the Internal City.” “All right,” says Davis. “I'll go see him some day when I'm out of town and with a lot of other things to do. But go on with your story. May I remark it intrigues me and mine?” “You may,” I comés back hospitably. “Where was I?” “In a terrible fix,” returns Joe. “You were about to serve a back-hand end run or some- thing to a bimbo who was lying face down in & merry mess of cordial glasses when a window——"" Q‘OB, yes,” I recall. “The window, the jolly d old window. Well, the window of the factory opens just as I Mfts my racket for the finishing wallop, and out of it’s dumped a base ketful of busted soup plates and butter dishes. T'm caught right in the shower, and as I tries to catch myself I stumbles. Naturally, my serve is not what it should have been. The ball barely goes over the barbed-wire fence we used for a net. Eustace catches it on the end of the bat, drives for 250 yards down the faire way and I'm 2 down, with three more balls to bowl and the third quarter about over. In the next chukker he runs me off my feet with a one-two to the chin and he wins easily with several yards to spare. Three of the watches caught his time at 11.32, daylight savings, East- ern standard.” “That was hard luck,” remarks Davis. he get the girl, too?” “No, he didn’t,” I tells him. “It seems that all the time she’d been in love with an aviator. He had some trouble with a parachute that wouldn’t open, so she eloped with a subway en- gineer, but her further adventures have really very little to do with tennis, and tennis is what we're talking about, isn't it?” “Is it?” asks the wife, sarcastic. “Did (It isn’t often that we get technical in these articles, but the discussion about the compara- tive abilities of Cochet and Tilden has reached such heights that we couldn’t refrain from take ing a hand. Without flattering ourselves, we believe we have demolished the contentions of the Cochet clique. We regret exceedingly that we have possibly hurt the feelings of La Belle France in the course of our strictures, but truth is truth, if, when and as issued.) (Copyright, 1930.) o