Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
combination until I said flatly that I did not want to have anything to
do with influencing other people to trade.
“If I fool myself,” I told him, “I alone suffer and I pay the bill at
once. There are no drawn-out payments or unexpected annoyances. I play
a lone hand by choice and also because it is the wisest and cheapest
way to trade. I get my pleasure out of matching my brains against the
brains of other traders--men whom I have never seen and never talked
to and never advised to buy or sell and never expect to meet or know.
When I make money I make it backing my own opinions. I don’t sell them
or capitalise them. If I made money in any other way I would imagine I
had not earned it. Your proposition does not interest me because I am
interested in the game only as I play it for myself and in my own way.”
He said he was sorry I felt the way I did, and tried to convince me
that I was wrong in rejecting his plan. But I stuck to my views. The
rest was a pleasant talk. I told him I knew he would “come back” and
that I would consider it a privilege if he would allow me to be of
financial assistance to him. But he said he could not accept any loans
from me. Then he asked me about my July deal and I told him all about
it; how I had gone into it and how much cotton I bought and the price
and other details. We chatted a little more and then he went away.
When I said to you some time ago that a speculator has a host of
enemies, many of whom successfully bore from within, I had in mind my
many mistakes. I have learned that a man may possess an original mind
and a lifelong habit of independent thinking and withal be vulnerable
to attacks by a persuasive personality. I am fairly immune from the
commoner speculative ailments, such as greed and fear and hope. But
being an ordinary man I find I can err with great ease.
I ought to have been on my guard at this particular time because not
long before that I had had an experience that proved how easily a
man may be talked into doing something against his judgment and even
against his wishes. It happened in Harding’s office. I had a sort of
private office--a room that they let me occupy by myself--and nobody
was supposed to get to me during market hours without my consent. I
didn’t wish to be bothered and, as I was trading on a very large scale
and my account was fairly profitable, I was pretty well guarded.
One day just after the market closed I heard somebody say, “Good
afternoon, Mr. Livingston.”
I turned and saw an utter stranger--a chap of about thirty-five. I
could not understand how he’d got in, but there he was. I concluded
his business with me had passed him. But I didn’t say anything. I just
looked at him and pretty soon he said, “I came to see you about that
Walter Scott,” and he was off.
He was a book agent. Now, he was not particularly pleasing of manner or
skillful of speech. Neither was he especially attractive to look at.
But he certainly had personality. He talked and I thought I listened.
But I do not know what he said. I don’t think I ever knew, not even
at the time. When he finished his monologue he handed me first his
fountain pen and then a blank form, which I signed. It was a contract
to take a set of Scott’s works for five hundred dollars.
The moment I signed I came to. But he had the contract safe in his
pocket. I did not want the books. I had no place for them. They weren’t
of any use whatever to me. I had nobody to give them to. Yet I had
agreed to buy them for five hundred dollars.
I am so accustomed to losing money that I never think first of that
phase of my mistakes. It is always the play itself, the reason why.
In the first place I wish to know my own limitations and habits of
thought. Another reason is that I do not wish to make the same mistake
a second time. _A man can excuse his mistakes only by capitalising them
to his subsequent profit._
Well, having made a five-hundred dollar mistake but not yet having
localised the trouble, I just looked at the fellow to size him up as
a first step. I’ll be hanged if he didn’t actually smile at me--an
understanding little smile! He seemed to read my thoughts. I somehow
knew that I did not have to explain anything to him; he knew it without
my telling him. So I skipped the explanations and the preliminaries
and asked him, “How much commission will you get on that five hundred
dollar order?”
He promptly shook his head and said, “I can’t do it! Sorry!”
“How much do you get?” I persisted.
“A third. But I can’t do it!” he said.
“A third of five hundred dollars is one hundred and sixty-six dollars
and sixty-six cents. I’ll give you two hundred dollars cash if you
give me back that signed contract.” And to prove it I took the money
out of my pocket.
“I told you I couldn’t do it,” he said.
“Do all of your customers make the same offer to you?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Then why were you so sure that I was going to make it?”
“It is what your type of sport would do. You are a first-class loser
and that makes you a first-class business man. I am much obliged to
you, but I can’t do it.”
“Now tell me why you do not wish to make more than your commission?”
“It isn’t that exactly,” he said. “I am not working just for the
commission.”
“What are you working for then?”
“For the commission and the record,” he answered.
“What record?”
“Mine.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Do you work for money alone?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“No.” And he shook his head. “No, you don’t. You wouldn’t get enough
fun out of it. You certainly do not work merely to add a few more
dollars to your bank account and you are not in Wall Street because you
like easy money. You get your fun some other way. Well, same here.”
I did not argue but asked him, “And how do you get your fun?”
“Well,” he confessed, “we’ve all got a weak spot.”
“And what’s yours?”
“Vanity,” he said.
“Well,” I told him, “you’ve succeeded in getting me to sign on. Now
I want to sign off, and I am paying you two hundred dollars for ten
minutes’ work. Isn’t that enough for your pride?”
“No,” he answered. “You see, all the rest of the bunch have been
working Wall Street for months and failed to make expenses. They said
it was the fault of the goods and the territory. So the office sent for
me to prove that the fault was with their salesmanship and not with
the books or the place. They were working on a 25 per cent commission.
I was in Cleveland, where I sold eighty-two sets in two weeks. I am
here to sell a certain number of sets not only to people who did not
buy from the other agents but to people they couldn’t even get to see.
That’s why they give me 33⅓ per cent.”
“I can’t quite figure out how you sold me that set.”
“Why,” he said consolingly, “I sold J. P. Morgan a set.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said.
He wasn’t angry. He simply said, “Honest, I did.”
“A set of Walter Scott to J. P. Morgan, who not only has some fine
editions but probably the original manuscripts of some of the novels as
well?”
“Well, here’s his John Hancock.” And he promptly flashed on me a
contract signed by J. P. Morgan himself. It might not have been Mr.
Morgan’s signature, but it did not occur to me to doubt it at the time.
Didn’t he have mine in his pocket? All I felt was curiosity. So I asked
him, “How did you get past the librarian?”
“I didn’t see any librarian. I saw the Old Man himself. In the office.”
“That’s too much!” I said. Everybody knew that it was much harder to
get into Mr. Morgan’s private office empty handed than into the White
House with a parcel that ticked like an alarm clock.
But he declared, “I did.”
“But how did you get into his office?”
“How did I get into yours?” he retorted.
“I don’t know. You tell me,” I said.
“Well, the way I got into Morgan’s office and the way I got into yours
are the same. I just talked to the fellow at the door whose business it
was not to let me in. And the way I got Morgan to sign was the same
way I got you to sign. You weren’t signing a contract for a set of
books. You just took the fountain pen I gave you and did what I asked
you to do with it. No difference. Same as you.”
“And is that really Morgan’s signature?” I asked him, about three
minutes late with my skepticism.
“Sure! He learned how to write his name when he was a boy.”
“And that’s all there is to it?”
“That’s all,” he answered. “I know exactly what I am doing. That’s
all the secret there is. I am much obliged to you. Good day, Mr.
Livingston.” And he started to go out.
“Hold on,” I said. “I’m bound to have you make an even two hundred
dollars out of me.” And I handed him thirty-five dollars.
He shook his head. Then: “No,” he said. “I can’t do that. But I can do
this!” And he took the contract from his pocket, tore it in two and
gave me the pieces.
I counted two hundred dollars and held the money before him, but he
again shook his head.
“Isn’t that what you meant?” I said.
“No.”
“Then, why did you tear up the contract?”
“Because you did not whine, but took it as I would have taken it myself
had I been in your place.”
“But I offered you the two hundred dollars of my own accord,” I said.
“I know; but money isn’t everything.”
Something in his voice made me say, “You’re right; it isn’t. And now
what do you really want me to do for you?”
“You’re quick, aren’t you?” he said. “Do you really want to do
something for me?”
“Yes,” I told him, “I do. But whether I will or not depends what it is
you have in mind.”
“Take me with you into Mr. Ed Harding’s office and tell him to let me
talk to him three minutes by the clock. Then leave me alone with him.”
I shook my head and said, “He is a good friend of mine.”
“He’s fifty years old and a stock broker,” said the book agent.
That was perfectly true, so I took him into Ed’s office. I did not hear
anything more from or about that book agent. But one evening some weeks
later when I was going uptown I ran across him in a Sixth Avenue L
train. He raised his hat very politely and I nodded back. He came over
and asked me, “How do you do, Mr. Livingston? And how is Mr. Harding?”
“He’s well. Why do you ask?” I felt he was holding back a story.
“I sold him two thousand dollars’ worth of books that day you took me
in to see him.”
“He never said a word to me about it,” I said.
“No; that kind doesn’t talk about it.”
“What kind doesn’t talk?”
“The kind that never makes mistakes on account of its being bad
business to make them. That kind always knows what he wants and
nobody can tell him different. That is the kind that’s educating my
children and keeps my wife in good humor. You did me a good turn, Mr.
Livingston. I expected it when I gave up the two hundred dollars you
were so anxious to present to me.”
“And if Mr. Harding hadn’t given you an order?”
“Oh, but I knew he would. I had found out what kind of man he was. He
was a cinch.”
“Yes. But if he hadn’t bought any books?” I persisted.
“I’d have come back to you and sold you something. Good day, Mr.
Livingston. I am going to see the mayor.” And he got up as we pulled up
at Park Place.
“I hope you sell him ten sets,” I said. His Honor was a Tammany man.
“I’m a Republican, too,” he said, and went out, not hastily, but
leisurely, confident that the train would wait. And it did.
I have told you this story in such detail because it concerned a
remarkable man who made me buy what I did not wish to buy. He was the
first man who did that to me. There never should have been a second,
but there was. You can never bank on there being but one remarkable
salesman in the world or on complete immunization from the influence of
personality.
When Percy Thomas left my office, after I had pleasantly but definitely