Frenzied Finance Part 6

Here we have a man without a heart, without a soul, and, I believe, absolutely without conscience--the type of man who even his a.s.sociates feel is likely to bring in after their deaths queer bills against their estates as an offset for what he owes them; the type of man whose promise is just as good as his bond, and whose bond is so near his promise as to make it absolutely immaterial to him which you take.

Exhibited in the side show of one of the great circuses some years ago was a strange creature which, for lack of a better name, its owner and the public dubbed, "A What Is It?" This freak had the semblance of humanity, and yet was not human. All its functions and feelings reversed the normal. Tickle it and it would cry bitterly; pinch or torture it and it would grin rapturously; when starved it repelled food, and when overfed it was ravenous for more. It had heart-beats but no heart. The public gave it up. The public would long ago have given up J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks if he would have let them.

Ill.u.s.tration is better than explanation, and perhaps I can more graphically set J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks before my readers by a few incidents which show his contradictory characteristics in action than by verbal diagrams, however laborious.

Once upon a time Add.i.c.ks, entering Delmonico's for dinner, stumbled on a couple of newsboys at the entrance. One, broken-hearted, was being consoled by the other. Add.i.c.ks, observing the deep sobs, asked: "What's the matter with you, bub?" The consoler explained that his chum had lost $2, his day's earnings and capital, and "His mudder--his fadder's dead--an' de baby'll git trun outter de tenement." Add.i.c.ks, without more ado, slipped the suffering young news-merchant a bill which his friends supposed was $2 to replace the lost funds. As they were taking off their coats in the hall, however, the little newsboy pushed his way in with: "Say, boss, did yer mean ter guv me de twenty?" Add.i.c.ks nodded a good-natured a.s.sent, and his friends registered silently a white mark to his score, and felt that, after all, somewhere beneath the surface he was more of the right sort than they had given him credit for being.

After dinner, as they left, the newsboy again approached. "'Scuse me, boss, but me chum 'd like ter t'ank yer too. I'm goin' ter give him a V outter it." Add.i.c.ks looked at the boy in his mildly cold way and said: "Let me have that bill. I will change it for you." The boy gave it up, and Add.i.c.ks, after methodically placing it in his purse, handed him back a $2 bill with: "That's what you lost, isn't it? And you" (to the second little fellow, who by this time had mapped out visions of new duds for the kids and a warm seat in the gallery of a Bowery theatre), "you didn't lose anything, did you? Well, both of you run along now!"

His friends looked at each other, and from their slates wiped away the white mark and replaced it with a deep, broad, black one. And yet Add.i.c.ks had made good the loss--done a good deed, but in an--Add.i.c.ks way. I should perhaps remark that J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks has never smoked, nor used a swear-word, nor taken liquor in any form.

During the Add.i.c.ks gas campaign in Boston one of his lieutenants demanded as his share of the deal a large amount of money, which he claimed Add.i.c.ks was withholding from him. Add.i.c.ks refused to pay.

Friends and a.s.sociates urged him to settle. While yet refusing, he agreed to meet this man at one of the leading hotels in the presence of counsel and lieutenants. The interview was a hot one. Add.i.c.ks surprised all by his absolute fearlessness in the face of a savage attack, which culminated in the production of a doc.u.ment signed by certain Ma.s.sachusetts legislators, wherein they receipted for the bribe money Add.i.c.ks had paid for their votes. The man who claimed he was being cheated threatened this would be laid before the Grand Jury the following day. All the witnesses were dumfounded at the situation and in concert begged Add.i.c.ks to hush the matter up by paying what was claimed.

"Gentlemen," said this great financier, "my honor, my business and my personal honor, has been a.s.sailed, and rather than submit to this outrage I would die! I now ask you all to bear witness that under no circ.u.mstances will I pay to this man a single dollar!" And he indignantly left the meeting.

While his counsel and a.s.sociates were appalled at what might be the outcome, they admired Add.i.c.ks' manly pluck, and asked themselves if they had not, after all, been mistaken in their estimates of his courage and principle. In the middle of the same night, the man with the doc.u.ment was surprised by a telegram reading: "Meet me in Jersey City to-morrow sure with paper; keep absolutely secret." Next day in Jersey they met, and Add.i.c.ks simply said: "There is the full amount. Give me the paper.

You don't suppose I would compound a felony in the State in which it was committed, and before witnesses, do you?"

In the national election of 1896 J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks was a candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware, and for a variety of reasons was anxious to secure a Republican victory. Within the State, however, the real contest was not over national issues, but to obtain control of the Legislature which in the following January had to elect a United States Senator. There were three factions, the Democrats and two wings of the Republicans, the Add.i.c.ks and anti-Add.i.c.ks parties, the latter calling themselves "regulars." On Election Day Add.i.c.ks used an even $100,000 buying votes, and that evening Delaware was safe for McKinley--both the "regulars" and the men whom Add.i.c.ks' money bought having voted for a Republican President. But it was early bruited around that if the vote of Suss.e.x County (there are three counties in Delaware--Newcastle, Kent, and Suss.e.x) were allowed to stand as received, all Add.i.c.ks' efforts to control the Legislature would have been fruitless and his "made dollars" expended for nothing. The ex-flour dealer of Philadelphia was not satisfied to accept the people's sacred verdict. He quickly called his lieutenants together, mapped out a campaign of almost reckless audacity and daring, and a.s.signed his best men to its execution.

The ballot-boxes with their contents were in the sheriff's charge and stored under lock and key in the court-house. The sheriff was an Add.i.c.ks tool. At midnight he turned over his charge to one of the would-be statesman's trustiest lieutenants, who, with the aid of a lantern and a slip of paper containing the directions, sorted over the legal ballots, threw some out, and put in new ones. When another sun arose the dastardly outrage upon the American elective franchise had been completed, and Add.i.c.ks was busily scheming to carry out the remainder of the plot. On the declaration which he or one of his a.s.sociates would make, that there had been fraud in Suss.e.x County, the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton must send on an investigating committee to whom it would be a.s.serted that the voting lists had been doctored by the Democrats. To prove it the boxes would be opened, the ballots counted, and lo! the villany of the Democrats would be, beyond contradiction, demonstrated.

But the scheme was an Add.i.c.ks scheme. Had it been the plot of any other man with the brains, the nerve, and the lack of principle to concoct it and set it in motion, inevitably it would have been carried through to the designed conclusion. As it was, this is what happened: The lieutenant who had charge of the actual commission of the crime thoughtlessly chuckled over the details of it with another, and this other "in the presence of witnesses" laughingly congratulated Add.i.c.ks on his plan's success. What was the astonishment of the group to hear the candidate for the Senate say: "Gentlemen, I could not countenance such a transaction. This is the first I have heard of it, and it is so outrageously criminal that I refuse to allow it to proceed further.

There will be no investigation, and if it is a fact that those ballots have been changed in the box, the ones who changed them shall receive no benefit from their nefarious work. I have spoken."

Mind you, every member of the group was a party to the scheme and had been carefully rehea.r.s.ed in the part a.s.signed him by Add.i.c.ks himself, but alone, that is, without witnesses; nevertheless so earnest and apparently honest was the man in his protest that for an instant they doubted their senses--until they remembered it was Add.i.c.ks.

The investigation was never held, and to this day Add.i.c.ks' lieutenants, especially he who did the midnight work and who still lives in the peaceful State of Delaware, turn with disgust when Add.i.c.ks' daring is mentioned.

It should be explained here that, whenever Add.i.c.ks plans an illegal transaction--one for which he might be made civilly or criminally liable--he invariably coaches each of his accomplices alone, "without witnesses." And when it becomes necessary in developing the plot to have a confab, at which the several parties to the proceeding must meet, Add.i.c.ks is most careful to preserve a legal semblance of ignorance of incriminating details. At intervals, when a danger-place in the discussion is approaching, he will get up from his seat and, moving to the door, will say: "Gentlemen, halt right there, until I step out of the room; tap at the door when you are over that bad spot, and I will return."

Add.i.c.ks' "Wait until I step out of the room" is as familiar among his coworkers as the "I am going upstairs" is among the "Standard Oil"

family.

Try to conjure before your mind's eye a picture of the anomalous character these instances suggest. I'll warrant your mental image as little resembles the original Add.i.c.ks as Mr. Hyde did Dr. Jekyll in the story. He does not look the part a.s.signed him here, nor any other part for that matter. I saw him coming toward me on State Street one summer day some years ago, a tall, wiry man, in a white-flannel suit, perfect in fit and spotless as snow, wearing a fine Panama hat. This was in the period before Panamas were commonly worn. He was to the life the elegant and luxurious Southern planter of ante-bellum days. Six months afterward in about the same place I saw approaching me a splendid person in rich sable outer garments who looked for all the world like an exiled Russian grand duke.

It was Add.i.c.ks in winter. You will not surprise his secret from that pleasant, rather ambiguous, but square-jawed face, nor from the mouth hidden under a long, drooping, gray, military mustache. His is a good-sized, well-shaped head, you might say, and the gray, shallow eyes that look out at you are almost merry in their glances. But they are inscrutable eyes which seem to have a challenge in their gaze, a sort of "look-me-over-as-long-as-you-like-and-you'll-never-guess-what's-under-the-surface"

expression that is baffling and provocative. Yet this sybarite, this daring coward, this stingy prodigal, this sincere hypocrite, this extraordinary blending of contradictory qualities, is the man who from 1887 to 1892 made Boston look like the proverbial country gawk at circus-time.

Power the man certainly has, and of a distinct quality, yet his intimates cannot explain the reason of their obedience to him. After a brief acquaintance he is revealed as the very soul of insincerity--he "works" his friends, he pays toll to his enemies, he frankly shows himself without the sense of moral obligation. I believe his talent resides in his capacity to select the proper type of man to "make rich"

in the illicit schemes his abnormal mind conceives. These coworkers of his are of different grades; some have a super-abundance of cash; others a desire to get it--in common are their lack of principle and dearth of brains. Add.i.c.ks cannot do business long with men of real ability, nor does he understand them, whereas he can read the minds of his ordained victims as if they were an open book. The big men who have encountered or been a.s.sociated with Add.i.c.ks are p.r.o.ne to characterize him as a mountebank, a joker, or a chump.

CHAPTER X

ADd.i.c.kS COMES TO BOSTON

J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks was born in Philadelphia in 1841, and was in the eighties plodding along the ordinary, uneventful path of a seller of flour to the people of that city which since the death of William Penn holds the record for the highest and densest percentage of sleep per capita of any English-speaking community.

In the eighties two things happened that changed the whole course of J.

Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks' life. Some one invented water-gas and "let in" Add.i.c.ks on the invention; and the Philadelphia branch of the "Standard Oil," represented by Widener, Elkins, and Dolan, "trustified"

the gas companies of the city of Chicago, which enabled Add.i.c.ks to "hold up" the "trustification" until Dolan and Dolan's a.s.sociates paid him the sum of $300,000 for the instrument with which he had done the holding up, $10,000 worth of the stock of one of the necessary Chicago companies.

The law of compensation, which gets in its deadly work on all the prettiest plans of man, but decreed that what goes up must come down when it ceases going up. It has a shrewd trick of grafting sorrows on our joys, and of handicapping success with discomfiting conditions. The favorite of fortune whose feet have fallen in pleasant places sooner or later stubs his toe.

Add.i.c.ks' first "made dollars" certainly came easy--so easy, indeed, that those who watched his early career marvelled at his success; but nowhere on G.o.d's footstool is there to-day a more terrible ill.u.s.tration of the inevitable workings of the law of compensation than the present standing of J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks affords.

The thief whose first excursion into a wayfarer's pocket is rewarded with the equivalent of days and nights of honest labor will surely be convinced thereafter of the superiority of theft over toil as a means of money-getting. Invariably the manufacturer of "made dollars," after his first coup, forsakes forever after the cold arithmetic of commerce for the rule of guess, dream, hope, and "I will," which const.i.tutes the mathematics of high finance. Add.i.c.ks' first "made dollars" came with such magical ease that there awoke in his slumbering subst.i.tute for a soul a disgust for those prosaic pursuits at which one could never, try how one might, make more than four by the addition of two and two. He probably argued to himself: "Why should I work in the flour business when I know a way of getting overnight more than I can make out of flour in a lifetime? If people are so simple in guarding their savings that I can by a trick take away from them enormous wealth without the slightest danger to my own safety or my profit, even if detected, why should I not devote my life to such healthful and profitable occupation?" The logic of the proposition was convincing. Accepting its conclusions, J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks, of Philadelphia, embarked on his career. Soon afterward he discovered gas in Boston.

This was in 1887. Equipped with his "made dollars" for capital, his impressive name, sublime effrontery, and a pedigree free from anything suggestive of his new purpose in life, the ex-flour merchant "lit" into our everything-figured-out-ahead-and-every-promise-made-taken-at-par town of Boston. To appreciate the lights and shadows of this event, one should know Boston and, at the same time, Add.i.c.ks. Every country boy will remember Tom Hood's poem beginning:

I remember, I remember the house where I was born, With the little lattice window where the sun came peeping in at morn,

and can recall milking-time in July or August when, sitting on the rail-fence surrounding the barn-yard, he watched the pigeons snipping up grain, the old hen scratching up worms for the chicks, the ducks and the drakes and the geese and the ganders proudly waddling back and forth, among and around the fluffy ducklings and goslings, and the bull-pup sound asleep by the side of the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat. Probably he will think of some particular milking-time when the calm, contented serenity of the barn-yard was suddenly disturbed by the unexpected descent in its midst of a neighboring peac.o.c.k, who, apparently unconscious of the consternation produced by his entry, proceeded proudly to spread his dazzling plumage to convince every one, from Uncle Cy, on the milking-stool, and mild-eyed Bess, down to the white fan-tailed dove, that he was--It.

Conjure up the picture--the peac.o.c.k at milking-time in the farm-yard; thus Add.i.c.ks came to Boston--though it is far from my intention to identify the bucolic background I have drawn with the Hub of the Universe.

Boston, up to this time, had been singularly free from the mushroom variety of millionaire which had sprung up overnight in such numbers in New York and Philadelphia. Proudly defiant of a product so alien to all her traditions, her citizens would have sworn that no votary of modern high finance could exist over one curfew-toll within her gates. For Boston had her own financial eminence, of a character in keeping with the chill conditions of conservatism and rect.i.tude appropriate to the metropolis of the New England conscience. She had her Stock Exchange, her numerous great corporations, her scores of single and multimillionaires, and it was her boast that her capital had played the greatest legitimate part in the country's growth. She had furnished a large percentage of the money which had created our vast Western railway system; she had found and made the superb copper-mines of Michigan and Montana, and in all parts of the land branches of her st.u.r.dy inst.i.tutions were vitally a.s.sisting the miracle of America's development. Notwithstanding what these wide-flung enterprises imply of commercial push and audacity, Boston, at the time Add.i.c.ks discovered gas there, was one of the most trusting wealth-investing communities in the world. She had her simple rules of business conduct which years of usage had consecrated into all-powerful precedent, but her brokers and capitalists, however fearful of all things quick or tricky, had never previously figured as candidates for what in Western parlance are described as "come-ons."

CHAPTER XI

HOW ADd.i.c.kS CAPTURED BOSTON GAS

At the time Add.i.c.ks "lit" in Boston that city numbered among her proudest possessions several extremely rich gas companies, and they were owned by her "best people." To do business with Boston's "best people"

is no easy task, and up to the advent of Add.i.c.ks, to do business with her "best people" without doing it through others of her "best people"

who could absolutely vouch for you was an unheard-of thing. The manner in which the ex-flour merchant of Philadelphia managed to slip by the barriers and into the heart of our blue-blooded citadel affords the most unparalleled example of audacity of which I know.

In many ways Boston is unlike other great American cities. Some of her inst.i.tutions through antiquity or a.s.sociation have acquired a positive sanct.i.ty. Pedigree is important. The average inhabitant spends much of his time watching the grandson of his neighbor's father, to see the old man's characteristics crop out in him. The boy's failures will be remembered against his own offspring fifty years hence. It is a city of long memories and of traditions. In 1887 Boston, as now, consisted largely of her traditions, her blue-gla.s.s window-panes and her Somerset Club.

Now the distinction, sanct.i.ty, and antiquity of the Somerset Club are quite beyond peradventure. Since Boston has been Boston she has had her Somerset Club, a club distinctively of grandfathers, fathers, and sons.

The right to members.h.i.+p in the Somerset Club is as much the inheritance of a Somerset man's son as his name or as the proud t.i.tle which always will be found affixed to his signature when he reaches man's estate, "of Boston." For a man to get into the Somerset without long years of waiting and intense scrutiny, not only of his own record but of his parents' before him, is a rare event. Yet the name of J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks was up for full members.h.i.+p, with Boston's picked best for his sponsors, a few days after he "lit." How Add.i.c.ks got upon the Somerset list Boston will never tell, and the mention of the fact nowadays within the club-house will empty its sideboard instanter.

The campaign of arrangement for the advent of Add.i.c.ks in Boston was more elaborate, more astute and expensive than was ever organized for exploitation of prima donna or great pianist. For months an advance agent had been preparing the way for his chief's arrival in a blaze of glory. There was talk in the papers and among the financiers about the wonderful water-gas process which enormously enhanced the profits of gas-making, and such rumor was always linked with the name of the brilliant Philadelphia Gas King, for so the press had already dubbed him. A wonder and magic immensely provocative of curiosity were woven about the ident.i.ty of this J. Edward O'Sullivan Add.i.c.ks, who it was said might be persuaded to visit Boston to work marvels with the stocks that had been "in the family" long before the present generation could remember. When it was sure that the great man was really coming the agent sought the advice of Boston's best in selecting quarters for him.

In the Tudor, a beautiful family hotel adjoining the Somerset Club on Beacon Hill, a magnificent suite of apartments was taken, and though the great man could remain in Boston but a brief s.p.a.ce, the furniture, the hangings, and even the carpets were all changed for him.

Eminent financial tricksters have various ways of handling their victims. Some believe that the most skilful mode of attack is the slow, confident, dignified approach which allays the subject's fears by its solemn display of deliberation. Others (and Add.i.c.ks is of this creed) are persuaded of the superior efficacy of the "rush-in-and-drag-out"

method. The subject, they say, "gives up" more and quicker when the hurry call is sounded. It was a winter's day when Add.i.c.ks "lit" in Boston, and circ.u.mstances had arisen, the suave advance agent told various Boston's best, with whom he was in consultation, that would make his chief's stay much briefer than either had antic.i.p.ated. So when the great man arrived at the club just before dinner, quite an array of important people were congregated there.

Add.i.c.ks ran the gantlet of the critical glances of as critical a group as you'll find on earth, and the word went round--no one could remember afterward who started it--"Typical Southern gentleman! Breeding sticking out everywhere!" So well had the astute advance agent done his work that a little dinner was arranged on the spot, and Add.i.c.ks made such rapid progress with these reserved and conservative Bostonians that, by the time coffee was served, conversation had reached the stage where it was natural for him to send the waiter to the coat-room for his bunch of gas papers. The emissary returned bringing the fur overcoat with which Add.i.c.ks always envelops himself in chilly weather. Add.i.c.ks searched the pockets, and, apparently to his surprise, discovered that they did not contain the required doc.u.ments, but where they should have been he found a small bale of 1,000-dollar government bonds, containing, one of the party said afterward, at least one hundred certificates. "How careless of my secretary!" said Add.i.c.ks, nonchalantly replacing the packet in the pocket and motioning the waiter to take the overcoat away again.

It was, of course, due to the admirable work of his advance agent that these Monte Cristo effects impressed the cultured little set who would have laughed to scorn such a display on the part of one of their own kind. In Add.i.c.ks it was the dazzling eccentricity of the wonder-worker, and so excusable; and the free, flash, careless exhibit of wealth made the man's conversation and subsequent demands seem natural. Next morning, in discussing the work of the previous evening with his lieutenant, Add.i.c.ks delivered himself of the wise remark: "Finance, my boy, like theatricals, is dependent for success on the staging, more even than on the actor. My experience has shown me that men the world over are alike--if you properly surround them, they will hiss at hissing time and clap at applauding time; yes, upon the way you stage your finance plays depends their success." The fact is that by no other method could this scenic artist of finance have set his plans moving so rapidly. The man had calculated to a nicety on the romantic cupidity he aroused.

After dinner, Add.i.c.ks at once "got down to business": "Gentlemen, my project is as simple as it is feasible and conservative, for I will touch nothing but conservative enterprises. Gentlemen, you have three great gas companies supplying this great city with light, the Boston, Roxbury, and South Boston. They are worth at the present time about five million dollars. I am going to buy them and spend three or four millions more on a new company; then I shall consolidate the four and turn them from coal into water-gas companies, which will sell gas to your people at less than they now pay, and at the same time make a lot of money for you and for myself. What do you say?"