Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 222, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1912 — SULLY, ONCE "COTTON KING, " NOW RUNS A SUMMER HOTEL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SULLY, ONCE "COTTON KING, " NOW RUNS A SUMMER HOTEL

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O you remember “Dan” Sully, the only genuine Cotton King that New York ever who only a .few years ago was perched on the dizziest heights of audacious speculation, who cleaned up $3,000,000 in a few months, lost it in a

few minutes, and vanished from the limelight? Well “Dan” Sully is now running a boarding house. It is at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, Understand clearly at the Btart that the ex-cotton king is really running the boarding house. He isn’t Just pretending to —sitting aloof somewhere in lonely majesty, lending his name and prestige to the undertaking, dazzling boarders with tales of past grandeur. No. The erstwhile czar of the cotton market not only superintends everything in the higher departments of the Job, but he turns to and takes a hand often in other matters which most people in his place would delegate to others. f Mr. Sully pointed to the sea, whose waves were roaring over the steep water front of Watch Hill. "Over there to the left," he said, "is Block Island. To the right is Montauk Point. Straight ahead the nearest land is the coaßt of Spain. That breeze comes direct from there.” "When I was busy in the cotton market in New York,” he went on, "I found there was no place like this for resting. It rests the brain as jao other place does, and when you're 7 working in Wall street it’s the brain that ought to get rest. I used to run up here every Friday and stay till Monday morning. It made an immense difference to me.” On the subject of Wall street, that mhde and broke him, Mr. Sully is disinclined to talk. At best he is a man of few words, but on cotton and speculation in general he is Sphinxlike. “Do you want to get back to Wall street?” he was asked. "Of course, I’d like to,” he an* swered. “When a man’s been in ■ really active work he wants to get back into it and stay in it until he’s put the sod. But”—and here his Jaws set firmly—“l’m not going back. I have no plans to do that. At times I hear echoes of the old days when I was there, but I 1 don’t intend to try to have more of them.” The house,' by the way, is a fine summer residence, built by Mr. Sully himself a year or two before his downfall on the Cotton Exchange, and named Kenneth Ridge, after a son who died. It stands on an eminence, the highest is Watch Hill. Before the owner’s financial downfall the house witnessed festivities which, if houses can mediate, must lead it to startling contrast. Six years ago, for Instance, Mr. Sully gave a dinner and ball at Kenneth Ridge to Admiral Robley D. Evans and a party of his officers. “They danced in this room,” he told the reporter, leading him into a spacious apartment. “Now, the boarders I have use it for a sun parlor. “I went into the boarding house

business on account of more business troubles,” Mr v Sully explained, when he and the reporter again settled them-

selves to enjoy the sea air on the veranda. “Last fall I went to England to see about some business matters there. I intended to s£end the winter either there or out west or in the southern states, "But the plans that I had made did not turn out well and I decided to spend the winter right here In Watch Hill. It was the first time that I or my family had ever stayed here in the cold weather. But, when I built the house, I put steam heat into it, so we were very comfortable. And right there the idea struck me, not only to run this place as a boarding house, but as an all-tbe-year-round boarding house.” In that idea something of the originality of the "Dan” Scully who evolved a "system” and played the cotton market to a standstill crops out again. Up to the present time nobody has ever thought of that windswept promontory, Watch Hill, as a place in which to spend the winter. Yet, having done It once, “Dan” Sully was amazed at the mildness of the air and promptly resolved to make other people besides himself enjoy it. In fact, he already talks about Watch Hill as a sort of future Atlantic City of New England. “Out there” —again he waved his hand toward the Atlantic ocean “only a short w%y off the coast, is the gulf stream. It’s quite near enough to keep the weather from getting too cold here in winter. Yet everybody who has a house here or hires one for the warm weather never stays later than November, and the hotels close early In September. I’m going to show people that this is an all-the-year-round place.” "Are you doing anything besides running your boarding house?” asked the reporter. “Nothing 1 whatever,” dhswered the ex-cotton king. Yet this is the man who, an obscure Providence cotton broker, sud-

denly appeared in Wall street and began operating in cotton in accordance with a “system” that seemed to be infallible. This is the man whose methods completely mystified the wisest old stagers in the country, whose profits ran up as high as $600,000 in one coup—the man whose’ failure, when announced from the rostrum of the cotton exchange on March 18, 1904, caused the wildest panic ever known In the history of that Institution. The “Dan” Sully who now takes people through his house and quotes prices on rooms to them was once worth $3,000,000. He lost nearly $2,000,000 of It In two minutes. According to him, he announced his voluntary suspension to the superintendent of the cotton exchange at 1:46 on the afternoon of that fatal March 18. It was not read on the floor of the exchange until two minutes past 2. "That delay of two minutes cost me $1,176,000,” Sully said once, in telling the story. “If it had been read at or before 2 o’clock I might have come out all right.” As it was, when the smoke cleared from the field wher4 he had met disaster, his liabilities totaled up to something like $3,000,000. At the time "Dan” Sully said to a reporter: 1 "Three weeks ago I was worth $3,000,000. Now I’m not worth $30.” Such was he who now runs the Seaside boarding house and expatiates upon the glories of Watch Hill and Its many advantages as a boarding place. Into all his laudations of the place he puts peal enthusiasm; they would be creditable to the most consummate Boniface of them all. “Would you like to get back to New York?” Like a shot came the answer, with a gleam of the eye and a snap of the J&W! " ‘Would I like to get back?’ Why New York is the only place in the world!”