Chapter V.

Thursday, November 12th, was a memorable day in Wall Street.  As the gong pealed its the-game’s-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured souls that are supposed to haunt the treacherous bogs and quicksands of the great Exchange, where lie their earthly hopes, must have prayed with renewed earnestness for its destruction before the morrow.  Never had the Stock Exchange folded its tents with surer confidence of continuing its victorious march.  Sugar advanced with record-breaking total sales to 2071/2 and in the final half-hour carried the whole list of stocks up with it.  In that time some of the railroads jumped ten points.  Sugar closed at the very top amid great excitement, with Barry Conant taking all offered.  During the last thirty minutes it had become evident to all that the boardroom traders and plungers, together with many of the semi-professional gamblers, who operated through commission houses, were selling out their long stock and going short over the opening of the Wall Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month.  But it was also evident, with the heavy selling at the close and the stiffness of the price, which had never wavered as block after block was thrown on the market, that some powerful interest as well had taken cognisance of the fact that the morrow was hoodoo-day.  At the close, most of the sellers, had they been granted another five minutes, would have repurchased, even at a loss, what they had sold, for it looked as though they had sold themselves into a trap.  Their anxiety was intensified by the publication, a few minutes later, of this item: 

“Barry Conant in coming from the Sugar crowd after the close remarked to a fellow broker, ’By three o’clock to-morrow, Friday, the 13th, will have a new meaning to Wall Street.’  This was interpreted as pointing to a terrific jump in Sugar to-morrow.”

“The Street” knew that the news bureau that sent out this item was friendly to Barry Conant and the “System,” and that it would print nothing displeasing to them.  Therefore, this must be, a foreword of the coming harvest of the bulls and the slaughter of the bears.

Others than Ike Bloomstein remarked upon the fact that Bob Brownley had hung close to the Sugar-pole all day, but when the close had come and gone without his having anything to do with the Sugar skyrockets, he dropped out of his fellow-brokers’ minds.  Wall Street has no use for any but the “doer.”  The poet and the mooner would be no more secure from interruption in the centre of the Sahara than in Wall Street between ten and three o’clock.  Some sage has said that the human mind, like the well-bucket, can carry only its fill.  The Wall Street mind always has its fill of budding dollars.  In consequence, there is never room for those other interests that enter the normal mind.