WAR TIME AND GOLD 65 



spilling of the Vanderbilt shares, whose worth 

 had been cut in half, and here was the crazy Tobin 

 bidding up the stock to pitiless heights. 



It was no longer a question of aldermen ; their 

 margins had melted out of sight. The brokers' 

 heads were in the lion's mouth. Every share of 

 Harlem was in Vanderbilt hands, and the broker 

 who had agreed to deliver even a hundred shares 

 was at his mercy, and he had no mercy. He 

 could demand one hundred, five hundred, a thou- 

 sand per cent, for the shares. Most of the 

 victims he stripped to the buskin, leaving them 

 only their business credit with which to build up 

 new fortunes. Our escape was by the breadth of 

 a hair. A customer, acting upon the tip of an 

 alderman whom he knew, sold through my em- 

 ployer a hundred shares of Harlem short. My 

 anxiety about this contract took me to the 

 outskirts of the crowd, where Tobin was bidding 

 for the stock. It chanced as I stood there that 

 the very broker who executed our orders on the 

 exchange came to me and said: 



"I've got a hundred shares of that stock to sell, 



