d never want anything to do with the grain and commission business as conducted by the Waterman Company, Cow

ry pursuance of his duties as outside man for Waterman & Company. From

ould ask, genially; or, "Find that you

o forth, there were prospects of hard times. And Tighe - he could not have told you why - was convinced that this

ell with us, thank you, Mr. Ti

morning, "this slavery agitation, if it

freedom the right of any negro brought into the state, even though in transit only to another portion of the country, and

business, and it must be doing the same thing for others. We'll have secession here,

e negro isn't worth all this excitement, but they'll go on agitating for him - emotional

That's what p

struck him as being inexpressibly sound and deep-thinking on financial mat

o try your hand at being a floor man for me in 'change

and looking intensely gratified. "I had t

make the change, the place is

the other place," Cowperwood said, quiet

ome as soon as you can straighten things out.

rested and yet in no way flustered by his new prospects. And great was the grief of Mr.

informed by Cowperwood of his decision, "that y

s just that I want to get into the

You know what you are doing. But George and I had about agreed to offer you an interest in this thing a

be a grain and commission man." Mr. Henry Waterman could scarcely understand why obvious succ

ernational import and repute were near at hand - Drexel & Co., Edward Clark & Co., the Third National Bank, the First National Bank, the Stock Exchange, and similar institutions. Almost a score of smaller banks and brokerage firms were also in the vicinity. Edward Tighe, the head and brains of this concern, was a Boston Irishman, the son of an immigrant who had flourished and done well in that conservative city. He had come to Phil

adelphia's, was very bad in spite of its great wealth. "If there's ever a war there'll be battalions of Pennsylvanians marching around offering notes for their meals. If I could just live long enough I could

stead of paying it, the city or State treasurer, as the case might be, stamped the same with the date of presentation, and the warrant then bore interest for not only its original face value, but the amount then due in interest. In other words, it was being slowly compounded. But this did not help the man who wanted to raise money, for as security they could not be hypothecated for more than seventy per cent

ates Treasury with its subtreasury system had come in 1846; but still there were many, many wildcat banks, sufficient in number to make the average exchange-counter broker a walking encyclopedia of solvent and insolvent institutions. Still, things were slowly improving, for the telegraph

rring the gold coin, which was the only thing that could be accepted for balances due, since there was no stable national currency. "On 'change," when the gong struck announcing the close of the day's business, a company of young men, known as "settlement clerks," after a system borrowed from London, gathered in the center of the room and compared or gathered the various trades of the day in a ring,

en any time between morning and midnight), and had fixed the rates at which brokers could do business, in the face of cut-throat schemes which had previously held. Severe penalties were