LUCK TURNS AGAIN 267 
at times about the company’s future, as about all public- 
service corporations, and the stock quotations were artificially 
maneuvered, but Field did all that he could to prevent this. 
He conceived it to be his duty to support the stock in the mar- 
ket, as he wished to keep it a high-grade investment security, 
rather than let it become a Wall Street footbali subject to 
every whisper or plot. 
A man so honest-minded and open-handed as Field, asso- 
ciating with experienced manipulators in finance, was des- 
tined eventually to lose out. His prestige and large fortune 
sustained him for ten years of elevated-railway history. Then 
he succumbed to the tape of a Wall Street ticker; the con- 
queror of the ocean depths was swamped by a deluge of stock 
certificates; the optimist who had sold cable stock to hesitant 
capitalists was himself sold out by pessimists and skeptics. 
Field’s diary of May 16, 1877, contained this item: “Bought 
this day a controlling interest in the New York Elevated Rail- 
road Company and was elected president of the company.” | 
Slightly over ten years later, on June 24, 1887, he lost in a 
few hours, by a transaction in elevated-railway stock, the 
fortune that had required years to build. This day’s opera- 
tions were called in Wall Street the ‘““Manhattan squeeze.” 
Much discussion has taken place as to just what happened 
on that fateful day and what went on behind the scenes. Dif- 
ferent versions have appeared. Field made no recriminations, 
as he had against Tilden eight years before when he lost a 
million to the wily politician. His losses now were much 
larger, probably five million dollars, but he stood the disaster 
as he had stood similar ones on the high seas when a precious 
cable slipped away into the ocean depths. 
It is possible to state the general happenings of that summer 
day; it may never be possible to determine the plans and mo- 
tives that actuated them. In some respects what took place 
was similar to what had taken place on previous occasions— 
but to a more extreme degree. Field tried to sustain the drop- 
