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sand shares a week from Tracy & Middleton,
and usually less. Say, you ought to be on
the floor. You are wasting your talent in
the telephone business, you are. Let s swap
places, you and I.
According to our books, said Sally to
the irate broker, having been duly coached
by Mr. William Simpson, the last week you
did business for us you did 3,800 shares, and
received $76.
That was an exceptional week. I ll make
it $10, said Jacobs.
Twenty-five, whispered Sally, deter-
minedly.
Let s split the difference, murmured
Jacobs, wrathfully. I ll give you $15 a
week, but you must see that I get at least
2,500 shares a week.
All right. I ll do the best I can for you,
Mr. Jacobs.
And he did, for the other brokers gave him
only twenty-five cents, or at the most fifty
cents per hundred shares. In the course of
a month or two Sally was in possession of an
PIKE S PEAK OR BUST 205
income of $40 a week. And he was only
eighteen.
II.
Time passed. As it had happened with
his predecessor, so did it happen now with
Sally. He began by speculating, wildly at
first, more carefully later on. He met with
sundry reverses, but he also made some very
lucky turns indeed, and he was ahead of the
game by a very fair amount certainly a
sum far greater than any plodding clerk
could save in five years, greater than many
an industrious mechanic saves in his entire
life. From the bucket-shops he went to the
Consolidated Exchange. Then he asked
Jacobs and the other two-dollar brokers to
let him deal in a small way with them, which
they did out of personal liking for him, until
he had three separate accounts and could
swing a line of several hundred shares.
He became neither more nor less than 10,000
other human beings in Wall Street moved
by the same impulses, actuated by the same
feelings, experiencing the same emotions,
having the same thoughts and the same
206 WALL STREET STORIES
views of what they are pleased to call their
business.
At last the blow fell which Sally had so
long dreaded he was promoted to a clerk-
ship in Tracy & Middleton s office. The
firm meant to reward him for his devotion to
his work, for his brightness and quickness.
From $15 a week they raised his salary to
$25, which they considered quite generous,
especially in view of his youth, and that he
had started three years before with $8. He
was only twenty now. But Sally, knowing it
meant the abandonment of his lucrative
perquisites as telephone boy, bemoaned
his undeserved fate.
He took the money he had made to Mr.
Tracy and told him an interesting story of
a rich aunt and a legacy, and asked him
to let him open an account in the office.
Tracy congratulated his young clerk, took
the $6,500, and thereafter Sally was both
an employee and a customer of Tracy &
Middleton.
Addicted to sharp practices though Mr.
Tracy was and loving commissions as he did,
he nevertheless sought to curb Sally s youth-
ful propensity for plunging, which was as
PIKE S PEAK OR BUST 207
near being kind as it was possible for a stock-
broker to be. But the money had come
easy. That is why fortunes won by stock
gamblers are lost with apparent recklessness
or stupidity. Sally speculated with varying
success, running up his winnings to $10,000,
and seeing them dwindle later to $6,000.
But in addition to becoming an inveterate
speculator, he gained much valuable experi-
ence. And when he had learned the tricks
of the trade he was taken from the ledgers
and turned loose in the customers room, to
take the latter s orders and keep them in
good humor and tell them the current sto-
ries, and give them impressively whispered
tips, and put them into various deals
of the firm, and see that they traded as often
as possible, which meant commissions for
the firm. He became friendly and even
familiar with Tracy & Middleton s clients,
among whom were some very wealthy men,
for a stock-broker s office is a democratic
place. Men who would not have dreamed of
taking their Wall Street acquaintances to
their homes or to their clubs for a million
reasons, all but called each other by their
first names there.
208 WALL STREET STORIES
He really was a bright, amiable fellow,
very obliging he was paid for it by the
firm and he made the most of his oppor-
tunities. The customers grew to like him
exceedingly well, and to think with respect
of his judgment, market-wise. One day W.
Basil Thornton, one of the wealthiest and
boldest customers of the firm, complained of
the difficulty of beating the game with the
heavy handicap of the large brokerage com-
mission.
Jestingly, yet hoping to be taken seri-
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