New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [314]
Not much point in saying anything else.
Sometimes William wondered if all things in the world were connected. But he hadn’t thought about Alaska. He was in the brokerage house the next morning when he saw the message on the wires. It looked innocent enough. The Guggenheims, the mighty German Jewish mining family, were going to develop huge copper reserves in Alaska. A good thing, one might think. But when William saw it, he cried out: “It’s all over.”
It was some time since a small group of speculators had decided to corner the copper market. He knew the men. The copper supply was limited, and the price was soaring. There hadn’t been a word about these damned Alaska mines. To buy the copper, they’d borrowed a fortune from the Knickerbocker Trust; but with huge new supplies from the Guggenheims in prospect, copper prices would fall through the floor. The corner, and the speculators, were surely bust.
It took just two hours for the price of copper to collapse. William went over to the trust offices. He’d no sooner walked through the door when one of the directors whispered to him, “Knickerbocker just asked for a loan, and was refused.” This was it, then. Knickerbocker’s credit was gone.
The market groaned. The market swooned. All afternoon stocks fell. William felt sure that the Knickerbocker Trust must fail now. And after that …
It was mid-afternoon when one of his partners came in with unexpected news.
“Morgan’s going to try to save the trusts.”
“Jack Morgan’s away in London,” William pointed out. “Hard to see what he can do from there.”
“Not Jack. Old Pierpont. He took a private train up from Virginia. He’s been here since last night.”
“But he hates the trusts. Despises us all.”
“Yes, but there’s so much money tied up in them, he reckons there’s no choice. If they fail, everything goes.”
Was it a ray of hope? William doubted it. Even Jupiter with his thunderbolts could hardly remove this massive mountain of bad debt.
But it was the only hope on the horizon. That evening, when Rose asked him anxiously what was happening, he smiled bravely and told her: “Morgan’s going to sort it out.” No point in starting a panic in his own home. Anyway, he couldn’t face it.
On Tuesday morning, a crowd formed outside the offices of the Knickerbocker Trust. Soon they had to be formed into an orderly line by a policeman. They wanted news. They wanted reassurance. They wanted their money. Inside, Morgan’s men were going through the books.
At lunchtime, William went for a walk down Broadway. As he came to Bowling Green, he passed the offices of the two great shipping lines, Cunard and the White Star. Continuing down to the waterside he stared across the harbor at Ellis Island.
How long would it be before he was as penniless as the poor devils who came in there every day? he wondered.
As poor as an Italian peasant? Well, not in absolute terms. His wife and children would be looked after by his parents, no doubt. Perhaps his grandmother would do something for them, too. But it wouldn’t be easy. Most of her money was in a trust that went to Tom. Tom’s two sisters were expecting their share of any inheritance, too. The Rolls-Royce would be gone. His wife’s pearls. God knows what sort of address they’d be living at.
He wondered how Rose would take it. She loved him, in her way. But she’d married into a certain kind of life. That was the deal. Old money, with money. Take away the money and what sort of marriage would they have? He honestly didn’t know. At least the Jewish refugees and the Italian peasants arriving at Ellis Island had been poor when they married each other. They had nowhere to go but up. In a way, they were free.
It was almost funny really, when you thought about it. All his life, he’d been rich. But he’d been living in a prison cell—in the great jail, called Expectation. And he couldn’t get out of it.
Well, there was one way out. Maybe, when he’d tidied up his affairs as best he could, he’d go to the White