MARKET MANIPULATION 105 



on the firm which had just paid fifty thousand 

 dollars bonus for a loan worth next to nothing 

 and harder yet for my devout friend who long 

 prayed in vain for his daily quarter per cent. 



It was often needful to make gold plentiful 

 for a time lest a flood from abroad, attracted by 

 continued high rates, should swamp the loan mar- 

 ket. So far as our interests were concerned nat- 

 ural causes, which I have sought to explain, made 

 gold plentiful when we needed to have it so and 

 scarce when scarcity most profited us and yet I 

 look back with the feeling that I cooperated effi- 

 ciently with nature in maintaining the conditions 

 that benefited us. 



During all the years of our activity in and 

 manipulation of the gold market I remember 

 but one occasion when its domination was at- 

 tempted by another. That was the ill-advised 

 act of a Secretary of the Treasury in pitting the 

 treasury against that law of the universe known 

 as Gresham's. Of this I shall write fully in an- 

 other chapter. The Black Friday fiasco of the 

 Fisk and Gould welchers was no more a Wall 



