Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1874 — A Broken-Down Wall Street Gambler. [ARTICLE]

A Broken-Down Wall Street Gambler.

A New York letter to the Cincinnati Gazette gives the history of a Wall street stock-gambler who has played out his hand: Here is a man of sixty who looks extremely shattered, ana, as he is an old acquaintance, I am much interested in his case. He has a wife and family which have for years considered themselves rich, but they are now poor and must remain so. The present is hard enough, but the future looks worse. The man sunk everything he had in one week. He spends a certain amount of time every day at the Stock Exchange, indulging his feelings and trying to recall the past. After this he goes to his task and toils through the duties which now give him bread.I have known this man half a lifetime, and knew his father also. The latter was a thrifty man, who by great industry paid for a farm which he bequeathed to this fellow and his sister. The young man studied law and a good practice, but he got to speculating in stock, and this destroyed his habits of labor. He made some hits which only led him to bolder attempts. His luck continued, and at last he became proverbially successful, so much so that many applied to him for advice on the subject. He gradually reached a fortune of $150,000, which was secure in his own hands a week before the panic. His sister’s money was also in his possession. At that time (August, 1873) he concluded that Central Hudson, which stood at par, would go to 130 and he spread his $150,000 so as to control a million. In others he bought a million worth and paid $150,000 down as a margin, and a bank lent the remainder, holding his stock as security. His plans were disappointed. The panic knocked the stock down to eighty-five, and the bank demanded its money. His loan was at five days’ call and he could not meet it. The stock was sacrificed and in one week he was beggared, besides sinking his entire patrimony. Fortunately, he has since got employment at SIOO a month, and 8 this keeps him from the street. He does the low drudgery of a firm which gave it to him principally on the score of friendship, and his sister takes in sewing. Sucn is the condition of a once-envied speculator. Ido not wonder at bis lingering around his former resort, and he will continue to do so as long as he lives. The tears he Sheds (real tears, not figures of speech) relieve his agony, and after the fitris oxer he goes to his drudgery with as much resignation as possible. The method of operating which is described above is called “ buying on a margin,” and no one can practice it in a wildly-extended manner until he has become reckless to a prodigious degree. In ballooning over Pittsburgh, Donaldson accidentally dropped a sand-bag into a kettle of boiling apple hatter.