John was to be president at "a fixed salary." It sounded
very grand. His duties at the trust company began to seem picayune.
Moreover, his loss in copper had depressed him and he wanted to recoup,
if he could. But how to get the two thousand five hundred dollars
necessary to start in business? Prescott pleaded poverty, yet talked
constantly of the ease with which a fortune might be made if they could
only once "get in right." It was a period of increased dividends, of
stock-jobbing operations of enormous magnitude, of "fifty-point
movements," when the lucky purchaser of only a hundred shares of some
inconspicuous railroad sometimes found that he could sell out next week
with five thousand dollars' profit. The air seemed full of money. It
appeared to rain banknotes and stock certificates.
In the "loan cage" at the trust company John handled daily millions in
securities, a great part of which were negotiable. When almost everybody
was so rich he wondered why any one remained poor. Two or three men of
his own age gave up their jobs in other concerns and became traders,
while another opened an office of his own.
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