188 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



York market I ran into the off-scouring of the 

 financial world. There were plenty for sale and 

 at prices low enough to suit me, but when I made 

 purchases and insisted upon receiving the bonds 

 from responsible parties the sale was declared off. 

 I bought one lot of a hundred thousand at fif- 

 teen from a member of a wealthy and well-known 

 New York family, only to find that he w T as the 

 black sheep of the family. He wanted me to 

 take up the bonds from a bank of which he was 

 borrowing ten thousand dollars on them and to 

 then pay him the five thousand dollars difference. 

 When I asked the bank if the bonds were his, or 

 if he had full authority to sell them, I was told 

 that he had no right to sell them, that he had as- 

 sured them he was loaning the money on the 

 bonds through me. I decided that there were 

 too many jobbers, wholesalers, and retailers be- 

 tween the manufacturer and the consumer of 

 these bonds and concluded to go at once to head- 

 quarters and as the manager of the estate had 

 expressed a preference for bonds issued by the 

 Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford road I 



