New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [315]
What sort of a life would he be leaving? Had he been happy? Not really. Did he like his house? Not so much. He loved his new Rolls-Royce—he was sure of that. But what did he love about it? The fact that it was expensive, the silver body, the red leather seats, the admiration and envy it evoked? No. It was the engine. That’s what excited him. The way it worked, the beauty of it. He’d have been just as happy if he was a poor mechanic.
The man who built that Rolls-Royce was the lucky fellow, William considered. A fellow doing something he loved, and doing it supremely well.
Do I love what I do? he asked himself. Not much. Do I do it well? He was mediocre, at best. And right now, he had failed, completely and utterly. How did he feel? Ashamed, humiliated, probably unloved. And very, very afraid.
By the time he got back to Wall Street, the news was out. Morgan’s men had concluded that the trust was past praying for. The Knickerbocker Trust had failed. Lines were already forming outside the other trusts, including his own. People were withdrawing their money.
The partners had already decided what to do if this happened. Pay out as slowly as possible. When he walked into his office, it was already under way. They would probably get through the afternoon, but after that? He had no idea. He watched the line. It was moving slowly but inexorably, like a river. Not even Pierpont Morgan could stop a river.
That evening at home, he smiled cheerfully through dinner with his family. Yes, there had been a little panic on Wall Street, he confessed to the children. They’d see it in the papers, and hear about it, but it would soon pass.
“The fundamentals of the market are good,” he assured them all. “Indeed, this is probably an excellent time to buy.”
The next day, people were camping outside the trust offices by dawn, hoping to get their money out before the rest. Meanwhile, the trust partners were looking for cash. The moment they opened for business, they went to the brokers, calling in all their loans. When he walked into his brokerage house, his partners there told him: “We’ll be lucky to get through the day. By tomorrow we’ll be gone.”
William went outside. There was nothing more to be done. He gazed sadly up at the sky. It was hard, and terrible. He turned, to walk to Bowling Green again, wanting to be alone.
But he had only gone a short way when one of the clerks from the trust caught up with him. The man was looking excited.
“Come quickly,” he cried. “Oh, sir, rescue is at hand.”
President Theodore Roosevelt had reason to be suspicious of New York City. A decade ago, he’d labored to reform its corrupt police. He’d also witnessed the mighty industrial combinations that J. P. Morgan was building up—and he didn’t like what he saw. Too much economic power was in too few hands, he believed. Elected governor of New York State, then chosen as vice president, the assassination of President McKinley had unexpectedly brought him, at the age of only forty-two, to the White House, where he had continued to speak against the might of Wall Street. For Pierpont Morgan himself, however, Roosevelt had a high regard.
In the early hours of that Wednesday, therefore, a remarkable thing had occurred. The government of the United States put the huge sum of twenty-five million dollars into the hands of Pierpont Morgan, with only one request:
“Do whatever you think best. But save us.”
And now Jupiter, greatest of all the gods, began to fling his thunderbolts.
When William Master looked back on those days, it was like remembering a great battle: periods of waiting; moments of sudden excitement and confusion; and a few haunting images that would never leave his mind again. Using the government money, and raising even greater private sums by the sheer force of his personality,