Fifty years in Wall Street
The road was opened to Wheeling in 1853. The firm of Robert Garrett &
Sons was established in 1849, and was originally engaged in the
wholesale grocery trade. When the road reached Wheeling its finances
were at the lowest ebb. The house founded by the grandfather of the
present head of the road bought largely of its bonds at a very low
figure, and this marked the first connection of the Garrett family with
this great property. The house of Garrett & Sons still exists as a
banking establishment under the management of T. Harrison Garrett. In
1853 Baltimore & Ohio stock could be bought for a song. Since then it
has sold at as high as $225 a share. The improvement in the property was
very largely doe to the efforts of John W. and Robert Garrett.
The recent embarrassing complications of Mr. Garrett in connection with
the management of his railroad and telegraph companies, it is hoped,
will only be temporary, and I expect to see him again, at no distant
day, reinstated at the head of the great corporation over which he and
his father presided. His present difficulties are matters of current
newspaper record and comment, and I need not, therefore, enlarge upon
them here. As shown by the latest report, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
is virtually in a good, prosperous and solvable condition, and I have no
doubt that the Drexel-Morgan syndicate which has undertaken to put the
property on a still more solid and durable basis with the ten million
loan which it has negotiated, will uprightly do its whole duty, and in
due time return the trust considerably enhanced in value to Mr. Garrett,
his heirs and assigns.
John H. Inman, another member of the Southern railroad circle, was born
in Tennessee. He is tall, fine looking and soldierly in appearance. He
is one of the shrewdest of the capitalists who have invested large
amounts in Southern enterprises. He came to New York from Atlanta, quite
poor, after the civil war. In the war he was a quartermaster’s clerk,
and his old quartermaster afterwards became one of his brokers on the
Cotton Exchange. Young Inman went into the office of an uncle on
arriving in New York, and learned the business of a cotton broker. He
was clear-headed and successful. After he became a partner in the firm
he added very materially to his wealth by carrying cotton for the
premiums on the options. He is recognized as one of the leaders of the
Cotton Exchange. In recent years he has become a financier, has made
large loans to railroads in the South, and has invested heavily in
Atlanta real estate, and in iron enterprises in Birmingham, the rising
Southern market. He was prominent in the reorganization of the Richmond
& Danville railroad system, in which he is largely interested. He is a
director in the Richmond Terminal and associate lines, as well as the
Louisville & Nashville and other Southern roads. He invested nearly two
millions in the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company. He is now about 50 years
of age. He seems to be a man of destiny. He is a man of great force of
character and exceptional business skill. He resides in New York, and is
possessed of a large fortune.
ANCESTRY IN ENGLAND—BRAINS IN AMERICA.
In this country no one cares about ancestry. The spectacle of Mark Twain
weeping at the tomb of Adam is a humorous expression of American
opinions on this general subject of ancestry. To save time he paid his
devoirs to the fountain head without stopping at the Guelphs, the
Tudors, the Bourbons, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, or the
Romanoffs. There is no time, if there was any wish in this great
country—shaking to the tread of gigantic business—to inquire, “Who was
his father?” There is only time for such questions as, “What do you
know?” “What can you do?” “How have you succeeded?” Integrity and
ability stand a man in better stead in America than show of purple veins
of Norman blood. Even in the aristocracy (so to speak) of brains,
ancestry in one sense, so far from being an advantage, is apt to be
precisely the reverse. A son of Henry Clay or Daniel Webster can never
hope to attain the lofty pre-eminence of the sire, and suffer by
comparison. Great men do not always have great sons. For one Pitt, the
son of a great Chatham, there are hundreds of sons who intellectually
dishonor great fathers. Brains, intelligence, industry, energy, and
pluck; these are the talismanic words which stand for success in
America, where no ghost of a dead feudalism hovers over the land,
darkening it by its blighting presence. In England the first question, a
silly echo of centuries, is, “Who is his father?” But who are the
nobility? Have they any title as such to the respect of right-thinking
persons? The nobility is running to seed, or rather the once noble tree
is withering and dying; it has borne its fruit and its time has passed
away. In Scriptural language, Why cumbereth it the ground? How many of
the nobility are now worthless roues, habitual seducers, dried up or
half consumed by the fires of passion and debauchery! They are dying as
the fool dieth, with a drunken leer on their shrunken faces and the
stain of dishonor on their escutcheons. The Commons of England will yet
redeem the nation from the thraldom of a worthless aristocracy. America
is the true field for the human race. It is the hope and the asylum for
the oppressed and down-trodden of every clime. It is the inspiring
example of America—peerless among the nations of the earth, the
brightest star in the political firmament—that is leavening the hard
lump of aristocracy and promoting a democratic spirit throughout the
world. It is indeed the gem of the ocean to which the world may well
offer homage. Here merit is the sole test. Birth is nothing. The fittest
survive. Merit is the supreme and only qualification essential to
success. Intelligence rules worlds and systems of worlds. It is the
dread monarch of illimitable space, and in human society, especially in
America, it shines as a diadem on the foreheads of those who stand in
the foremost ranks of human enterprise. Here only a natural order of
nobility is recognized, and its motto, without coat of arms or boast of
heraldry, is “Intelligence and integrity.”
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CHAPTER LI.
ARBITRATION.
HOW THE SYSTEM OF SETTLING DISPUTES AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS BY ARBITRATION
HAS WORKED IN THE STOCK EXCHANGE.—WHY NOT EXTEND THE SYSTEM TO
BUSINESS MATTERS GENERALLY?—ITS GREAT ADVANTAGES OVER GOING TO
LAW.—IT IS CHEAP AND HAS NO VEXATIOUS DELAYS.—TRIAL BY JURY A
PARTIAL FAILURE.—SOME PROMINENT CASES IN POINT.—JURY “FIXING” AND
ITS CONSEQUENCES.—HOW JURIES ARE SWAYED BY THEIR SYMPATHIES.—A
CURIOUS MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE BEFORE A REFEREE.—THE LITTLE GAME OF
THE DIAMOND BROKER.
Wall Street has derived great prestige and character from the New York
Stock Exchange. In fact, the Stock Exchange is Wall Street, so to speak,
so much so that if the Exchange moved to any other locality, the latter
would become the new Wall Street, to the utter oblivion of the old,
which would soon be eclipsed and regarded as a thing of the past.
The New York Stock Exchange has distinguished itself in many respects,
but there is probably nothing for which it is likely to become more
famous in history than its solution of the great problem of settling
disputes and misunderstandings by arbitration. Other financial bodies
have tried the same substitute for ordinary law proceedings, but it
would appear that greater success has crowned the efforts of the Stock
Exchange in this particular experiment than any other corporate body.
The large number of cases on record that have been amicably settled by
arbitration within the past few years, in which law would have been
formerly considered indispensable, seem to point to a period, probably
not far distant, when arbitration will be the great and ultimate court
of appeal in the large majority of civil cases. Several considerations
will make it the most popular. It is cheaper, less complicated, not
subject to vexatious delay; it is more equitable, and the members
composing the Arbitration Committees are business men, who are quick to
discern, accurate in perception, sound in judgment and decisive in
drawing their conclusions on business principles.
The expense of arbitration is a mere trifle compared with the enormous
sums swallowed up in litigation.
Transactions involving millions of dollars annually in the Stock
Exchange are made subject to settlement by this method of arbitration in
the event of any difference of opinion arising in any particular case.
Very few instances occur in which there is any necessity to carry the
case beyond the jurisdiction of the Arbitration Committee.
The number of cases actually settled in this way would probably cost
half a million dollars annually if they had to be brought into court, to
say nothing of the incidental expenses, which would amount to as much
more, arising from delay, on the scale of present charges by the legal
profession, even leaving out our own Evarts, who is probably the Boss
charger of the Bar.
The success attending the system at the Stock Exchange, I think, goes
far to prove that the method might be universally extended to the great
pecuniary interest and personal comfort of business men throughout the
country, for the adjustment of their misunderstandings and grievances
among one another.
My object in writing upon this subject has for its basis the hope that
this chapter may catch the eye of some of our great merchants in this
and other large cities, and that it may suggest to those of them who
have not contemplated the subject already, the advisability and
necessity of establishing for themselves a similar method of arbitration
to that which has been so successful in the Stock Exchange, to be final
and without appeal, in their respective business affairs.
Experience has fully demonstrated that trial by jury is in innumerable
instances a signal failure; especially has this been so since what is
known as “jury fixing” has become so common in the courts. The practice
of bribing jurors has now become a secret profession, and is so ably
conducted that it is almost impossible, except in rare instances, to
expose it.
But apart from this vicious and criminal practice of tampering with
juries, there are many other reasons why it is next to impossible, in a
large variety of instances, to obtain justice from an ordinary jury.
Human sympathy plays a very important part in the verdicts of juries
generally. I mean by this, class sympathy. A business man who is
regarded by the community as rich and powerful, can hardly expect
justice from a common jury unless the party opposed to him occupies a
similar station in society. Where the position of either the plaintiff
or defendant calls forth sympathy with regard to worldly means, in the
large majority of cases the ordinary jurors will bring in a verdict in
favor of the man of small or moderate means, believing that they are in
duty bound to sympathize with the oppressed. In a case where a clerk or
a woman, for instance, is a party to the suit, it is next to impossible
for a man of means to receive equity at the hands of the great palladium
of our liberty. I am sorry it is so, but I speak feelingly in this
matter, as I have myself been a victim of this unworthy class prejudice,
in a country where all men are theoretically equal.
Counsel usually make a great display over the cases of impecunious
clients, out of all proportion to their magnitude. Mole hills become
ostensibly transformed into mountains in the eye of the highly
imaginative lawyer, who works himself up into such a dramatic pitch of