All in a Life-time

I took these warnings very seriously.

How the state of mind engendered by these forces affected me in a purely material way, we shall soon see. From the outset of my business career, when an errand boy in Kurzman’s office, I found myself surrounded by employees, not perhaps more vicious than most, but certainly sharing the vices of the majority. They gave, at best, only what they were paid for, and not an ounce of energy or a minute of time beyond.

I shrank from the possibility of becoming a mere clock clerk and gave all of my best self and held back nothing. I made mistakes, I had my failures from the standard that I had set; but my purpose held fast and I cheerfully pursued the rugged uphill road to success.

CHAPTER III

APPRENTICED TO THE LAW

The most important branch of his practice was the searching of titles, and this gave me my early taste for real estate. This department was under the able management of Alfred McIntire, who graciously initiated me into the intricacies of his work.

We were then in the midst of a real-estate boom mostly participated in by the recently created middle class. Houses were dealt in almost as freely as merchandise, the only hindrance being the delay occasioned by the searching of titles, which was still confined to the lawyers, as there were no title insurance companies. Contracts would frequently be assigned twice and sometimes thrice, before the great event, “the closing of the title.” Then the various couples involved—the seller, the assignors of the contract, and the final purchaser—would all troop into our offices. The women invariably were the bankers and pulled out their roll of bills and sometimes Savings Bank Books, rarely checks, to consummate the transaction. The moneys invested were seldom taken out of the business, but were mostly the savings of the thrifty housewives. When everything was completed, all adjourned to a neighbouring wine cellar, to be treated to a bottle or two of Rhine wine by the vendor, and frequently I had to go along to represent Kurzman, and as the youngest listen attentively to the real estate stories told with all kinds of embellishments.

Kurzman at that time took as his partner George H. Yeaman, who had been a member of Congress from Kentucky and, more recently, American Minister to Denmark, and subsequently became a lecturer at the Columbia Law School. His native Southern chivalry had been polished by his experience at the Danish court; he was a man of splendid education and wide culture. I was fortunate in being chosen to take his dictation. I was amused in 1916 when, as Ambassador, I visited Dr. Maurice Francis Egan at our Legation in Copenhagen, and looked through the records made by Yeaman in 1865 while he was the head of that Legation.

My private life I continued to order along the lines that I had laid down for myself. I would get up at 6 A. M. and go to Central Park. Then if I had not exercised at home, I would take a long walk; otherwise I would sit under the trees and read. The hour that the horse car consumed in wending its way from the Park to Duane Street I would devote to my books, and I was so thrifty that I did not even buy a newspaper. I kept myself so busy that I did not even see one, until, going home for the night, I unfolded and read such as had been left in Kurzman’s office during the day.

Thrift was, indeed, a necessary virtue. I had left commerce for the law at something of a sacrifice: in 1872, my accounts, which I kept scrupulously all this while, bear evidence of how careful I had to be of my scanty income. “Carfare, 10 cts.; Dinner, 15 cts.; Sundries, 2 cts.” That is a typical day’s expenditure.

No man that lived through the Panic of ’73 can ever forget it and on me it made an indelible impression. At the root of the trouble was railway over-expansion. The successful completion of the Union Pacific in 1869 caused the projection of many other roads. Jay Cooke launched the Northern Pacific; Fisk and Hatch, the Chesapeake & Ohio; Kenyon, Cox & Co., the Canadian Southern. The eminent New York banking concerns floated the bonds; the large rate of interest promised—N. P. paid 8½ per cent.—attracted buyers, largely clergymen, school-teachers and small professional men—and prices advanced until optimism bordered on hysteria. Issue followed issue. Then, in the May of ’73, a panic on the Vienna Bourse stopped European consumption and threw back on the New York financiers obligations that strained their credit. Early in September, after one unfortunate bank-statement followed on the heels of another, call-money was at 7⅙ and commercial paper at from nine to twelve per cent.

Minor failures were numerous in the week of September 8th. Kenyon, Cox &. Co. failed on the 13th; the Eclectic Life Insurance Co. on the 17th. On the 18th, the big bolt fell; word ran round that Jay Cooke & Co., in many respects the greatest house of its time, was tottering. This news greatly startled Kurzman, who had been a persistent purchaser of Northern Pacific bonds. “On the floor of the Exchange,” said the Times, “the brokers surged out, tumbling pell-mell over each other in the general confusion, and reached their offices in race-horse time.” Those were not the days of telephones; when the panic-stricken men had got their orders, they ran back to the floor, on which absolute confusion reigned. Men shouted themselves hoarse, contradicted themselves and collapsed. A moment was enough to ruin many a dealer. Any one with money to lend was beset by a mob of lunatics. Almost immediately the effect was felt all the way down the financial line; smaller companies went the way of the big ones and many of the smallest were tottering after the smaller.

That week I took as usual all that I could spare from my scant salary and went, according to my custom, to the German Uptown Savings Bank to deposit it along with the little fund that I was laboriously setting aside. There was a big line of confident depositors bent on similar errands; many were ahead of me, and waiting my turn, as I looked into the teller’s cage, I saw the president of the bank in a very earnest conversation with three other men. Of course, I could not hear what they were saying, but I thought the president seemed worried, and that those with him also showed uneasiness.

I turned my head to find that the shuffling line had brought me before the window that was my goal. The clerk behind it was both a receiving and a paying teller. On a sudden impulse I thrust my dollar bill that I intended to deposit back into my pocket, presented my pass-book, and told the clerk that I wanted to withdraw the entire $80 that was to my credit.

Three days later that bank closed. The other depositors ultimately got about fifty cents on the dollar.

The real estate market had been as badly inflated as the stock market, and foreclosures were the order of the day. Properties like the block bounded by Park and Madison Avenue and Seventy-first and Seventy-second streets went under the hammer. John D. Crimmins and his father had paid $475,000 to James Lenox, who repurchased it for $374,150 at the foreclosure sale under the mortgage. Equities disappeared like the snow in spring-time. Where we had once been almost rushed to death with the drawing of mortgages to consummate the many sales, we were now hard pressed to keep pace with foreclosure proceedings.

I took charge of this work for Kurzman, who gave me 10 per cent. of the net fees; the commission was most acceptable, the experience invaluable, but a more depressing task it has never been my lot to perform. The proud and prosperous men that had been our best clients from 1871 to 1873 now returned to shed their wealth and, with it, their self-reliance. One who had owned eight or ten houses was reduced to borrowing $100 from Kurzman for temporary relief. I made up my mind never to “plunge”; if I had not lived through the Panic of ’73, I should to-day be either many times richer than I am or, what is far more likely, penniless.

The bad light in the Kurzman offices had injured my eyes, and, just after the panic had subsided, my doctor ordered a sea trip. I sailed on the barque Dora for Hamburg—thirty days for $35, and no extra charge for the excitement that was thrown in.

We were undermanned and underprovisioned. The first mate was ill when we set out from Jersey Flats; because of that, two of the crew had deserted, leaving only eight men aboard. There was no doctor among these, and the Captain and I read a thumbed work on medicine that adorned his cabin, studied the remedies that it suggested, and nearly emptied the medicine chest in trying to cure the poor fellow, who lost sixty pounds under our ministrations and, at the voyage’s end, went home with his disease still undiagnosed.

Meanwhile, the crew were dissatisfied on account of the extra work forced on them by the inactivity of the mate and the absence of the deserters, and also with their rations. They won the second mate to their side, and, on a day of storm when they declared themselves too few to handle the sails, he led something like an old-fashioned mutiny. They crowded toward the Captain.

“Run and get a pistol!” he whispered to me.

I obeyed. As I returned and slipped him the weapon, the mutineers were just coming to a pause before him.

The Captain levelled his pistol. He made short work of the difficulty. He offered them cold lead or hot grog. The crew, like sensible men, chose the latter, but they continued to grumble at the food—which was mostly hard-tack and cornmeal—until, on a day when we were becalmed in the North Sea, we caught several dolphins weighing over 150 pounds. I have rarely eaten anything better than that dolphin steak.

This is not to be a record of travel, but one phase of that early journey of mine is well worthy of notice: I saw Germany just as she was entering on the imperialistic career that ended so abruptly when her crestfallen representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles. The Franco-Prussian War had just ended in triumph; the German Empire had been reborn. Its people were not the easygoing people that I remembered from my earlier boyhood in Mannheim. Everywhere there were the beginnings of commercial and military activity; everywhere there was preached the doctrine of world power.

I passed several weeks at Kiel; I lived well on less than a dollar a day. I had some difficulty in becoming friendly with a pensioned wounded army captain because he held me personally responsible that American ammunition had been sold to the French. The same complaint was made to me by the German Ambassador, Baron Wangenheim, in Constantinople, in 1915. I saw the launching of the new Empire’s first battleship, the very beginning of that colossal preparation for war which, at the cost of so many millions in lives and money, was finally to bear its bloody fruit in 1914. A wrinkled old man wearing a small military cap made the speech on that occasion. It was the famous General von Moltke. I listened intently to what he said. His words reached everyone in that crowd, which was attentively listening to the great hero of the Franco-Prussian War; and when I looked into his piercing eyes, I found that they seemed to penetrate right through me, and I could understand the frequently made statement that officers used to quiver in his presence, and that his questions, accompanied by one of his fixed looks, always elicited the exact truth.

On my return to America, I entered the law office of Chauncey Shaffer, who was a leader of the New York Bar and had a nation-wide reputation. He had been retained in many important cases, and some romantic. His offices were first on the third floor in an old-fashioned private house at No. 7 Murray Street, and later, he moved into the Bennett Building, one of the city’s first modern office buildings.

In our new, well-lighted quarters, we had some interesting neighbours, and these, along with many another, were constantly dropping in on Shaffer. I still recall with pleasure my acquaintance in those surroundings with Gildersleeve and Purroy, with Butzel and Bourke Cochran.

Henry A. Gildersleeve had been born on a farm in Dutchess County, and in early life was the handiest man with his fists in all that district. In the Civil War he organized a company and was elected a captain. He returned from that to complete his education and become a lawyer, but he became a crack shot, too, at the international rifle matches; and when he first visited Shaffer’s office, it was as an Apollo of a man with romance in every feature of his face and every particle of attire.

He was offered by both parties the nomination as Judge of General Sessions and came to consult Shaffer about it. I was in the room at the time.

The scene is still vivid. Shaffer never forgot his Napoleonic pose when there was anybody present to observe it, and now he moved about with one hand under his coat tails and the other thrust into his breast. The harder he thought, the harder he chewed his tobacco and the more frequent were his expectorations. Finally he stopped short in front of Gildersleeve, who had been waiting patiently for this queer oracle to speak.

“If you have to go down in this fight,” Shaffer said, “go down in good company: take the Fusion nomination.”

Gildersleeve accepted that advice. He remained on the bench until he was seventy years of age. He is in his eighties now and as keen of intellect as in those far-off days when he used to visit Shaffer. He is still one of my favourite golf companions.

On many Saturdays we did little work; the coterie met in Shaffer’s office, and we talked; it would be nearer to the mark to say that one of us talked and entertained the others by his endless flow of good stories and sparkling reminiscences. He was a student under Shaffer, and his name was Bourke Cochran. I never saw him poring over Blackstone or Kent, but on Saturday when freed from his duties as principal of the Public School at Tuckahoe, this exuberant young instructor would either practise his future orations on us or pour out his flood of Cochranisms and anecdotes. Not getting my name at the first meeting, he dubbed me “Mortgagee” and still calls me so. He thrilled us with the account of his early struggles at Dublin University, roused our enthusiasm by his plans to restore oratory to the New York Bar, and evoked our applause by his determination to Patrick Henryize the Assembly at Albany. The Democrats promised him a nomination to the Assembly, but withdrew the promise when they discovered that he was not yet twenty-one.

It was while at Shaffer’s that I began to find out how human great men really are. The names of Benjamin F. Butler—the redoubtable Butler of Massachusetts—and Preston Plumb of Kansas used to move me to awe. One of my employer’s important cases involved some grants of land to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad and was brought by John Leisenring, of Pennsylvania, whose attorney-of-record, Congressman-at-large Charles P. Albright, of the same state, had, in addition to Shaffer, associated with him in the affair, Butler and Plumb. The latter used to dash into our office without a necktie and then chafe at the former’s unpunctuality and indifference in the matter of keeping appointments.

“It’s all very well for Butler to behave like this just now,” he would say. “Wait a few more years. Then he will still be a mere Congressman, while I’ll be a United States Senator! We’ll see who’ll kowtow to the other then!”

Although Plumb was elected to the Senate not long after and served there many years, I did not hear of Ben Butler doing any kowtowing.

In the summer of 1875 I felt that obtaining a knowledge of the law in this scrappy, unsystematic fashion was unsatisfactory, and that, therefore, I would leave Shaffer’s employ, attend Columbia Law School to get a thorough grounding of the law, and arrange for future easy access the odd bits of legal knowledge that I had absorbed in the offices. As I needed an income to enable me to do this, I secured a position as night-school teacher at $15 a week in the school on Forty-second Street near Third Avenue.

At that time Forty-third Street had not yet been cut through, and on top of the rocks was a shanty-town occupied by squatters. As I had the adult class, my pupils were from eighteen to forty-five years old, some of them denizens of the rocks, while others were hardworking carpenters, brakemen, butchers, factory workers, a plumber’s assistant, a coachman, and a blacksmith.

I particularly remember the latter three, because the plumber’s assistant came to the school to inveigle some of the other boys to play cards with him in one of the rear seats, and to amuse himself by throwing tobacco quids and beans while I, with my back turned to the class, would be engaged in explaining things on the blackboard. I was nineteen years of age, husky, weighing 180 pounds, and unafraid even of a plumber’s boy. As my weekly stipend of $15 was my sole support and its retention depended upon my being able to maintain discipline and keep up the attendance, I was not going to permit this loafer’s antics to defeat me—and one evening when I caught him playing cards, I forcibly ejected him from the classroom. Thenceforth my tenure of office was assured and continued to the closing day exercises, at which I had the pleasure of rewarding the coachman, Morgan O’Toole, with a prize for the greatest advancement made by any pupil. This man was very anxious to learn fractions. During the first three weeks of the session, every Friday evening I had succeeded in teaching them to him. Every following Monday evening his mind was an absolute blank as to fractions, and the fourth week I asked him to come to my house both Saturday and Sunday, and gave him private lessons. His joy on the next Monday when he found he had retained his knowledge is still a vivid memory in my mind.

The blacksmith, a man named Whitney, had been a fellow pupil of mine in Fifty-first Street School, and had been one of the best penmen. I was surprised to see him come to reacquire that ability, which he had lost through wielding the hammer and pulling the bellows.

One of the carpenters wanted to learn duodecimals. As I knew nothing about them, I told him that I wanted him to brush up on ordinary fractions for two days. In the meantime, I learned duodecimals and then taught him.

It was really a great experience to divide impartially two hours every evening so as to satisfy the twenty-five earnest seekers after knowledge.

I deeply sympathized with these men who, wearied from their day’s labour, preferred to forego needed rest or amusement and devote their evenings to extricate themselves from the ignorance in which they had been compelled, probably through poverty and the early need of self-support, to live the better part of their existence.

It spurred me to still greater efforts to increase my own knowledge and I was no longer content merely to perform my allotted tasks at the Law School, but spent several hours a day at the Astor Library and drew deep drafts from that fine well.

During that period I devoted all the daylight hours to study, principally at the Law School, sitting in the midst of these hundreds of men who had come from all parts of this country and Japan, to imbibe from the lips of this great teacher, Professor Theodore W. Dwight, the basis of the law of the land.

I joined the Columbia Club and was elected one of the team to debate with the Barnard Club, all of whose members were college graduates, while we had not had that advantage. I studied the subject of the debate, “Whether Participation in Profits or Agency Is the Correct Test of Partnership,” more thoroughly than I ever did any case on which I was retained during my practice of law. Professor Dwight, who presided, praised our thorough preparation and fine team work and declared us the winners. When our class graduated, we had the great honour of having that famous leader of the Bar, Charles O’Connor, come out of his retirement to bid us “Godspeed” on our way.

I was formally admitted to the bar on June 1, 1877.

During my second year in Law School I did not teach night school, but supported myself by accepting a position from that fine Southern gentleman, General Roger A. Pryor, who had been Congressman, Minister to Spain, and finally became a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

An interesting episode that occurred at that time was my representing General Pryor at several meetings of the owners of the Greenwich Street property, who had retained him to seek an injunction to prevent the continued use and extension of the first Elevated road, which was on their street and was propelled by a chain. They claimed that their property would be ruined for private residences, and it was. They did not visualize, however, that this was the first step forward in the solution of the transit problem of New York, which was then totally dependent upon its horse-car system; and that someone had to suffer for the general good.

A very important and valuable after-effect of my connection with Pryor’s office was my becoming acquainted with Mr. Valentine Loewi, for whom I searched the title in a mortgage transaction. Loewi doubted my experience and when Pryor confronted me with this, instead of resenting the criticism, as Loewi expected me to do, I recognized its justice, and satisfied Loewi by having my work checked up by Mr. McIntire. He became my permanent friend and one of my firm’s first clients, and through his recommendations we secured some of the most valuable clients we ever had.

A little later came the uproar consequent upon Tilton’s entering the wrong berth in a sleeping-car. He came to Pryor, and I acted as secretary while these two prepared the Tilton statement for the newspapers. Curiously, both these six-footers had the habit, when thinking intensely, of striding across the room with swinging arms, and were that day doing it in opposite directions. I was constantly on the alert for a collision. Tilton would dictate a phrase. Pryor would stop and suggest another word. Tilton would weigh and test it, and would make still further corrections. Not even my weightiest diplomatic notes from Constantinople received the care and attention that these few lines were given by these two masters of English.

In the summer of ’77, as Mr. Kurzman was going to Europe, he requested me to come back to Kurzman & Yeaman, and as they offered me a well-lighted office, I did so. Still associated with Kurzman was Alfred McIntire to whom I have already referred, and with whom I had kept up the pleasantest of relations during my clerkships with Shaffer and Pryor, both of which positions he had secured for me. McIntire was a New Englander of the very best type, considerably older than Mr. Kurzman, and recognized as one of the best conveyancers of the City of New York.

One Sunday while I was visiting McIntire, we went rowing on the Harlem River, and discussed plans for a prospective partnership. He was about six foot two in height, and weighed fully 250 pounds, and I was to do the rowing. Our skiff had not proceeded fifty yards before I discovered that I could not pull such a load and get anywhere. I took this as an omen, and then and there resolved that when I did select a law partner, he should be of my own age and weight, so that he could do some of the pulling.

During this summer, one of the old clients of the office, Henry Behning, got into very serious differences with his partner Diehl. The matter became greatly complicated, and the more complicated it became, the more excited Behning grew, and the more excited he was, the more incoherent and less comprehensible was his English, so that Mr. Yeaman, who was acting as his counsel in Mr. Kurzman’s absence, despaired of understanding him. A climax was reached one day when Diehl’s attorneys had secured the appointment of a receiver. Behning was accusing the lawyers, and the judge, and everybody else of all kinds of conspiracies, and Yeaman was so bewildered that he called me in to tell Behning that he did not think he could do justice to him because he could not understand his speech, and that he had better secure a German-speaking attorney. Upon my explaining this to Behning, he said: “All right, I’ll take you.” I explained the proposition to Mr. Yeaman, and he said that if Behning would be contented to do all his consulting with me he would be very glad to steer the legal proceedings. I discovered that some of Behning’s fears of conspiracy were justified, and concluded that the only way to counteract them was to throw the firm into bankruptcy. I prepared the necessary papers, and had them signed by the judge of the United States District Court. I then communicated with the pompous ex-judge who represented Diehl, and had the tremendous satisfaction of having completely checkmated him. A prompt settlement resulted. The creditors realized that if they kept on fighting, the lawyers would be dividing the assets, and therefore consented to have Behning and Diehl divide them, and each continue in business for himself, and each assume half the liabilities.

Behning greatly appreciated what I had accomplished. He wanted to give me something to prove it. As he had no spare cash, he offered, and with Yeaman’s consent I accepted, one share of the Celluloid Piano Key Company stock. At that time, Arnold, Cheney & Company had cornered the word’s ivory market, driving up the price of ivory for piano keys to $30.00 a set. The piano manufacturers tried alabaster and other substitutes with small success, when Behning thought of using celluloid and formed the Celluloid Piano Key Company, securing for it the exclusive right for the use of that substance in piano and organ keys.

The company was so successful that its president began to intrigue for its control. The president was an Englishman, the treasurer a Dane, the secretary an American, and most of the rest Germans. Themselves densely ignorant of the manipulations of corporations, they finally feared that the president was in a fair way to get the company away from them, whereupon those representing over 70 per cent. of the stock held a hurried meeting, but they could not agree on a common policy because each mistrusted the others. I proposed that they all give their proxies to one man who should obligate himself faithfully to represent the interests of all against the president; they replied that this was excellent, but they could not agree on the one man.

Then Behning spoke:

“What’s the use of fencing any longer? The only one we all trust is Henry. Let’s give him all our proxies.”

They did so, slated me for secretary, and as I wanted to prevent any mischief until the next annual meeting, I called on the president, told him I had the proxies of 70 per cent. and, with the audacity of my years, warned him that, if he did anything improper for the remainder of his term, I would bring him into court.

He asked me:

“Are you going to be an officer?”

“I am to be secretary,” I said.

“Will you protect my interest, and see that I get my proportionate share of the profits?”

I went back to the others and obtained the authority to give him this assurance, which I did.

“All right,” he declared, “make out my proxy to you and I’ll sign it.”

I had bearded a lion in his den and brought a lamb out with me. My connection with this concern, in one capacity or another, continued through two decades, and I was its president when I left it.

This adventure in celluloid put me in a position where it was possible to realize my ambition to stop clerking and start for myself.

It was settled most unexpectedly. During my attendance at Law School, Abraham Goldsmith, Wilbur Larremore, son of Judge Larremore, and I used to hold weekly quizzes at my house. In that way I had renewed my friendship with Goldsmith, who had been my classmate in the City College. One evening, early in December, 1878, Goldsmith called and informed me that Samson Lachman and he contemplated starting a law firm. I had always been very fond of Goldsmith, and Samson Lachman had won my unlimited admiration when I listened to his Commencement Day oration and saw him receive eleven prizes, which were about all that one man could take. Hence, Goldsmith found me very receptive, and before we separated that evening, our partnership was an accomplished fact. We both agreed that Lachman was entitled to head the firm. As Goldsmith expressed indifference as to his position, and as Lachman, Morgenthau & Goldsmith sounded more euphonious, that order was adopted. We agreed to start on January 1, 1879. Our average ages were twenty-three. We hired offices at No. 243 Broadway at an annual rental of $400. Our net receipts for the year 1879 were $1,500.

Our practice, as well as our income, grew steadily, but I shall abstain from relating many details, as most of the matters involved were not of public interest.

A rather interesting affair, because some of the participants are well known to the public, was the dissolution in February, 1893, of the firm of Wechsler & Abraham, of Brooklyn. We represented Wechsler, and William J. Gaynor, afterward Mayor of the City of New York, represented Abraham. Their partnership agreement contained a very peculiar dissolution clause. They were to meet on February 1, 1893, and bid for the business, and a bid was to be final only if the non-bidding partner had failed to increase it during a term of twenty-four hours. When we met, I drew attention to the fact that if we acted under the contract, either side could prolong the matter indefinitely, and recommended that we amend the agreement by reducing the limit to one hour. This was agreed to on condition that both parties would deposit $500,000 as an earnest of their intentions to complete their bid, the unsuccessful bidder to have his check returned to him. Isidor Straus pulled out a certified check of $500,000 and I instructed Wechsler to make out his check. When Wechsler admitted that he did not have that much in the bank, I showed them an underwriting that I had secured from the Guaranty Trust Company and the Title Guarantee & Trust Company, to finance our purchase to the extent of $1,000,000. The auction then proceeded, and both factions were cautiously watching each other. Gaynor, Abraham, and the Strauses several times retired to the other end of the room for conference, Nathan Straus constantly pulling at one of his big cigars and pretending that they had about reached the limit of their bidding. I had arranged definitely with Wechsler that we would bid an amount that would produce $500,000 for the good will of the business. So, finally, when they came within reach of about $100,000 of it, I bid the exact amount that would produce the desired result. They saw what I meant, and, as it turned out, had their last conference, which lasted about ten minutes, and raised us $100. I then informed them that we would take our hour. We (Wechsler, Mr. MacNulty, who was the manager of the store, and myself) went to an adjoining restaurant to discuss the matter. Wechsler devoted fully forty minutes of the hour in trying to persuade me to reduce the fee that he had agreed to pay me. He and I had agreed that if he purchased the property, and we had to complete the financing of it, my firm’s fee was to be $25,000, while if Abraham bought him out, we were to receive $10,000. Wechsler thought we had earned it too quickly, and begged for a reduction. I was absolutely firm and finally told him the story of the dentist who, with his modern methods, had painlessly extracted two teeth for a farmer in two minutes, and when he demanded his fee of $2.50, the exorbitancy of the charge was objected to by the farmer, who stated that when he had his last tooth extracted, the dentist had pulled him around the room for half an hour, and then only charged him 50 cents for all that work. I said to Wechsler that I could have protracted this matter for thirty days, and this delay would have been most injurious to him on account of his diabetic condition. He wanted me to bid another $10,000 so that Abraham would have had to pay the fee, and he would have a net $250,000 for his good will. I was firm in my advice that he was unwise to run the business alone and should not risk securing it. We returned before the hour had expired, got Wechsler’s check back, and his half interest in the business became the property of Isidor and Nathan Straus, for whom Abraham had in reality been bidding. Immediately thereafter they dropped Wechsler’s name and created the well-known firm of Abraham & Straus.

Incidentally it may be of interest to the public to know that, when Isidor and Nathan Straus divided their interests, Isidor and his sons secured the business of R. H. Macy & Co., which they owned in common, while Nathan and his sons secured the half interest in Abraham & Straus. No doubt a good share of Nathan Straus’ munificent charities are financed to-day by his share of the profits from that business.

One of the greatest surprises in our practice was when Judge Horace Russell retained me as a business lawyer to advise him what to do about the affairs of Hilton, Hughes & Company, who had succeeded to the business of A. T. Stewart & Company, and who, in turn, were later succeeded by John Wanamaker. Judge Russell’s brother-in-law, Mr. Hilton, had been increasing the volume of the business rapidly, but his expense ratio was increasing much faster in proportion, so that, at the end of the year, he showed a tremendous loss. Some of the biggest banks in New York were refusing to renew the notes, even though Judge Hilton was willing to endorse them. They said they felt safe on all the paper they had then with Judge Hilton’s endorsement and collateral, but they feared that if they permitted the losses to continue much longer, it might even engulf Judge Hilton in the unavoidable catastrophe. I finally advised him that he should sell out the business and take his loss. He retained Mr. Elihu Root as counsel. The three of us went over the whole situation. I explained that, owing to the very large general expenses due primarily to the excessive salaries which Hilton had agreed to pay under five-year contracts to his buyers, heads of departments, and even the superintendent of the engine room, and the bad credit in which the firm then stood, the only wise course was to sell out the business. We concluded to do so, but in the meantime decided that it would be necessary to make a general assignment to preserve the assets and secure a reasonable settlement with the men who held long contracts. When the assignment was finally prepared, it had to be executed the following day, and Root, Russell, and I first dined together, and then remained in Russell’s office until five minutes past midnight, when young Hilton, in our presence and that of Mr. Wright, the assignee, and a notary, executed the document.

While waiting, Mr. Root told us of several cases in which he had recently been retained, where the younger generation dissipated big fortunes in a very short time. He laid particular stress on the case of Cyrus W. Field, who, in his lifetime, prided himself that he had an income of $1,000 a day, which at that time was enormous. I also recall Root telling me that night that it was unwise for any lawyer to devote himself entirely to politics, that he should, when called upon, render a public service, complete it, and then return to his profession, but be ready for any further calls that might be made upon him. Root has pursued that course most successfully.

I felt a strange sensation to be present at this midnight dénouement of the great business of A. T. Stewart & Company. I could not help but think of the causes. Judge Hilton had offended the Jews in America because his hotel, the “Grand Union” in Saratoga, had refused to accommodate Joseph Seligman, whom both the New York Chamber of Commerce and Union League Club honoured by electing as one of their vice-presidents. Hilton did not then realize that this act not alone involved the loss of his Jewish customers, but it would also influence a great many of his Christian patrons who would resent such discrimination, and withdraw their custom from his firm. Most of this trade went to the rising firms of B. Altman & Co. and Stern Bros. and so strengthened them that they became great competitors of Hilton, Hughes & Company, and precipitated their downfall. John Wanamaker bought the lease and stock of goods. I remember distinctly with what satisfaction, when the transaction was closed, he told me that this was the first time that he had ever heard of so valuable a franchise being given away for nothing. Wanamaker shrewdly disregarded the short existence of Hilton, Hughes & Company, and advertised John Wanamaker as the successor of A. T. Stewart & Company.

CHAPTER IV

REAL ESTATE

The tenants of this building in 1872 were Irish and Germans, and one of the stores was occupied as a saloon by an Irishman named Ryan who catered to the worst element of the neighbourhood. Kurzman, failing to get rid of him in a peaceful way, and knowing that there was a political feud between him and Anthony Hartman, the odd though popular Justice of the District Court, waited for the first of May, when only a three-hours’ dispossess notice was required. Circumstances favoured the plan because on that day the Thomas Ryan Association were giving a picnic. So the notice was served by nailing it on the door at twelve o’clock. Judge Hartman opened court at three o’clock, called the cases of Kurzman vs. Ryan, took Ryan’s default, signed the dispossess warrant, and adjourned the court, compelling all other litigants to wait for their justice until the next day. Instead of the usual one marshal, all those attached to the court, with their assistants, were hurried to No. 218 Chrystie Street, and within two hours had removed everything to the sidewalk.

By that time word had reached Ryan, and he and some of his henchmen returned. They were thoroughly aroused but quite helpless. As there was no court in session, and the marshals were in possession of the premises, Kurzman was rid of Ryan for good and all. This was the first exhibition I ever saw of how justice might be travestied.

The next day Ryan’s attorneys appeared before Hartman and attempted to have the proceedings reopened, and upon Hartman’s refusal to do so, attacked him bitterly. The Judge said that if the learned counsel would not at once stop his impudent remarks, the court would forget its dignity long enough to leave the bench and “punch him in the jaw.”

My next experience brought me in contact with even a worse element. Kurzman had foreclosed a second mortgage on some houses on West Thirty-ninth Street between Tenth and Eleventh avenues. They were part of the block that was called “Hell’s Kitchen.” Many of the tenants owned only a mattress and a few chairs, and no kitchen utensils of any kind, and frequently paid their rents in instalments of less than one dollar. Twice I saw women carried out of the buildings the worse for the “exciting arguments” they had indulged in with some of their visitors. It would not have paid us to dispossess these people, as the new ones would have been no better. We collected the rents for a few months longer until the first mortgages were foreclosed.

This condition was very general throughout the City of New York. The boom days of real estate had disappeared, and with them, the optimistic speculators. Real estate was unsalable, and those who had received mortgages in payment of some of their capital and all their profits were confronted with the choice of either abandoning their mortgages or foreclosing them and again assuming control of their property. The conferences between the delinquent owners and the mortgagees to adjust these matters reminded one as much of funerals as the joyous meetings in the wine cellars had of weddings. These middle-class investors whom I met in ’72 and ’73 were completely wiped out and never came back. Quite the contrary was the case with most of those intrepid builders and operators like John D. Crimmins and Terrence Farley, who forgot their losses and went at it again with fresh vigour and new courage as soon as the liquidation had ended. In 1879, when specie payment had been resumed, the superintendents of both the insurance and bank departments urged institutions under their supervision to market their real estate as soon as possible. Their efforts and those of other recent plaintiffs to dispose of their holdings started a new active period. Real estate again became fashionable, and the plucky operators and builders who had survived the drastic punishment they had received were soon reinforced by a new set of men, of whom I was one.

In 1880, I turned my attention to Harlem where nearly all the brownstone and brick houses that had been built in the seventies were in the hands of mortgagees, and where the owners of the old frame houses were thoroughly discouraged and could see little hope in the future. Nearly all of Harlem was for sale. I bought plots of three to five adjoining houses at a time, and quickly resold them at small profits. This activity stopped when President Garfield was shot. The suspense during his illness caused a complete cessation, so I, too, rested until October, 1885. I was then worth only $27,000, and as a large part of that was represented by my interest in the Celluloid Piano Key Company, I had but little working capital.

My brother-in-law, William J. Ehrich, agreed to operate with me in real estate, he to contribute $40,000 capital and I to do the work. All profits, after paying him interest, were to be divided equally.

At that time my mother lived on One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Street in a house I had purchased, a 17-foot brown-stone house with a pleasant yard which she personally transformed into a delightful little garden. In my frequent visits there I became impressed with the prospective importance of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. It was the first broad street north of Forty-second that ran from river to river, and I foresaw its future value, particularly of the block between Seventh and Eighth avenues. It seemed to me like the neck of a funnel into which the entire neighbouring population was daily poured to reach the Elevated station at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue.

Ehrich and I concluded to secure some property on this block. The first that we obtained was the lease of seven lots for which, at the beginning, we paid the annual rental of $4,000. We still own this leasehold, and the gross rental now is $44,500. We subsequently purchased the adjoining plot of five lots, improved the same, and were delighted when we were enabled to sell it to the Knickerbocker Real Estate Company among whose stockholders were Solomon Loeb, of Kuhn, Loeb & Company; Henry O. Havemeyer, John D. Crimmins, and John E. Parsons, at a price which netted us a profit of $100,000. This was in 1899. Subsequently, I repurchased this plot jointly with my partners, Lachman & Goldsmith, for $250,000, and within two years thereafter sold it to Mr. Louis M. Blumstein for $425,000. This was the most profitable, but not the only transaction we had on this street. With various associates I owned, at one time or another, one half of the property on the south side of that block, so that I made good use of my early judgment as to its future value.

Our operations on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street were not confined to that block alone. We had also purchased various plots between Fifth and Sixth avenues and, with a friend, I had collected a plot of eight lots between Lexington and Fourth avenues. This made Oscar Hammerstein one of my customers.

One day the optimistic Oscar came into my office with his serious, flat-footed walk, his French silk hat on his head, and his eternal cigar between his fingers. He had just completed the Harlem Opera House on West One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and he told me that, for his success there, it was essential to have also a theatre on the East Side, and he negotiated for the eight lots that we had collected on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street near Park Avenue. We spent several hours arranging the details of the lease of our property, with privilege to buy, which was what he wanted. He argued me into giving it to him on a 4 per cent. basis while the building was being constructed. When he was all through, I said:

“Do not think that you have deceived me as to your real aim. You want to secure this property and pay down as little as possible until your building is completed! All of us who own property on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues greatly appreciate the fine theatre you put there, and the consequent increase in the value of our property, and I am therefore willing to help you make this enterprise a success. I will at once give you a deed, and as there is no broker in the transaction, you need only pay the equivalent of six months’ rent on account of the purchase price.”

Hammerstein gratefully accepted the offer and, subsequently, told me how he financed that entire operation without any capital. He struck a sand-pit and saved all costs of excavation, besides realizing over $30,000 for the sand. That furnished him nearly all the cash for the building.

A little later Hammerstein got into difficulties about an office building next to the Harlem Opera House. He wanted to borrow $25,000 on a second mortgage. He practically put a pistol to my head, and said:

“You folks must lend me this money, or I can’t finish the building—and that will force me into bankruptcy.”

I looked at him and saw not the optimistic Oscar, but the harried Hammerstein. He went on:

“You don’t know what that will mean. If I go into bankruptcy, the Bank of Harlem will also have to go. I owe them over $50,000 and they have agreed that, if I can finish the building, they will buy it from me, giving me back my notes in part payment.”

“But that bank,” I protested, “has only $100,000 capital! How could it lend you $50,000?”

“One day,” he said, “as I was seated in my little office underneath the steps of the Harlem Opera House, the president of the Bank broke in, and leaning over my shoulder, handed me a blank note, and asked me, for God’s sake, to make it out to the order of the Bank for $10,000. ‘Don’t ask any questions,’ he whispered, ‘but just do what I want, and do it quick.’ I complied with his request, I didn’t stop to put on my hat and coat, but followed him to the Bank; and just as I expected, there were the bank-examiners!”

He paused in his narrative to give me one of those knowing, piercing looks of his. This was still another Hammerstein: he was the accomplished actor awaiting applause for securing such an extensive and undeserved line of credit from so unexpected a source.

“Does that,” he asked, “explain to you how I could pull his leg?”

The impresario did not then go into bankruptcy. A few of us combined and lent him the money. My activities in Harlem also included the purchase of two solid blocks of lots.

In 1887 Ehrich and I bought from Oswald Ottendorfer the entire block bounded by Lenox and Mount Morris avenues and One Hundred and Twentieth and One Hundred and Twenty-first streets. I induced the Ottendorfers to split the transaction and content themselves with our buying the Lenox Avenue front outright and their giving us an option on the Mount Morris front. This option was sold for $10,000 profit, to Walter and Frank Kilpatrick, and our total profits, which we divided in May, 1887, were $43,424.10. I always remembered the numbers because of the sequence, 43, 42, 41.

Immediately after we had sold the Ottendorfer block we purchased the block to the north, also for $325,000. In this purchase the Kilpatricks joined us. I had a peculiar experience when it came to drawing the contracts. As the Ottendorfers had agreed to take back separate mortgages on every four lots, I wanted the Astors, owners of this block, to do the same. Mr. Southmayd, the partner of William M. Evarts and Joseph H. Choate, attorneys for the Astors, refused to do so, and insisted that we give him one mortgage for the entire $240,000 which they had agreed they would allow to remain on the property. All my pleadings were in vain. He even refused to take back four mortgages on eight lots each, saying that he could not tell which was the most valuable, and we might retain one or two of the plots and forfeit our equities on the rest.

Mr. Southmayd told me that just prior to the Panic of 1857, when farms of 160 acres in Brooklyn were being sold at very inflated prices, an old German truck-farmer was asked what he wanted for his 160 acres. He demanded $50,000, the prevailing price at that time; $35,000 cash and a $15,000 mortgage. When they argued with him that he had reversed the order of things, Hans still adhered to his terms, as he claimed that the property was not worth over $15,000, and when asked why he then insisted on $50,000, he answered, “because you paid that amount to my neighbour Peter for the same size farm.” Southmayd sneeringly added that after the Panic of 1857 Hans got his property back for his mortgage.

I would not submit to being balked by Southmayd. I made up my mind to talk to the famous John Jacob Astor himself.

I had never met him, but he had often been pointed out to me, as, shortly before 9 o’clock, he walked with his son, Waldorf, down Fifth Avenue, from their home to their office in Twenty-fifth Street. Astor was a portly figure with impressive side-whiskers. I watched for them and followed them to their office and asked for an interview. My plain statement of facts made no apparent impression on them. I tried again: I told Southmayd’s story of Hans: a smile broke the severity of the elder’s face.

“Mr. Astor,” I concluded, “you must admit that it’s unfair to your property to compare the Harlem of to-day with the Brooklyn of 1856.”

“You’re right,” said Astor. “You make me a proposition of what relative values you put on the various plots, and what will be the amounts of the separate mortgages, and I will have it checked up.” I submitted my figures and they were accepted without any change. The mortgages were paid long before they were due, as all the property was promptly improved. I believe this was the first time that the Astors broke away from their policy of not selling any of their holdings.

While these activities were going on in Harlem, a great many builders had erected rows and rows of private houses on the West Side, principally between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue, so as to be adjacent to the Elevated roads. In 1887 and 1888 there was a considerable slump, and over three hundred new private houses were unsold and unoccupied. Everything looked very gloomy. All of us who were interested in the West Side were terrified when an announcement came that there would be an unrestricted auction of the Joshua Jones Estate on Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth streets from Central Park West to within a few hundred feet of Amsterdam Avenue.

Ehrich and I attended the auction, and when the first lot on Seventy-fourth Street was put up with the privilege of the balance of the block, we astonished the auctioneer and all present by taking all twenty-four lots.

That afternoon Ehrich and I went up to look at our purchase. As we walked over the lots a couple of men shouted at us to get off the property. We asked them why, and they said: “Don’t you see our traps? We are catching birds here.”

There is not much bird-trapping in that neighbourhood to-day!

Success breeds enterprise. When we had disposed of these various plots at a good profit, I was ambitious to undertake still larger transactions. The original Rapid Transit Commission was then laying out the routes of the first subway, and I, in search of another One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, began to prospect for the district in which the Commission would be likely to locate a northerly spur, concluding that if Washington Heights were made accessible, One Hundred and Eighty-first Street would become the important thoroughfare of that neighbourhood.

There were four hundred lots owned by Levi P. Morton, then Vice-President of the United States, and George Bliss, of Morton, Bliss & Company, for which I had practically concluded my negotiations in September, 1890, when the Old World was shocked by the failure of Baring Brothers, the largest banking house of England. All negotiations were stopped. But, in February, 1891, about eighty lots located in this vicinity were successfully disposed of at auction. Peter F. Meyer, who conducted that sale, assured me that less than one half of the bidders had secured lots.

On the strength of this success, I asked L. J. Phillips to ascertain whether, owing to the financial stress of the times, the owners, Morton and Bliss, would take $900,000 for their property, for which they had formerly asked $1,000,000.

Phillips’s report was brief: “Nothing less than a million.”

This was what I really expected, and my directions were briefer: “Go close it!”

On March 26th I signed the contract. I paid $50,000 down and agreed to pay $300,000 more on May 27th. I then interested about fifteen people in the syndicate, many of whom were very prominent in real estate. We were granted special facilities to open One Hundred and Eighty-second Street, and had all the work done before the auction.

This arrangement gave us sixteen complete blocks with sixty-four corners, a most unusual percentage.

There were a number of fortuitous circumstances which helped to make for success. James Gordon Bennett having large possessions in that neighbourhood, directed that our sale receive generous attention in the Herald. There had been a secession of some of the auctioneers from the Real Estate Exchange, which then occupied its own building at No. 65 Liberty Street. Their manager called and said that their Board of Directors were ready to do almost anything that I would ask to secure the sale. They allowed me to display in the salesroom during all of May a sign 60 feet wide and 20 feet in height, and they also agreed that they would permit no other sale on May 26th.

We had numerous conferences, and none of my associates agreed with me that it was possible to sell so many lots at one session, but I was absolutely firm and insisted that it be tried. I conceded that I would stop the auction if I found that the purchasers had been exhausted, or that the lots were being sold at a loss. Thousands of people visited the property on the preceding Saturdays and Sundays. We could have sold the property on the 26th of May without having made our final payment, and could have used the proceeds of the sale for that purpose, but to avoid any possible question as to whether we had taken title or not, we closed the title on the day before the sale. As we were about leaving Morton, Bliss & Company’s offices, both Bliss and Morton expressed the wish that we might have a great success the next day, and the genial Vice-President of the United States added: “If there is anything I can do, please call upon me.” In response, I asked him whether he would come over to the auction-room and if necessary, to convince the public of our authority to sell the property, whether he would make a statement from the auctioneer’s stand. He consented to do so and waited at his office until I notified him that there was no need of his remaining any longer.

When the auction started, the entire floor as well as the auction stands and gallery were crowded to capacity. The bidding was very lively, and when some of the One Hundred and Eighty-first Street corner lots sold for over $10,000, there was considerable applause.

The auction lasted until seven o’clock, and every one of the 411 lots was sold. Ex-Register John Reilly had paid the highest prices: he bought the entire front on the west side of St. Nicholas Avenue from One Hundred and Eightieth to One Hundred and Eighty-first streets, and he afterward confided to me that he had succeeded where we failed in finding out that the Subway was to go through St. Nicholas Avenue, and that there was to be a station at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street. The corners of One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and St. Nicholas Avenue are to-day the most valuable on Washington Heights.

Our syndicate was well satisfied with the result, as we divided a profit of $480,000 amongst the men who had invested $300,000. They showed their appreciation of my work by presenting me with a magnificent silver service, which was greatly admired by my Turkish visitors in Constantinople.

I was quite carried away with my success, and my enthusiasm made me an easy prey to the temptation of participating in a still larger scheme—the development of the Town of Bridgeport, Alabama. A few years prior to 1891 there had been a great boom in Birmingham and Anniston, so that I was easily persuaded by the firm that had been associated with me in the purchase of the Astor Block to go in with them to develop Bridgeport.

All of us in the North felt that the South was “coming back” and Bridgeport was near coal and iron fields and had good water power. We started development, stove- and iron-pipe companies, a hotel, and a bank. We believed, with energetic New Yorkers back of it, this little town on the Tennessee River could be made a great manufacturing centre; we all forgot that it was very far from Broadway. Before I knew it, I had sunk more than my Washington Heights profit, and I am still paying taxes on some of the land that I bought at that time.

The loss of that money was a wholesome lesson, and I resolved to stick to New York. I broke this resolve on only one other occasion, and that was my venture into the Bamberger-Delaware gold mine: we took out plenty of gold—something like $600,000 a year, but it cost us more than that to do so. That investment also proved a total loss.

In the winter of 1891 we began an operation which was to result in winning the record for rapid construction up to that date. Our tenants in the Hoagland property at Fifteenth Street and Sixth Avenue failed. We concluded to tear down the old buildings and erect a new one. We had been negotiating unsuccessfully with Baumann, the furniture dealer, so we planned with our architect to put up a four-story building. I was in the architect’s office the latter part of January, when in walked Mr. Baumann and told me that if I would guarantee to finish the building by April 30th, he would pay the price I asked.

I consulted my architect, Albert Buchman.

“It’s impossible,” he declared, “four and a half months—June 15th is the earliest date conceivable.”

“Even if we use double shifts?”

“Even if we use double shifts.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m going to chance it.”

Buchman’s allotment for the excavation was fifteen days. I sent for Patrick Norton, who had done some excavating work for me in Harlem.

“Pat,” I asked, after I had sketched the case, “is there any objection to working twenty-four hours a day?”

“That depends,” said he.

“Well, if you went at it on that basis, couldn’t you finish this job in seven instead of fifteen days? I’ll pay for the light, and I’ll give you 25 per cent. extra.”

Norton belonged to the type of bluff, enterprising contractors. The novelty appealed to him, and he accepted it on the spot and completed the job on time.

Everything else went with similar speed. We were told that it would take some time to get the iron posts required for the cellar; I showed our plans to a man from Jackson & Company, and asked him whether, for an extra consideration, he could have the posts required for the job finished within a week. Within three days he made his deliveries. We changed our specifications and substituted wooden ceilings for plaster. We had the building finished and the elevators running on April 27th. The building was a four-story structure with an iron front covering five full lots, and we erected it for a trifle under $110,000.

I had another but less satisfactory experience with Pat Norton:

In the Winter of ’97 I bought from Collis P. Huntington a tract of land running from One Hundred and Thirty-eighth to One Hundred and Forty-first streets and from St. Ann Avenue eastward. The Title Company discovered that Huntington did not own as large an area as was described in the contract, so I called on him to ask for a reduction. It was a memorable sight to behold this great old gentlemen, 6 feet 3 inches in height, over eighty years of age, with as keen an intellect as a man of thirty, trying to fathom my motives and playing with me as a cat plays with a mouse. He leaned forward to get close to me, adjusting his little skull cap a bit, and said:

“Suppose I make you no concession at all! Are you going to throw up that contract, or take the property?”

“I will take the property because I expect to make a profit,” I said, “but I am going to rely on you to do the fair thing by me.”

He sat back in his chair and told me his experiences with Trenor W. Park, who wanted to buy a railroad from him. A dispute arose about it, which resulted in a law-suit. Afterwards, Park wanted to settle and buy him out. Huntington fixed the price, and as Park hesitated, he told him that for every day he delayed in accepting the offer he would add $100,000 to his price, and as seven days had expired since his first offer, the price was $700,000 more that day. Park agreed to that figure before he left the room.

“My experience,” said Huntington, “is that no man benefits by law-suits, but that no man can succeed if he is afraid of them. Now, what do you really think would be the fair thing for me to do in your case?”

I mentioned a sum, and he said:

“Strange to say, that is the figure I had in my mind.” He dictated a letter then and there, agreeing to the reduction.

We were anxious to dispose of the Huntington property at auction, and hurriedly prepared it. There was a stone fence running diagonally over the southerly part of the property, and I thought it would improve the appearance of this place to have the stones removed, and as Norton was putting through the streets and laying the sidewalks, I made a contract to have him do so for $800. The next morning I was impelled to visit the Huntington property. I was amazed to find 150 Italians working shoulder to shoulder, digging a trench alongside the stone wall, and dumping the stones into it. I stopped them and sent for Norton. When he came, instead of being ready to apologize, he wore a broad grin and said that he never expected me to come there, as I always came alternate days: by the second day no trace of that trench would have been left—what difference would it make to me, as long as it had disappeared, where it had gone?

We advertised an auction of this property for April 5, 1898. Because of the expectation of a war with Spain, a number of people asked me to abandon the sale. I agreed with their arguments that the sale would not succeed, but I wanted to see if my analysis of the psychology of prospective buyers was correct, which was, that some persons expecting big bargains would come to the sale and would buy. So I concluded to put up a few of the least valuable lots—those that had considerably more rock above the surface—and then try some of the St. Ann Avenue fronts. Just as I expected, the rock lots brought a very low price, but really all they were worth, and were purchased by one of the shrewdest dealers in New York. We stopped the sale after thirty were sold.

In the winter of 1894 great excitement was caused among the real estate men by mysterious efforts to secure the block on the east side of Sixth Avenue between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets. I was keenly interested because if the east side of Sixth Avenue was to be developed it would injure our Hoagland property, especially if it were a retail concern, which would throw the travel from Macy’s on the east side. I, therefore, called on my old friend William R. Rose, who was acting as attorney in the matter. On my assuring him that I wished to benefit by my information without interfering with his scheme, he told me that the site was being collected for a retail drygoods store with a main entrance on Sixth Avenue, and it finally turned out to be Siegel-Cooper & Company. I immediately negotiated for the properties on the east side of Sixth Avenue adjoining this block and secured for Lachman, Morgenthau & Goldsmith from William Waldorf Astor the Nineteenth Street corner now occupied by the Alexander Building, and for myself alone the entire block from Seventeenth to Eighteenth street to a depth of 180 feet, from some of the descendants of John Jacob Astor. Simultaneously with the completion