BUBBLES 203 



the price at which he offered it to me could easily 

 be obtained but that he hadn't the time to attend 

 to it. He said that the deal could go on if I 

 would promise to take the Julia when it was over 

 and that he would take the risk of getting out of 

 Jim Smith what he ought to contribute. 



It was mostly bluff and all graft, but the situa- 

 tion was dangerous for in starting the operation 

 Smith had bought thousands of shares through 

 Stockwell's brokers on Stockwell's orders, and if 

 Stockwell had insisted on taking those purchases 

 for himself, denying that they were on account of 

 the pool, he might have had the pool cornered to 

 the serious injury of Smith and myself. I made 

 the concession, the shares were delivered and the 

 operation continued. Smith stood pat on our 

 short sales, waiting for the decline which was as 

 certain to come as the sun to sink to the horizon, 

 but the vis viva of the Stockwell boom held it 

 strong for days. We knew the rise was ephem- 

 eral, we had watched for years from behind the 

 scenes the machinery that made the quotations 

 and often we had controlled and directed that 



