The Begum's Millions

15. The San Francisco Stock Exchange

 Mme Sarrasin who was obliged to finish the discussion, saying to the young man that the love of duty was enough, no doubt, to explain the zeal of the majority of them. And when Marcel, called back again to his unrelenting work to complete some project or calculation, regretfully tore himself away from this gentle conversation, he bore with him an unshakable resolution to save France-Ville and all of its inhabitants. He could not have suspected what was about to happen, and yet it was the natural and ineluctable consequence of this unnatural state of things—this concentration of all power in one person—that was the fundamental law of the City of Steel.2 The San Francisco Stock Exchange The San Francisco Stock Exchange, a condensed and rather algebraic expression of an immense industrial and commercial system, is one of the busiest and strangest in the world. As a natural consequence of being located in California’s capital, it has a distinctive cosmopolitan character, which is one of its most outstanding traits. Under its porticoes of beautiful red granite, the Saxon with blond hair and tall stature stands elbow to elbow with the Celt with his dull complexion, darker hair, more supple and slender limbs. Here, the Negro meets the Finn and the Hindu. The Polynesian, with surprise, meets the Greenlander. The Chinaman with his oblique eyes and his carefully braided pigtail tries to outdo the Japanese, his historic trading enemy. All languages , all dialects, all jargons can be heard here, as if it were a modern Babel.1 The opening on October th of that unique stock exchange presented nothing extraordinary. As eleven o’clock approached, one could see the major brokers and business agents approach each other, cheerfully or gravely according to their individual temperaments , exchange handshakes, go to the bar, and precede the day’s 15  business with propitiatory libations. They went, one by one, to open the little copper door with numbered boxes which receive, in the vestibule, the correspondence of subscribers; they pulled out enormous packets of letters and ran through them with a distracted eye. Soon the day’s first market prices were posted, at the same time that the busy crowd slowly grew larger. A slight hubbub arose from the increasingly numerous groups. The telegraphic dispatches then proceeded to pour in from all points of the globe. Not a minute would go by without another fresh strip of blue paper, read aloud at the top of a man’s voice amid a tumult of other voices, being added to the north wall to the collection of telegrams posted by the Stock Exchange guardians. The intensity of movement grew minute by minute. Messengers raced in, left, rushed toward the telegraph office, brought in answers . All the notebooks were opened, annotated, scratched out, torn up. A sort of wild contagion seemed to have taken possession of the crowd, when, toward one o’clock, something mysterious passed like a shiver through these agitated groups. An astounding, unexpected, and unbelievable bit of news had just been brought by one of the associates of the “Bank of the Far West” and circulated with lightning speed. Some said: “What a joke! It must be a ploy! How can we deal with a blunder like that?” “Hey! Hey!” said the others, “there’s no smoke without fire!” “How can a man fail in a situation like his?” “People can fail in any situation!” “But sir, his real estate and equipment alone are worth more than eighty million dollars!” exclaimed another. “Without counting the pig-iron and steel, provisions, and manufactured goods,” came the reply. “You bet! That’s what I was saying! Schultze is good for ninety million dollars, and I’ll take charge of selling it all off whenever he wants, to his credit.”  “Well, how do you explain this suspension of payments?” “I don’t understand it at all! I just don’t believe it!” “As if things like that didn’t happen every day, and in the most reputable businesses!” “Stahlstadt is not a business—it’s a whole city!” “After all, it can’t be over. A holding company will no doubt be quickly organized to resume this business!” “But why the devil didn’t Schultze arrange for that, before being declared insolvent?” “That’s just it, sir, it’s just so absurd that it doesn’t make sense! It’s pure...