104 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



faith as his own. After a few more trifling 

 amenities he hastened away, his last words being 

 a superfluous declaration that he would have no 

 more agreements with me to hold gold from the 

 market. He hurried to the Exchange to borrow 

 his gold while I sent word to a broker in the loan 

 crowd to lend two hundred thousand gold for 

 one per cent over night and ten minutes later 1 

 sent the gold to the office of the man with whom 

 I had the controversy. 



That loan of two hundred thousand gold at 

 the rate of over three hundred per cent per an- 

 num frightened several large borrowers so that 

 it was easy to get high rates for time loans. I 

 loaned one lot of a million at five per cent for 

 thirty days and lesser amounts at the same rate 

 for that and shorter terms. I supplied so much 

 of the demand that when I had delivered the gold 

 I had loaned and poured on the loan market the 

 rest that I had locked up in loans the metal be- 

 came so plentiful that for a time it loaned flat, 

 that is without interest on either the gold or the 

 currency involved in the loan. This was hard 



