The Governing Committee was holding a meeting in its room. Bob rushed in unceremoniously.

“One word, gentlemen,” he called. “I have more trades outstanding, both buys and sells, than any other member or house. Before deciding whether to adjourn in an attempt to save ‘the Street’, I ask your consideration of this proposition: If the Exchange will suspend operations for thirty minutes, and allow me to address the members on the floor, I will agree to buy stocks all around the room, until they have regained at least half their drop all of it, if possible. I will buy until I have exhausted to the last hundred my fortune of a billion dollars. This should make an adjournment unnecessary. I know that this is a most extraordinary request, but you are confronted with a most extraordinary situation, the most remarkable in the history of the Stock Exchange. Already, if what they say on the floor is correct, over two hundred banks and trust companies throughout the country have gone under, and new failures are being announced every minute. Half the members of this and the Boston and Philadelphia Exchanges are insolvent and have closed their doors, or will close them before three o’clock, and the shrinkage in values so far reported runs over fifteen billions. Unless something is done before the close, there will be a similar panic in every Exchange and Bourse in Europe to-morrow.”

The committee instantly voted to lay the proposition before the full board. In another minute the president’s gavel sounded, and the floor was still as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on the president. Every man in that great throng knew that upon the announcement they were about to hear, might depend, at least temporarily, the welfare, not only of Wall Street, but of the nation, perhaps even of the civilised world. The president spoke:

“Members of the New York Stock Exchange:

“The Governing Committee instructs me to say that Mr. Robert Brownley has asked that operations be suspended for thirty minutes, in order that he be allowed to address you. Mr. Brownley has agreed, if this request be granted, he will upon resumption of operations purchase a sufficient amount of stock to raise the average price of all active shares at least one-half their total drop all of it, if possible. He agrees to buy to the limit of his fortune of a billion dollars. I now put Mr. Brownley’s request to a vote. All those in favour of granting it will signify the same by saying ‘Yes.’”

A mighty roof-lifting “Yes” sounded through the room.

“All those opposed, ‘No.’”

There was a deathly hush.

“Mr. Brownley will please speak from this platform, and remember, in thirty minutes to the second, I will sound the gavel for the resumption of business.”

Bob Brownley strode to the place just vacated by the president. The crowd was growing larger every minute. The ticker was already hissing a tape biograph of this extraordinary situation in brokerage shops, hotels, and banks throughout the country, and in a few minutes the news of it would be in the capitals of Europe. Never before in history did man have such an audience the whole civilised world. Already arose from Wall, Broad, and New Streets, which surround the Exchange, the hoarse bellow of the gathering hordes. Before the ticker should announce the resumption of business these would number hundreds of thousands, for the financial district for more than an hour had been a surging mob.

For once at least the much-abused phrase, “He looked the part,” could be used in all truthfulness. As Robert Brownley threw back his head and shoulders and faced that crowd of men, some of whom he had hurt, many of whom he had beggared, and all of whom he had tortured, he presented a picture such as a royal lion recently from the jungles and just freed from his cage might have made. Defiance, deference, contempt, and pity all blended in his mien, but over all was an I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many atmosphere of confidence that turned my spinal column into a mercury tube. He began to speak:

“Men of Wall Street:

“You have just witnessed a record-breaking slaughter. I have asked permission to talk to you for the purpose of showing you how any member of a great Stock Exchange may at any time do what I have done to-day. Weigh well what I am about to say to you. During the last quarter of a century there has grown up in this free and fair land of ours a system by which the few take from the many the results of their labours. The men who take have no more license, from God or man, to take, than have those from whom they filch. They are not endowed by God with superior wisdom, nor have they performed for their fellow-men any labour or given to them anything of value that entitles them to what they take. Their only license to plunder is their knowledge of the system of trickery and fraud that they themselves have created. No man can gainsay this, for on every side is the evidence. Men come into Wall Street at sunrise without dollars; before that same sun sets they depart with millions. So all-powerful has grown the system of oppression that single men take in a single lifetime all the savings of a million of their fellows. To-day the people, eighty millions strong, are slaving for the few, and their pay is their board and keep. I saw this robbery. I felt the robbers’ scourge. I sought the secret. I found it here, here in this gambling-hell. I found that the stocks we bought and sold were mere gambling chips; that the man who had the biggest stack could beat his opponent off the board; that his opponent was the world, because all men directly or indirectly played the stock-gambling game. To win, it was but necessary to have unlimited chips. If chips were bought and sold, on equal terms, by all, no one could buy more than he could pay for, and the game, although still a gambling one, would be fair. A few master tricksters, dollar magicians, long ago seeing this condition, invented the system by which the people are ruthlessly plundered. The system they invented was simple, so simple that for a quarter of a century it has remained undiscovered by the world at large and even by you, who profess to be experts. No man thought that a free people who had intended to allow all the equal use of every avenue for the attainment of wealth, and who intended to provide for the safeguarding of wealth after it was secured, could be such dolts as to allow themselves to be robbed of all their accumulated wealth by a device as simple as that by which children play at blindman’s buff. The process was no more complex than that employed by the robber of old, who took the pebbles from the beach, marked them money, and with the money bought the labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by turning pebbles into money he took away from the labourer the money which he had paid them for the labour until all in the land were slaves of the moneymaker. These few tricksters said: We will arbitrarily manufacture these chips stocks. After we have manufactured them, we will sell the world what the world can pay for, and then by the use of the unlimited supply we still have we will win away from the world what it has bought, and repeat the operation, until we have all the wealth, and the people are enslaved. To do this there was one thing besides the manufacturing of the chips stocks that was absolutely necessary a gambling-hell, the working of whose machinery would place a selling value upon such chips; a hell where, after selling the chips, they could be won back. I saw that if these tricksters were to be routed and their ‘System’ was to be destroyed, it must be through the machinery of this Stock Exchange. I studied the machinery, and presently I marvelled that men could for so long have been asses.

“From the very nature of stock-gambling it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that it be conducted under certain rules, unchangeable, unbreakable rules, to attempt to change or break which would destroy stock-gambling. The foundation rule, the rule absolutely necessary for the existence of stock-gambling is: Any member of the Stock Exchange can buy, or sell, between the opening and the closing of the Exchange as many shares of stock as he cares to. With this rule in force his buying and selling cannot be restricted to the amount he can take and pay for, or deliver and receive pay for, because there is not money enough in the world to pay for what under this same rule can be bought and sold in a single session. This is because there have been arbitrarily created by these few tricksters many times more stocks than there is money in existence. The amount of stock that any man can sell in one session of the Exchange is limited only by the amount that he can offer for sale, and he can offer any amount his tongue can utter; and he is not compelled and cannot be compelled to show his ability to deliver what he has offered for sale until after he has finished selling, which is the following day. You will ask as I did: Can this be possible? You will find the answer I found. It is so, and must continue to be so, or there will be no stock-gambling. Mark me, for this statement is weighted with the greatest import to you all. A member of this Exchange can sell as many shares of stock at one session as he cares to offer. If any attempt is made at the session he sells at to compel him either before or after he offers to sell to show his ability to deliver, away goes the stock-gambling structure, because from the very nature of the whole structure of stock-gambling the same shares are sold and resold many times in each session and the seller cannot know, much less show, that he can deliver until he first adjusts with the buyer and the buyer cannot adjust until after he has become such by buying. If a rule were made compelling a seller to show his responsibility before selling, every member would have every other member at his mercy and there could be no stock-gambling. When I had worked this out, I saw that while the few tricksters of the ‘System’ had a perfect device for taking from the people their wealth, I had discovered as perfect a means of taking away from the few the wealth they had secured from the many. With this knowledge came a conviction that my way was as honest as the ‘System’s,’ in fact more honest than theirs. They took from the innocent, I took from the guilty what had already been dishonestly secured. I determined to put my discovery into practice.

“I might never have done so but for that Sugar panic in which I was robbed of millions by the ‘System’ through Barry Conant. In that panic the ‘System,’ with its unlimited resources, filched from the people by the arbitrary manufacture of stocks, and by their manipulation did to me what I afterward discovered I could do to them, without any resources other than my right to do business on the floor of this Exchange. You saw the outcome, in the second Sugar panic, of my first experiment. In a few minutes I cleared a profit of ten million dollars. I could have made it fifty millions, or one hundred and fifty, but I was not then on familiar terms with my new robber-robbing device, and I had yet a heart. To make this ten millions of money, all that was necessary for me to do was to sell more Sugar than Barry Conant could buy. This was easy, because Barry Conant, not knowing of my newly invented trick, could buy only what he could pay for on the morrow, or, at least, what he believed his clients could pay for; while I, not intending to deliver what I sold unless by smashing the price to a point where I could compel those who had bought to resell to me at millions less than I sold at could sell unlimited amounts literally unlimited amounts. When Barry Conant had bought all that he thought he could pay for, he was obliged to beat a retreat in front of my offerings, and I was able to smash, and smash, until the price was so low that he could not by the use of what he had bought, as collateral, borrow sufficient to pay me for what I had sold him. Then he was compelled to turn about and sell what he had bought from me, and when I had rebought it, for ten millions less than I had sold it for, the trick had been turned. I had sold him 100,000 shares say at 220. He had sold them back to me say at 120, and he stood where he had stood at the beginning. He had none of the 100,000 shares. Both of us stood, so far as stock was concerned, where we had stood at the beginning, but as to profits and losses there was this difference: I had ten millions of dollars profits, while Barry Conant’s clients, the ‘System,’ were ten millions losers and all by a trick. The trick did not differ in principle from the one in constant practice by the ‘System.’ When the ‘System,’ after manufacturing Sugar stock, sell 100,000 shares to the people for $10,000,000, they so manipulate the market by the use of the $10,000,000 that they have taken from the people as to scare them into selling the 100,000 shares back to them for $5,000,000. After they have bought they again manipulate the market until the people buy back for $10,000,000 what they sold for $5,000,000. The ‘System’ commits no legal crime. I committed no legal crime. I had not even infringed any rule of the Exchange, any more than had the ‘System’ when they performed their trick. Since my experimental panic I have repeatedly put the trick in operation, and each time I have taken millions, until to-day I have in my control, as absolutely as though I had honestly earned them, as the labourer earns his week’s wages, or the farmer the price of his crops, over $1,000,000,000, or sufficient to keep enslaved the rest of their lives a million people.

“What do you intelligent men think of this situation? You know, because you know the stock-gambling game, that the American people, with their boasted brains and courage, come year after year with their bags of gold, the result of their prosperous labours, and dump them, hundreds of millions, into this gambling-inferno of yours. You know that they are fools, these silly millions of people whom you term lambs and suckers. You chuckle as, year after year, having been sent away shorn, they return for new shearing. You marvel that the merchants, manufacturers, miners, lawyers, farmers, who have sufficient intelligence to gather such surplus legitimately, would bring it to our gambling-hell, where upon all sides is plain proof that we who conduct the gambling, and who produce nothing, are obliged to take from those who do produce, hundreds of millions each year for expenses, and hundreds of millions each year for profits for you know that we have nothing to give them in return for what they bring to us. You know that every dollar of the billions lost in Wall Street means higher prices for steel rails, for lumber and cars, and that this means higher passenger and freight rates to the people. You know that when the manufacturer brings his wealth to Wall Street and is robbed of it, he will add something to the price of boots and shoes, cotton and woollen clothes, and other necessities that he makes and that he sells to the people. You know that when the copper, lead, tin, and iron miners part with their surplus to the ‘System,’ it means higher prices to the people for their copper pots and gutters, for the water that comes through lead pipes, for their tin dippers and wash boilers, and for their rents, and all those necessities into which machinery, lumber, and other raw and finished material enters. You know that every hundred millions dropped by real producers to the brigands of our world means lower wages or less of the necessities and luxuries for all the people, and especially for the farmer. You know that it is habit with us of Wall Street to gloat over the doctrine of the ‘System,’ which the people parrot among themselves, the doctrine that the people at large are not affected by our gambling, because they, the people, having no surplus to gamble with, never come into Wall Street. And yet, knowing all this, you never thought, with all your wisdom and cynicism, that right here in this institution, which you own and control, was the open sesame, for each or all of you, to those great chests of gold that your clients, the ‘System,’ have filled to bursting from the stores of the people. What, I ask, do you wise men think of the situation as you now see it?”

There was an oppressive stillness on the floor. The great crowd, which now contained nearly all the members of the Exchange, listened with bulging eyes and open mouths to the revelations of their fellow member. From time to time, as Bob Brownley poured forth his shot and shell of deadly logic, from the vast mob that now surrounded the Exchange rose a hoarse bellow of impatience, for few in that dense throng outside could understand the silence of the gigantic human crusher, which between the hours of ten and three was never before known to miss a revolution except while its victims’ hearts and souls were being removed from its gears and meshes.

Bob Brownley paused and looked down into the faces of the breathless gamblers with a contempt that was superb. He went on:

“Men of Wall Street, it is writ in the books of the ancients that every evil contains within itself a cure or a destroyer. I do not pretend that what I am revealing to you is to you a cure for this hideous evil, but I do say that what I am giving you is a destroyer for it, and that while it will be to the world a cure, it may leave you in a more fiery hell than the one of which you now feel the flames. I do not care if it does. When I am through, any member of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow. There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day $95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 in all. Their value is due to the fact that this Exchange deals in between one and three million shares a day. Were any attempt made to prevent the operation of my invention, transactions would because of such attempt drop to five or ten thousand shares per day, or to such transactions as represent stock that will be actually delivered and actually paid for. To make my invention useless it must be made impossible to buy or sell the same share of stock more than once at one session, and short selling, which is now, as you know, the foundation of the modern stock-gambling structure, must likewise be made impossible. If this could be done the $95,000,000 worth of seats in the Exchange would be worth less than five millions, and, what is of far greater import to all the people, the financial world would be revolutionised. Men of Wall Street, do not fool yourselves. My invention is a sure destroyer of the greatest curse in the world, stock-gambling.”

A sullen growl rose from the gamblers. Robert Brownley glared down his defiance.

“Let me show you the impossibility of preventing in the future anyone’s doing what I have done to you so many times during the past five years. All the capital required to work my invention is nerve and desperation, or nerve without desperation. It is well known to you that there are at all times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. Your members have from time to time shown nerve or desperation enough to embezzle, raise certificates, give bogus checks, counterfeit stocks and bonds, and this for gain of less than millions, and when detection was probable. All these are criminal offences and their detection is sure to bring disgrace and State prison. Yet members of this Exchange desperate enough to take the chance, when confronted with loss of fortune and open bankruptcy, have always been found with nerve enough to attempt the crimes. I repeat that there are at all times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. That you may see that my successors will surely come from your midst from time to time during the future existence of the Exchange, I will enumerate the different classes of members who will follow in my footsteps:

“First, the ‘In Gold We Trust’ schemer who is of the ‘System’ type, but who is outside the magic circle. A man of this class will reason: I know scores of men, who stand high on ‘the Street’ and in the social world, who have tens of millions that they have filched by ‘System’ tricks, if not by legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley’s, the trick of selling short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen produce panics and who were applauded by ‘the Street’ and the press for their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful, they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic, the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I attempted to bring on a panic.

“Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic, when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have taken place in any event.

“The third class is that large one that always will exist while there is stock-gambling, a class of honest, square-dealing-play-the-game-fair-Exchange men who would take no unfair advantage of their fellow-members until they become awakened to the knowledge that they are about to be ruined by their fellow-members’ trickery.

“Next, let us consider further whether it is possible for our Exchange to prevent my device from being worked, now that it is known to all. Suppose the Governing Committee was informed in advance that the attempt to work the trick was to be made. If, at any session, after gong-strike, the Governing Committee, or any Exchange authority, could for any reason compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself, or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly, where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account, the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange that the broker in question was about to work Brownley’s discovery and he could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be taken by others and he could be ruined.

“Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars, impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed. When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can no longer be robbed by the ‘System.’ In leaving you, the Exchange, and stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a soul that has been withered by the ‘System’s’ poison, with a full sense of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have any, with this argument: ’If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed, no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will fall.’

“The day on which the stock-gambling structure falls is the day for which all honest men and women should pray.”

Bob Brownley paused and let his eyes sweep his dumfounded audience. There was not a murmur. The crowd was speechless.

Again his eyes swept the room. Then he slowly raised his right hand with fist clenched, as though about to deal a blow.

“Men of Wall Street” his voice was now deep and solemn “to show that Robert Brownley knew what was fitting for the last day of his career, he has revealed to you the trick and more.

“Many of you are desperate. Many of you by to-morrow will be ruined. The time of all times for such to put my trick in practice is now. The victim of victims is ready for the experiment. I am he. I have a billion dollars. With this billion dollars I am able to buy ten million shares of the leading stocks and to pay for them, even though after I have bought they fall a hundred dollars a share. Here is your chance to prevent your ruin, your chance to retrieve your fortune, your chance to secure revenge upon me, the one who has robbed you.”

He paused only long enough for his astounding advice to connect with his listener’s now keenly sensitive nerve centres; then deep and clear rang out, “Barry Conant.” The wiry form of Bob’s old antagonist leaped to the rostrum.

“I authorise you to buy any part of ten million shares of the leading stocks at any price up to fifty points above the present market. There is my check-book signed in blank, and I authorise you to use it up to a billion dollars, and I agree to have in bank to-morrow sufficient funds to meet any checks you draw. You have failed to-day for seven millions, and, therefore, cannot trade, but I herewith announce that I will pay all the indebtedness of Barry Conant and his house. Therefore he is now in good standing.” Bob had kept his eye on the great clock; as the last word passed his lips, the President’s gavel descended.

With a mighty rush the gamblers leaped for the different poles. Barry Conant with lightning rapidity gave his orders to twenty of his assistants, who, when Bob Brownley called for Conant, had gathered around their chief. In less than a minute the dollar-battle of the age was on, a battle such as no man had ever seen before. It required no supernatural wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley’s seed had fallen in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the “System” were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had broken the stillness following Robert Brownley’s fateful speech had awakened echoes that threatened to shake down the Exchange walls. The surging mob on the outside was roaring like a million hungry lions in an Arbestan run at slaughter time.