The Financier a novel by Theodore Dreiser

 
 

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Chapter LIX 
The banking house of Jay Cooke & Co., in spite of its tremendous 
significance as a banking and promoting concern, was a most unpretentious 
affair, four stories and a half in height of gray stone and red brick. It had 
never been deemed a handsome or comfortable banking house. Cowperwood 
had been there often. Wharf-rats as long as the forearm of a man crept up 
the culverted channels of Dock Street to run through the apartments at will. 
Scores of clerks worked under gas-jets, where light and air were not any too 
abundant, keeping track of the firm's vast accounts. It was next door to the 
Girard National Bank, where Cowperwood's friend Davison still flourished, 
and where the principal financial business of the street converged. As 
Cowperwood ran he met his brother Edward, who was coming to the stock 
exchange with some word for him from Wingate. 
"Run and get Wingate and Joe," he said. "There's something big on this 
afternoon. Jay Cooke has failed." 
Edward waited for no other word, but hurried off as directed. 
Cowperwood reached Cooke & Co. among the earliest. To his utter 
astonishment, the solid brown-oak doors, with which he was familiar, were 
shut, and a notice posted on them, which he quickly read, ran: 
September 18, 1873. 
To the Public— 
We regret to be obliged to announce that, owing to 
unexpected demands on us, our firm has been obliged to 
suspend payment. In a few days we will be able to present a 
statement to our creditors. Until which time we must ask 
their patient consideration. We believe our assets to be 
largely in excess of our liabilities. 
Jay Cooke & Co. 
A magnificent gleam of triumph sprang into Cowperwood's eye. In company 
with many others he turned and ran back toward the exchange, while a 
reporter, who had come for information knocked at the massive doors of the 
banking house, and was told by a porter, who peered out of a diamond-
shaped aperture, that Jay Cooke had gone home for the day and was not to 
be seen. 
"Now," thought Cowperwood, to whom this panic spelled opportunity, not 
ruin, "I'll get my innings. I'll go short of this—of everything." 

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Before, when the panic following the Chicago fire had occurred, he had been 
long—had been compelled to stay long of many things in order to protect 
himself. To-day he had nothing to speak of—perhaps a paltry seventy-five 
thousand dollars which he had managed to scrape together. Thank God! he 
had only the reputation of Wingate's old house to lose, if he lost, which was 
nothing. With it as a trading agency behind him—with it as an excuse for 
his presence, his right to buy and sell—he had everything to gain. Where 
many men were thinking of ruin, he was thinking of success. He would have 
Wingate and his two brothers under him to execute his orders exactly. He 
could pick up a fourth and a fifth man if necessary. He would give them 
orders to sell—everything—ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty points off, if necessary, 
in order to trap the unwary, depress the market, frighten the fearsome who 
would think he was too daring; and then he would buy, buy, buy, below 
these figures as much as possible, in order to cover his sales and reap a 
profit. 
His instinct told him how widespread and enduring this panic would be. The 
Northern Pacific was a hundred-million-dollar venture. It involved the 
savings of hundreds of thousands of people—small bankers, tradesmen, 
preachers, lawyers, doctors, widows, institutions all over the land, and all 
resting on the faith and security of Jay Cooke. Once, not unlike the Chicago 
fire map, Cowperwood had seen a grand prospectus and map of the location 
of the Northern Pacific land-grant which Cooke had controlled, showing a 
vast stretch or belt of territory extending from Duluth—"The Zenith City of 
the Unsalted Seas," as Proctor Knott, speaking in the House of 
Representatives, had sarcastically called it—through the Rockies and the 
headwaters of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. He had seen how Cooke 
had ostensibly managed to get control of this government grant, containing 
millions upon millions of acres and extending fourteen hundred miles in 
length; but it was only a vision of empire. There might be silver and gold and 
copper mines there. The land was usable—would some day be usable. But 
what of it now? It would do to fire the imaginations of fools with—nothing 
more. It was inaccessible, and would remain so for years to come. No doubt 
thousands had subscribed to build this road; but, too, thousands would 
now fail if it had failed. Now the crash had come. The grief and the rage of 
the public would be intense. For days and days and weeks and months, 
normal confidence and courage would be gone. This was his hour. This was 
his great moment. Like a wolf prowling under glittering, bitter stars in the 
night, he was looking down into the humble folds of simple men and seeing 
what their ignorance and their unsophistication would cost them. 
He hurried back to the exchange, the very same room in which only two 
years before he had fought his losing fight, and, finding that his partner and 
his brother had not yet come, began to sell everything in sight. 

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Pandemonium had broken loose. Boys and men were fairly tearing in from 
all sections with orders from panic-struck brokers to sell, sell, sell, and later 
with orders to buy; the various trading-posts were reeling, swirling masses 
of brokers and their agents. Outside in the street in front of Jay Cooke & 
Co., Clark & Co., the Girard National Bank, and other institutions, immense 
crowds were beginning to form. They were hurrying here to learn the 
trouble, to withdraw their deposits, to protect their interests generally. A 
policeman arrested a boy for calling out the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., but 
nevertheless the news of the great disaster was spreading like wild-fire. 
Among these panic-struck men Cowperwood was perfectly calm, deadly cold, 
the same Cowperwood who had pegged solemnly at his ten chairs each day 
in prison, who had baited his traps for rats, and worked in the little garden 
allotted him in utter silence and loneliness. Now he was vigorous and 
energetic. He had been just sufficiently about this exchange floor once more 
to have made his personality impressive and distinguished. He forced his 
way into the center of swirling crowds of men already shouting themselves 
hoarse, offering whatever was being offered in quantities which were 
astonishing, and at prices which allured the few who were anxious to make 
money out of the tumbling prices to buy. New York Central had been 
standing at 104 7/8 when the failure was announced; Rhode Island at 108 
7/8; Western Union at 92 1/2; Wabash at 70 1/4; Panama at 117 3/8; 
Central Pacific at 99 5/8; St. Paul at 51; Hannibal & St. Joseph at 48; 
Northwestern at 63; Union Pacific at 26 3/4; Ohio and Mississippi at 38 
3/4. Cowperwood's house had scarcely any of the stocks on hand. They 
were not carrying them for any customers, and yet he sold, sold, sold, to 
whoever would take, at prices which he felt sure would inspire them. 
"Five thousand of New York Central at ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-
seven, ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three, ninety-two, ninety-
one, ninety, eighty-nine," you might have heard him call; and when his sales 
were not sufficiently brisk he would turn to something else—Rock Island, 
Panama, Central Pacific, Western Union, Northwestern, Union Pacific. He 
saw his brother and Wingate hurrying in, and stopped in his work long 
enough to instruct them. "Sell everything you can," he cautioned them 
quietly, "at fifteen points off if you have to—no lower than that now—and 
buy all you can below it. Ed, you see if you cannot buy up some local street-
railways at fifteen off. Joe, you stay near me and buy when I tell you." 
The secretary of the board appeared on his little platform. 
"E. W. Clark & Company," he announced, at one-thirty, "have just closed 
their doors." 
"Tighe & Company," he called at one-forty-five, "announce that they are 
compelled to suspend." 

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"The First National Bank of Philadelphia," he called, at two o'clock, "begs to 
state that it cannot at present meet its obligations." 
After each announcement, always, as in the past, when the gong had 
compelled silence, the crowd broke into an ominous "Aw, aw, aw." 
"Tighe & Company," thought Cowperwood, for a single second, when he 
heard it. "There's an end of him." And then he returned to his task. 
When the time for closing came, his coat torn, his collar twisted loose, his 
necktie ripped, his hat lost, he emerged sane, quiet, steady-mannered. 
"Well, Ed," he inquired, meeting his brother, "how'd you make out?" The 
latter was equally torn, scratched, exhausted. 
"Christ," he replied, tugging at his sleeves, "I never saw such a place as this. 
They almost tore my clothes off." 
"Buy any local street-railways?" 
"About five thousand shares." 
"We'd better go down to Green's," Frank observed, referring to the lobby of 
the principal hotel. "We're not through yet. There'll be more trading there." 
He led the way to find Wingate and his brother Joe, and together they were 
off, figuring up some of the larger phases of their purchases and sales as 
they went. 
And, as he predicted, the excitement did not end with the coming of the 
night. The crowd lingered in front of Jay Cooke & Co.'s on Third Street and 
in front of other institutions, waiting apparently for some development 
which would be favorable to them. For the initiated the center of debate and 
agitation was Green's Hotel, where on the evening of the eighteenth the 
lobby and corridors were crowded with bankers, brokers, and speculators. 
The stock exchange had practically adjourned to that hotel en masse. What 
of the morrow? Who would be the next to fail? From whence would money 
be forthcoming? These were the topics from each mind and upon each 
tongue. From New York was coming momentarily more news of disaster. 
Over there banks and trust companies were falling like trees in a hurricane. 
Cowperwood in his perambulations, seeing what he could see and hearing 
what he could hear, reaching understandings which were against the rules 
of the exchange, but which were nevertheless in accord with what every 
other person was doing, saw about him men known to him as agents of 
Mollenhauer and Simpson, and congratulated himself that he would have 
something to collect from them before the week was over. He might not own 
a street-railway, but he would have the means to. He learned from hearsay, 
and information which had been received from New York and elsewhere, 
that things were as bad as they could be, and that there was no hope for 

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those who expected a speedy return of normal conditions. No thought of 
retiring for the night entered until the last man was gone. It was then 
practically morning. 
The next day was Friday, and suggested many ominous things. Would it be 
another Black Friday? Cowperwood was at his office before the street was 
fairly awake. He figured out his program for the day to a nicety, feeling 
strangely different from the way he had felt two years before when the 
conditions were not dissimilar. Yesterday, in spite of the sudden onslaught, 
he had made one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and he expected to 
make as much, if not more, to-day. There was no telling what he could 
make, he thought, if he could only keep his small organization in perfect 
trim and get his assistants to follow his orders exactly. Ruin for others 
began early with the suspension of Fisk & Hatch, Jay Cooke's faithful 
lieutenants during the Civil War. They had calls upon them for one million 
five hundred thousand dollars in the first fifteen minutes after opening the 
doors, and at once closed them again, the failure being ascribed to Collis P. 
Huntington's Central Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio. There 
was a long-continued run on the Fidelity Trust Company. News of these 
facts, and of failures in New York posted on 'change, strengthened the cause 
Cowperwood was so much interested in; for he was selling as high as he 
could and buying as low as he could on a constantly sinking scale. By 
twelve o'clock he figured with his assistants that he had cleared one 
hundred thousand dollars; and by three o'clock he had two hundred 
thousand dollars more. That afternoon between three and seven he spent 
adjusting his trades, and between seven and one in the morning, without 
anything to eat, in gathering as much additional information as he could 
and laying his plans for the future. Saturday morning came, and he 
repeated his performance of the day before, following it up with adjustments 
on Sunday and heavy trading on Monday. By Monday afternoon at three 
o'clock he figured that, all losses and uncertainties to one side, he was once 
more a millionaire, and that now his future lay clear and straight before 
him. 
As he sat at his desk late that afternoon in his office looking out into Third 
Street, where a hurrying of brokers, messengers, and anxious depositors 
still maintained, he had the feeling that so far as Philadelphia and the life 
here was concerned, his day and its day with him was over. He did not care 
anything about the brokerage business here any more or anywhere. Failures 
such as this, and disasters such as the Chicago fire, that had overtaken him 
two years before, had cured him of all love of the stock exchange and all 
feeling for Philadelphia. He had been very unhappy here in spite of all his 
previous happiness; and his experience as a convict had made, him, he 
could see quite plainly, unacceptable to the element with whom he had once 

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hoped to associate. There was nothing else to do, now that he had 
reestablished himself as a Philadelphia business man and been pardoned 
for an offense which he hoped to make people believe he had never 
committed, but to leave Philadelphia to seek a new world. 
"If I get out of this safely," he said to himself, "this is the end. I am going 
West, and going into some other line of business." He thought of street-
railways, land speculation, some great manufacturing project of some kind, 
even mining, on a legitimate basis. 
"I have had my lesson," he said to himself, finally getting up and preparing 
to leave. "I am as rich as I was, and only a little older. They caught me once, 
but they will not catch me again." He talked to Wingate about following up 
the campaign on the lines in which he had started, and he himself intended 
to follow it up with great energy; but all the while his mind was running with 
this one rich thought: "I am a millionaire. I am a free man. I am only thirty-
six, and my future is all before me." 
It was with this thought that he went to visit Aileen, and to plan for the 
future. 
It was only three months later that a train, speeding through the mountains 
of Pennsylvania and over the plains of Ohio and Indiana, bore to Chicago 
and the West the young financial aspirant who, in spite of youth and wealth 
and a notable vigor of body, was a solemn, conservative speculator as to 
what his future might be. The West, as he had carefully calculated before 
leaving, held much. He had studied the receipts of the New York Clearing 
House recently and the disposition of bank-balances and the shipment of 
gold, and had seen that vast quantities of the latter metal were going to 
Chicago. He understood finance accurately. The meaning of gold shipments 
was clear. Where money was going trade was—a thriving, developing life. He 
wished to see clearly for himself what this world had to offer. 
Two years later, following the meteoric appearance of a young speculator in 
Duluth, and after Chicago had seen the tentative opening of a grain and 
commission company labeled Frank A. Cowperwood & Co., which ostensibly 
dealt in the great wheat crops of the West, a quiet divorce was granted Mrs. 
Frank A. Cowperwood in Philadelphia, because apparently she wished it. 
Time had not seemingly dealt badly with her. Her financial affairs, once so 
bad, were now apparently all straightened out, and she occupied in West 
Philadelphia, near one of her sisters, a new and interesting home which was 
fitted with all the comforts of an excellent middle-class residence. She was 
now quite religious once more. The two children, Frank and Lillian, were in 
private schools, returning evenings to their mother. "Wash" Sims was once 
more the negro general factotum. Frequent visitors on Sundays were Mr. 
and Mrs. Henry Worthington Cowperwood, no longer distressed financially, 

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but subdued and wearied, the wind completely gone from their once much-
favored sails. Cowperwood, senior, had sufficient money wherewith to 
sustain himself, and that without slaving as a petty clerk, but his social joy 
in life was gone. He was old, disappointed, sad. He could feel that with his 
quondam honor and financial glory, he was the same—and he was not. His 
courage and his dreams were gone, and he awaited death. 
Here, too, came Anna Adelaide Cowperwood on occasion, a clerk in the city 
water office, who speculated much as to the strange vicissitudes of life. She 
had great interest in her brother, who seemed destined by fate to play a 
conspicuous part in the world; but she could not understand him. Seeing 
that all those who were near to him in any way seemed to rise or fall with 
his prosperity, she did not understand how justice and morals were 
arranged in this world. There seemed to be certain general principles—or 
people assumed there were—but apparently there were exceptions. 
Assuredly her brother abided by no known rule, and yet he seemed to be 
doing fairly well once more. What did this mean? Mrs. Cowperwood, his 
former wife, condemned his actions, and yet accepted of his prosperity as 
her due. What were the ethics of that? 
Cowperwood's every action was known to Aileen Butler, his present 
whereabouts and prospects. Not long after his wife's divorce, and after many 
trips to and from this new world in which he was now living, these two left 
Philadelphia together one afternoon in the winter. Aileen explained to her 
mother, who was willing to go and live with Norah, that she had fallen in 
love with the former banker and wished to marry him. The old lady, 
gathering only a garbled version of it at first, consented. 
Thus ended forever for Aileen this long-continued relationship with this 
older world. Chicago was before her—a much more distinguished career, 
Frank told her, than ever they could have had in Philadelphia. 
"Isn't it nice to be finally going?" she commented. 
"It is advantageous, anyhow," he said. 
Concerning Mycteroperca Bonaci 
There is a certain fish, the scientific name of which is Mycteroperca Bonaci, 
its common name Black Grouper, which is of considerable value as an 
afterthought in this connection, and which deserves to be better known. It is 
a healthy creature, growing quite regularly to a weight of two hundred and 
fifty pounds, and lives a comfortable, lengthy existence because of its very 
remarkable ability to adapt itself to conditions. That very subtle thing which 
we call the creative power, and which we endow with the spirit of the 
beatitudes, is supposed to build this mortal life in such fashion that only 
honesty and virtue shall prevail. Witness, then, the significant manner in 

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which it has fashioned the black grouper. One might go far afield and gather 
less forceful indictments—the horrific spider spinning his trap for the 
unthinking fly; the lovely Drosera (Sundew) using its crimson calyx for a 
smothering-pit in which to seal and devour the victim of its beauty; the 
rainbow-colored jellyfish that spreads its prismed tentacles like streamers of 
great beauty, only to sting and torture all that falls within their radiant 
folds. Man himself is busy digging the pit and fashioning the snare, but he 
will not believe it. His feet are in the trap of circumstance; his eyes are on an 
illusion. 
Mycteroperca moving in its dark world of green waters is as fine an 
illustration of the constructive genius of nature, which is not beatific, as any 
which the mind of man may discover. Its great superiority lies in an almost 
unbelievable power of simulation, which relates solely to the pigmentation of 
its skin. In electrical mechanics we pride ourselves on our ability to make 
over one brilliant scene into another in the twinkling of an eye, and flash 
before the gaze of an onlooker picture after picture, which appear and 
disappear as we look. The directive control of Mycteroperca over its 
appearance is much more significant. You cannot look at it long without 
feeling that you are witnessing something spectral and unnatural, so 
brilliant is its power to deceive. From being black it can become instantly 
white; from being an earth-colored brown it can fade into a delightful water-
colored green. Its markings change as the clouds of the sky. One marvels at 
the variety and subtlety of its power. 
Lying at the bottom of a bay, it can simulate the mud by which it is 
surrounded. Hidden in the folds of glorious leaves, it is of the same 
markings. Lurking in a flaw of light, it is like the light itself shining dimly in 
water. Its power to elude or strike unseen is of the greatest. 
What would you say was the intention of the overruling, intelligent, 
constructive force which gives to Mycteroperca this ability? To fit it to be 
truthful? To permit it to present an unvarying appearance which all honest 
life-seeking fish may know? Or would you say that subtlety, chicanery, 
trickery, were here at work? An implement of illusion one might readily 
suspect it to be, a living lie, a creature whose business it is to appear what it 
is not, to simulate that with which it has nothing in common, to get its living 
by great subtlety, the power of its enemies to forefend against which is little. 
The indictment is fair. 
Would you say, in the face of this, that a beatific, beneficent creative, 
overruling power never wills that which is either tricky or deceptive? Or 
would you say that this material seeming in which we dwell is itself an 
illusion? If not, whence then the Ten Commandments and the illusion of 
justice? Why were the Beatitudes dreamed of and how do they avail? 

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The Magic Crystal 
If you had been a mystic or a soothsayer or a member of that mysterious 
world which divines by incantations, dreams, the mystic bowl, or the crystal 
sphere, you might have looked into their mysterious depths at this time and 
foreseen a world of happenings which concerned these two, who were now 
apparently so fortunately placed. In the fumes of the witches' pot, or the 
depths of the radiant crystal, might have been revealed cities, cities, cities; a 
world of mansions, carriages, jewels, beauty; a vast metropolis outraged by 
the power of one man; a great state seething with indignation over a force it 
could not control; vast halls of priceless pictures; a palace unrivaled for its 
magnificence; a whole world reading with wonder, at times, of a given name. 
And sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. 
The three witches that hailed Macbeth upon the blasted heath might in turn 
have called to Cowperwood, "Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, master of a 
great railway system! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, builder of a priceless 
mansion! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, patron of arts and possessor of 
endless riches! You shall be famed hereafter." But like the Weird Sisters, 
they would have lied, for in the glory was also the ashes of Dead Sea fruit—
an understanding that could neither be inflamed by desire nor satisfied by 
luxury; a heart that was long since wearied by experience; a soul that was 
as bereft of illusion as a windless moon. And to Aileen, as to Macduff, they 
might have spoken a more pathetic promise, one that concerned hope and 
failure. To have and not to have! All the seeming, and yet the sorrow of not 
having! Brilliant society that shone in a mirage, yet locked its doors; love 
that eluded as a will-o'-the-wisp and died in the dark. "Hail to you, Frank 
Cowperwood, master and no master, prince of a world of dreams whose 
reality was disillusion!" So might the witches have called, the bowl have 
danced with figures, the fumes with vision, and it would have been true. 
What wise man might not read from such a beginning, such an end?