Only Yesterday: Chapter XII

By all the canons of conservative finance the banker was right.

One did not have to listen long to an after-dinner conversation, whether in New York or San Francisco or the lowliest village of the plain, to realize that all sorts of people to whom the stock ticker had been a hitherto alien mystery were carrying a hundred shares of Studebaker or Houston Oil, learning the significance of such recondite symbols as GL and X and ITT, and whipping open the early editions of afternoon papers to catch the 1:30 quotations from Wall Street.

This action had been taken from the most laudable motives: several of the European nations were having difficulty in stabilizing their currencies, European exchanges were weak, and it seemed to the Reserve authorities that the easing of American money rates might prevent the further accumulation of gold in the United States and thus aid in the recovery of Europe and benefit foreign trade.

During January and February the stock market turned ragged and unsettled, and no wonder—for with prices still near record levels and the future trend of business highly dubious, it was altogether too easy to foresee a time of reckoning ahead.

Charles Cary Rumsey exemplified the principle of noblesse oblige by endorsing Simmons beds.

For on page 1 appeared what was to prove a portentous piece of news.

(Shades of a thousand Democratic orators who had once extolled the New Freedom and spoken harsh words about Standard Oil magnates and New York financiers!)

Al Smith put up a valiant fight, swinging strenuously from city to city, autographing brown derbies, denouncing prohibition, denouncing bigotry, and promising new salves for the farmer’s wounds; but it was no use.

Had they been disturbed that Radio should sell at such an exorbitant price as 150?

Yet so cogent were the arguments against them that at last the great majority of even the sober financial leaders of the country were won over in some degree.

For many years rival capitalistic interests, imitating the brilliant methods of Sidney Z. Mitchell, had sought to secure control of local electric light and power and gas companies and water companies and weld them into chains; and as the future possibilities of the utilities seized upon the speculative imagination, the battle between these groups led to an amazing proliferation of utility holding companies.

These trusts ranged all the way from honestly and intelligently managed companies to wildly speculative concerns launched by ignorant or venal promoters.

Reprehensible, you say?

Nonstop flyers were zooming about over the American countryside, and emulation of the heroes of the air had reached its climax of absurdity in the exploit of a twenty-two-year-old boy who had climbed into the cabin of the Yellow Bird and had been carried as a stowaway by Assolant and Lefèvre from Old Orchard, Maine, to the Spanish coast.

It was Bobby Jones’s penultimate year as monarch of amateur golfers—his seventh successive year as winner of either the amateur or the open championship of the United States.