BANKERS AND MERCHANTS 355 



ignore the calls, knowing that the loaners dare 

 not attempt to enforce them and invite the ruin 

 to themselves and others that would follow the 

 wiping out of hundreds of millions of values in 

 bond and stock issues. When under similar cir- 

 cumstances Chicago banks and capitalists sol- 

 emnly called Yerkes before them and told him 

 they could carry him no longer, he challenged 

 them to do their worst but promised them "merry 

 hell in the market in the morning" and that he 

 wouldn't leave many of them solvent. 



One little incident got on my nerves. I w T as 

 chatting with the Chairman of the Finance Com- 

 mittee of one of the largest insurance companies 

 in the city, when he told me of large loans they 

 were making on Gould securities and added sig- 

 nificantly : 



"Gould has made some good turns for me in 

 his Western Union." 



I w T as borrowing a good deal of his company 

 and I had made no turns for him and didn't pro- 

 pose to, but it struck me with the force of a physi- 

 cal blow that if financial trouble came he could 



