May 



1902.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER 'WORLD 



247 



A NEW FIGURE IN THE RUBBER FIELD. 



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SINCE the newspapers must have a " king of rubber," it 

 would not be surprising if they should now award that 

 title to Mr. James R. Keene. of Wall street, who has 

 become interested to an important extent in the two 

 greatest rubber manufacturing companies in existence. In an 

 entertaining book on the strenuous life in financial New York, 

 about twenty years ago, Henry Clews wrote ; " One of the 

 most remarkable up-anddown lives known to Wall street is 

 that of James R. Keene. His rise and fall are both of recent 

 date." This was true enough when written, but merely rising 

 and falling once did not end the notable activity of Mr. Keene. 

 He has since taken part in many daring operations, and has 

 engineered large speculations, embracing at one time or an- 

 other about every known form of investment, with the result 

 that, while these have not always enriched him, Mr. Keene is 

 not at present a poor man. His introduction to rubber has 

 come rather late, but if his operations in this field should prove 

 as original and as startling as some of his former financial deals, 

 the newspaper men may be pardoned for 

 dubbing him "rubber king." 



Mr. Keene was born in England, in 1838, 

 the son of a London merchant who planned 

 for him a liberal education. The father's 

 fortune became impaired, however, and 

 he removed with his family to Shasta 

 county, California, when James was a lad 

 of 14, but not before he had given promise 

 of the energy and ambition that have since 

 influenced his career. The son guarded 

 live stock at an army post until he had 

 earned enough money to buy a miner's 

 outfit, and then became a prospector for 

 gold. He engaged successively in mining, 

 freighting, stock raising, milling, and edit- 

 ing a country newspaper, but without 

 much success at anything. Then he went 

 to Nevada, secured mining interests, which 

 he sold at a profit, went to San Francisco 

 and speculated in mining stocks, making 

 in a few months $125,000, which he lost 

 more quickly. In the flush of success he married ; then came 

 a year of hardship, but he clung to the belief that he had a nat- 

 ural talent for speculation that in time would command success. 



One day Mr. Keene became a member of the San Francisco 

 Stock Exchange, in which he speedily grew to be a figure of 

 importance, becoming finally its president. He was " the free 

 lance operator of the mining stock market, who dared to beard 

 the Bonanza kings in their den, and came of! victorious." See- 

 ing the great and rapid advance in the stocks of the Comstock 

 mines, he reasoned that what had gone up so high and so fast 

 was bound to come down. Most people on the Pacific coastat 

 that time were not in a mood to reason so soberly, and it re- 

 quired more than ordinary nerve to make the experiment of 

 selling " short." But Mr. Keene had the courage of his con- 

 victions, and his onslaughts on the market caused it to topple 

 over, giving him an opportunity to buy stocks on which he 

 later was credited with realizing $6,000,000 in profits. When 

 the Bank of California failed, Mr. Keene was one of a few 

 wealthy men who came to its assistance with millions, to pre- 

 vent any loss to its depositors. 



JAMES R. KEENE 



About 1877 Mr. Keene's physicians advised him to go to 

 Europe and rest. Passing through New York he looked into 

 Wall street to see how business was done there, and was 

 tempted to put oflt going to Europe. He tried to " bear " West- 

 ern Union and a lot of other stocks, but the California methods 

 wouldn't work. Then he bought stocks heavily, the market 

 being demoralized and prices low, and on tne return of better 

 times found himself richer by $9,000,000. " His investments 

 were nearly all in good, reliable property. No dubious accept- 

 ances nor rotten railroad items were mixed up with his tangible 

 fortune, which was without parallel in Wall street for its size 

 and rapidity of accumulation." By this time Mr. Keene felt 

 invincible, and he tried to conquer the financial world. He 

 engaged in all kinds of speculation, until his resources were so 

 tied up that he was unable to protect his interests against a 

 " bear " attack, and he soon " had the mortification of seeing 

 the stocks which had been his advance within a few months to 

 a point that would have enabled him to realize $10,000,000 if 

 he had been able to hold them." T^his 

 was the fall chronicled in Mr. Clews's 

 book. But to Mr. Keene it was only a 

 new starting point in life. He again be- 

 came strong enough to tempt the attacks 

 of combinations, for which he often has 

 proved to be more than a match, and to- 

 day he is a man of large fortune, and 

 continues to impart no little vivacity to 

 Wall street. 



Mr. Keene has been described as " the 

 greatest manipulator of stocks that ever 

 lived." He has never sought to become 

 identified with the management of the 

 companies whose stocks he has bought 

 and sold by the hundreds of thousands of 

 shares. His name figures in no lists of 

 company directors. He prefers to work 

 in a different way. J. Pierpont Moigan, 

 for example, can consolidate vast proper- 

 ties and reorganize railway systems and 

 put out new securities by the hundreds 

 of millions. But marketing securities is a different thing, and 

 Mr. Keene knows how to buy and how to sell stocks as no 

 other man. He takes a stock which he believes to be worth 

 more than it is selling for and he advances it until people are 

 eager to buy it. Mr. Morgan reorganized the Southern Rail- 

 way Co., but a good market for the securities was not found 

 until Mr. Keene took an interest in them. He had charge of 

 the United States Steel shares, and he developed a market for 

 them such as had never before existed for any stocks. 



The failure at one time of Mr. Keene has been mentioned. 

 Edwin Le Fevre writes: "There was a man who was used to 

 the best in the land, lavish by nature, fond of the good things 

 oi life, accustomed to the flattery of lesser speculators, loving 

 above everything to back his views in the market with millions, 

 to whom operating in stocks was as the breath of his nostrils, 

 a man proud by instinct, a bundle of nerves, impatient of ob- 

 stacles — now flat ' broke.' Once so powerful and courted and 

 feared, now unnoticed, unsought, regarded by the Street as an 

 exploded bubble about to join the ranks of the vast army of 

 Wall street failures. What did he do ? ' He took a small house 



