Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/104

 CHAPTER VIII.

THE GOLD CONSPIRACY.

"Black Friday," that darkest day in the financial history of America, was not the creation of sudden circumstance, but the culmination of a plan conceived by Gould and his associates, with all its details arranged for weeks before. Whether the whole truth has ever been written about Mr. Gould's gold operations is open to doubt. The explanation given by Henry Clews, in his noted work, "Twenty-eight years in Wall Street," seems a trifle naive to those who are not so deeply initiated in Wall street methods. He says:

"In the year 1869, this country was blest with abundant crops far in excess of our needs, and it was apparent that great good would result from any method that could be devised to stimulate exports of a part, at least, of the surplus.

"Letters poured into Washington by the thousand from leading bankers, merchants and business men, urging that the Treasury department abstain from selling gold, as had been the practice for some time, so that the premium might, as it otherwise would not, advance to a figure that would send our products out of the country, as the cheapest exportable material in place of coin, which, at its then arti