The Sixty-First Second

The Sixty-First Second

In the year 19, toward the end of the month of October, the country was on the eve of a stupendous panic. A period of swollen prosperity had just ended in which Titans had striven in a frenzy for the millions that opportunity had spilled before them. For months the stock market had steadily lowered, owing to the flight of the small investor, affrighted by the succession of investigations, the fear of readjustments, and the distrust of the great manipulators. The public, which understands nothing of the secret wars and hidden alliances of finance, had begun tremulously to be aware of the threatening approach of a stupendous catastrophe. So in the ominous, grumbling days of October, when the air was full of confusing rumors and violent alarms, the public, with its necessity for humanizing all sensations, perceived distinctly only two figures, each dramatically in peril, about whose safety or ruin the whole comprehensible drama of the financial cataclysm seemed to center. These two figures, both presidents of great trust companies, giants in their own sphere, represented two opposite elements of that great mass of society which seeks its level in Wall Street. Bernard L. Majendie, president of the Atlantic Trust Company, member of every exclusive club, patron of the arts, representative of one of the oldest American families, accustomed to leadership and wealth from colonial times, was linked in a common danger with John G. Slade, president of the Associated Trust Company, promoter, manipulator, owner of a chain of Western newspapers, a man who had hauled himself out of the lowest depths of society. Many believed that both, in the relentless readjustment which the banks were forcing on the trust companies, were destined to be blotted out in the general catastrophe. Many others, perceiving the strange oppositeness of the two individuals, speculated on which would survive the other, if indeed either were to persist. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 37113
Author: Johnson, Owen
Release Date: Mar 12, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Wenzell, A. B. (Albert Beck), 1864-1917