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By Root 661 0

As usual d’Argenson, who—according to Law—was “jealous of the credit that I had acquired with His Royal Highness and the public by the direction of the bank and the Western company,” was a vociferous opponent, claiming that the plan was doomed and casting doubt on public willingness to invest, given that the first issue of shares was still trading below par. Egged on by d’Argenson, even the regent was anxious about the scheme’s viability and stalled Law’s request for royal sanction. Realizing that the doubters would be silenced only if he demonstrated, irrefutably, that the idea was fail-safe, Law conferred with several key friends and potential investors. They agreed on easy terms of payment for the new issue of shares: ten monthly installments (later made even more tempting by being increased to twenty). Ships would be slow to prepare and fit, Law said, so the company would not need its full working capital immediately. With this incentive dangling before them, five supporters were keen enough to pledge to buy a million livres’ worth of shares each. Law’s gambling instincts now surfaced: he guaranteed to put up 2.5 million livres as a first down payment on the par price. This effectively obliged him to buy over 90 percent of the entire issue and invest a total of 25 million livres. To the regent, self-assurance on such a scale was irresistible: on Sunday, May 23, he overruled d’Argenson’s misgivings and authorized the deal. The new enterprise was named the Company of the Indies, although most still used the old sobriquet, Mississippi Company.

Beneath his surface bravado, Law fretted over the wisdom of his move: “On Monday night I did not sleep; I had gained a great confidence with the public and I feared losing it by the action that I had taken,” he later owned. In fact, his gamble paid off. In the goldfish-bowl society in which he moved, underwriting an issue on such a scale could scarcely fail to attract attention. Everyone assumed that to do so Law, with his inside knowledge, had to have been certain of success. The growing profits of his acquisitions, particularly of the tobacco monopoly and the distant Louisiana colony, seemed assured. The shrewdest began to follow suit.

Rapidly, amid a flurry of rumor, the herd instinct took hold. The price of the old shares broke through their par price and rose to 600 livres, and subscriptions for the new issue streamed in. By mid-June shares were changing hands at 650 livres, and 50 million paper notes poured off the bank’s presses to enable people to purchase the next issue of shares, which would be offered at the end of the month. Slowly, the skeptical French public, who had burned their fingers with state bonds, were learning that paper investments could rise as well as fall in value. Law was about to compound the lesson with maneuvers that laid bare his grasp of consumer psychology: the elementary concept that reducing supply increases demand.

New issue restrictions were imposed: in order to buy one new share investors had to own four old ones. Thus, those who had bought the original issue enjoyed the pleasure of watching the value of their investment rise as, over the summer of 1719, France savored her first taste of a bull market. By the time the second installment was due on the new issue, the share price had doubled to 1,000 livres. Meanwhile, Law gilded the lily still further by stating that the company would pay a generous 12 percent dividend of 60 livres in the following year. As the bank printed more notes and issued more loans to allow greater numbers of people to buy and deal in shares, prices continued to rise.

Law’s summer spending spree was still incomplete. At the end of July 1719 he bought the rights to the Royal Mint for 50 million livres. To cover the cost, a third issue of 50,000 shares was offered. These were nicknamed petites filles, granddaughters, and as before were linked to earlier issues. To buy one granddaughter you had to own four mothers and a daughter.

Outside the Mississippi Company office, throughout the summer of 1719, Paris was rapidly