Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/131

 could sharpen the appetite of Fisk for the game his leader (Gould) was pursuing. The compounded villainy presented by Gould and Corbin was too tempting a bait." So Fisk was drawn into the movement when his aid was most needed. This corner was a glittering edifice built on a foundation of deceit and corruption. It could not long stand. The most that Gould and Fisk could do was to frighten the "shorts" into covering before Grant awakened to the realization of how he was being used and issue orders to sell gold. Wall street was soon filled with rumors that the administration was in the deal and the excitement ran high.

"The malign influence," says the Congressional report already quoted, "which Cataline wielded over the reckless and abandoned youth of Rome finds a fitting parallel in the power which Fisk held in Wall street when, followed by the thugs of Erie and the debauchees of the opera, he swept into the gold-*room and defied both the street and the Treasury."

The magnitude of the conspiracy is shown by the fact that before Black Friday Gould had employed fifty to sixty brokers to make his purchases, and $50,000,000 to $60,000,000 of gold had been bought by William Heath & Co., Woodward, H. K. Enos, E. K. Willard, and others of the brokers. He required all this to advance the price of gold from 135½ to 140½.

Fisk's entrance into the game was a powerful help to Gould, for it not only furnished another purchaser for gold, but directed public attention