Fifty years in Wall Street
Estorff. Rothschild prudently kept quiet and did not interrupt the game,
but stepped lightly up and stood behind the prince’s chair, where he
could watch every move. The Prince was getting the worst of the game,
and was becoming a little excited. Turning around, he said: “Rothschild,
do you understand chess?” “Sufficiently well, your Serene Highness,”
replied Rothschild, “to induce me, were the game mine, to castle on the
king’s side.” The Prince took the hint, and won the game. Then turning
to Rothschild, he said: “You are a wise man. He who can extricate a
chess player from such a difficulty as I was in, must have a very clear
head for business.”
The Prince afterwards told the Baron that Rothschild was as good a chess
player as Frederic the Great, and that a man of such capacity must be
able to take good care of money. The forty millions which were obtained
on deposit remained with the house of Rothschild for nine years, and
when Napoleon invaded Germany in the interim, the money, together with
other valuables, was hidden in wine casks in Rothschild’s cellar, but
the Conqueror never thought of tapping the casks. After peace was
proclaimed, and William, who had been obliged to seek safety in flight,
returned home, old Rothschild was dead, but his son Anselm handed over
to the Prince every dollar of the forty millions, and tendered him in
addition two per cent. interest for the entire time of the deposit. The
Prince made him a present of the interest.
The elder Rothschild had five sons, namely: Anselm, who succeeded his
father in Frankfort; Solomon, of Vienna; Nathan Mayer, of London;
Charles, of Naples; and James, of Paris. According to their father’s
will, the five sons were to constitute but one firm, in which they were
to enjoy equal profits, and never divide the fortune. The business was
to be managed at Frankfort as headquarters, to which great money centre
all the profits from the other moneyed capitals were to be raked in. The
intention of the old man was to make these five money kings dominate
Europe by the power of their wealth, so that the ordinary kings would
become their subjects, and in many instances the hopes of the great old
chess player have been realized. All the annual settlements were made at
Frankfort, and the brothers met there at least once a year for a general
conference. This system continues, and though the original five brothers
have all passed over to the majority, the last of them, James, having
died in Paris in 1868, at the ripe age of 76, yet the representatives of
the house in the large cities of Europe sustain the principles of union,
harmony and consolidation laid down by old Anselm Mayer Rothschild.
Although this union has been the great source of the Rothschilds’
success, it would be hopeless, however, for any other parent outside the
Hebrew race to imitate the injunction of old Rothschild. The idea of an
equal division of the profits could not be entertained for a moment by
an American. The socialistic family tie that enjoined such an
arrangement could only be rendered binding through the power of the
Hebrew religion. Just imagine how an American would feel if by some
lucky turn of fortune, like that of Nathan Rothschild in London, after
the battle of Waterloo, he should make six millions in a day, and be
requested to divide it with his four brothers! He would sooner spend a
million of it to try and break the old man’s will, and employ several of
the best sophistical lawyers he could find to prove that his father was
demented.
It is supposed that the elder Rothschild died worth 15 or 20 millions,
but this is in a great measure merely conjecture, as nobody outside the
family ever knew what their real wealth was, this fact having always
been kept an inviolate family secret. It must be said, to the credit of
the old man, that in his latter days, instead of becoming stingy, as
many do, he was quite liberal, and, according to the scriptural
injunction, distributed his alms in secret, without even permitting his
sons to know anything about the matter. He contributed largely to
various charities in the same way. It is said he would go through the
poverty-stricken districts of the city after night, giving money to the
needy, from whom he would retreat before giving them time to thank him
for his beneficence. He had a notion that those who gave without
receiving thanks were greater favorites with the Divine Being, who rules
the destinies of man.
The greatest speculator of the five brothers was Nathan Mayer
Rothschild, the third son of the great old man. He made the grand hit of
his life after the battle of Waterloo. He kept watching the movements of
the opposing armies on the Continent, and followed Wellington very
closely as he approached the famous field. It seems that the Iron Duke
was not at all pleased with Nathan’s attention to him, as he took him
for either a spy or an assassin, and was on the point of having him
arrested several times. But Nathan kept his purpose steadily in view, in
spite of the fact that bullets were whizzing around his ears in showers.
He sat on his horse on the hill of Hougomont with perfect composure in
the teeming rain the whole afternoon, looking upon that terrible
struggle that was to decide the destiny of nations, until Blucher
arrived and the French were put to route.
As soon as Nathan saw this he put spurs to his steed and made all
possible haste to Brussels, where a carriage with swift horses was in
waiting to carry him to Ostend. At day light next morning he arrived on
the Belgian coast, where he found it exceedingly difficult to obtain a
boat, the sea being very rough. At length he obtained a boatman as
courageous as himself, who undertook the task for 2,500 francs, and
landed him at Dover in the evening. He lost no time, but with relays of
the swiftest horses pushed forward to London, and was on the Exchange
next morning ready for business, long before the opening of the market.
That was the morning of the 20th, only a day and two nights after the
battle that decided the fate of nations. Nathan had performed a great
feat. He acted his role well. Like the great hero whose political
history had just closed, Nathan was “grand, gloomy and peculiar,” in the
financial sense of the phrase. He was an embodiment of the latest
information from the Continent. In defiance of winds and waves he had,
at the risk of his life, outstripped the swiftest couriers and the best
special correspondents of that day. The great operators flocked around
him asking, “What is the news?” Nathan sighed heavily and seemed
reluctant to tell. Eventually, this important piece of information was
extorted from him, in strict confidence: “Blucher, at the head of his
vast army of veterans, was defeated by Napoleon at Ligny, on the 16th
and 17th (of June), and there can be no hope for Wellington with his
comparatively small and undisciplined force.” This statement was
substantially true, and it forcibly reminds one of Tennyson’s poetic
remarks:
“A lie which is all a lie
May be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is half a truth,
Is a harder matter to fight.”
True, Blucher had been repulsed at Ligny. The Duke had an awkward squad,
with the exception of the English, the Irish, and the Scotch Greys, to
marshal in fighting order, but he “got there all the same.” Nathan’s
secret point soon oozed out, and in less than an hour after the opening
there was a perfect panic on the London Stock Exchange. Nathan had his
brokers at work, first selling “short,” and then, when the market
reached bed rock, buying on the long side. He bought everything that he
could raise, borrow or beg the money for—consols, notes and bills. When
the news of Wellington’s victory arrived, forty-eight hours after Nathan
had begun to manipulate the market, and when he was “long” of everything
that he had money or credit to purchase, securities went up with a boom.
Nathan realized six million dollars, and it is said that a large number
of the great operators flocked around him to congratulate him. It was
lucky for Nathan that the scene of his operations was in London instead
of Wall Street, otherwise Judge Lynch might have had something to say
before the settlements had been made.
The career of Nathan Rothschild in England was remarkable, and his
success from the very start phenomenal. He began his speculations and
money-lending operations in Manchester with $500, being the limited
amount which he was permitted to draw from the family treasury on taking
his departure from Frankfort to seek his fortune in Great Britain. In
five years he had augmented the $500 to a million. He then removed to
London. There he married a daughter of Levi Cohen, one of the wealthiest
Hebrews of the great metropolis, well known by the pseudonym of
Pound-Adoring Cohen. His father-in-law was afraid that Nathan would soon
ruin himself, so reckless did he seem in his speculations, estimated by
the conservative standard of old Cohen.
Nathan was very fortunate in his speculative ventures in the public
funds, and managed to get himself introduced so as to do considerable
business for the Government in its transactions on the Continent. His
first introduction to the Government was through the Duke of Wellington,
who during his peninsular campaigns had made drafts that the Treasury of
Great Britain was dilatory in meeting. Nathan purchased these drafts at
a large discount. He afterwards renewed them to the Government, and they
were eventually redeemed at par. This was the means of bringing him into
confidential relations with the ministry of Great Britain, and he was
entirely trusted as their chief agent in all their financial matters on
the Continent. This gave him immense advantage in speculating, and
enabled him to give his brothers in the other great capitals of Europe a
large amount of valuable and inside information, which put them in a
position to speculate with success in the funds of their respective
Governments. Nathan had made arrangements to get the very latest
information from Frankfort, then the centre of European financiering, by
well trained carrier pigeons. He had also several boats of his own by
which to send personal messages across the channel in cases where these
were requisite, and a boat always in readiness at a moment’s notice in
case his presence should be indispensable at the great money centre, and
the central counting and clearing house of the family.
Nathan Rothschild was a strange and inconsistent compound of liberality,
avariciousness, and penuriousness. He entertained his guests in a
princely style, and often princes were mingled with those guests, but he
was miserably mean with his clerks and employees generally. Unlike A. T.
Stewart, who followed the very opposite rule, and had his place filled
with bankrupt dry goods men as employees, the Rothschilds would never
engage anybody who had been unfortunate in business. They had a
superstitious feeling that misfortune is contagious, and they carefully
avoided coming in contact with any of its victims. Nathan was even more
precise than Wm. H. Vanderbilt in calculating the pennies in his lunch
bill; but while Vanderbilt did this as a mere whim to illustrate his
business precision and correctness, Rothschild really loved the pennies
with ardent devotion. But Baron Nathan, even when he had accumulated
$70,000,000 or $80,000,000, was not happy. He was tortured by the fear
of enemies, who, he believed, intended to murder him. Like Vanderbilt,
he received many threatening letters; but unlike the New York