The Curb Exchange reports even greater gains and makes no secret of the fact that there is no limit to the prices stocks may eventually reach.
Informed sources highly influential in Wall Street refuse to credit statements from abroad that the situation is headed for unavoidable collapse because there had been, until now, no discernible corresponding gains in employment, national income, carloadings, production, foreign trade, or retail sales.
The consensus of investing opinion is that awakened confidence in the future of the nation ...
... substantiating this claim, stock exchanges in all major cities throughout the Americas report gains as great as Wall Street's ...
... in view of these facts, all reliable sources assert that a vast surge of public confidence has been responsible ...
"Well, what'll it be?" demanded Titus. "Rails, utilities, heavy industry, mining, novelties?"
"I don't know —"
"Better get in fast, Mr. Hale! Everybody's buying and holding. While there's still foreign investors willing to sell —" He broke into a loud, harsh laugh, like the sound of a loaded cafeteria tray being dropped. "They think we're riding for a fall! Why, damn them, there's no limit to what we can do! This is the biggest, richest, brainiest, nerviest damned country in the whole damned gutless world! We'll show them a house for every family, a car in every garage, a chicken for every damned pot in every damned house, ten suits of clothing and fifty dresses for every man, woman, and child, hundred — million — dollar movies, hundred — billion — dollar industries, every man worth a fortune —"
"Hey! Wait a minute!" cried Hale. "What's the —"
"Not a thing, Mr. Hale. Nothing's wrong! Everybody's buying! What'll yours be? I've got a hot tip on a couple of million shares some damn fool foreign syndicate's holding. They're scared to hang on and scared to sell. I'll scare the pants off them and buy out for a measly couple of hundred million. You in on it?"
"I —"
"Of course, you are! We'll split it three ways; you, Johnson, and us!"
Hale yelled: "Where are you going to get a couple of hundred million?"
"From the banks, Mr. Hale. From the banks. They're practically giving money away. Sorry I can't go on talking; got to get started on this deal before prices double or triple. So long!"
Through the open window, Hale heard for the first time the street clamor of laughing voices; voices not dull and defeated as before, but somehow buoyant, eager — confident.
It didn't take Hale long to find the answer. Of course, it seemed absurd, the idea of casting a spell on the whole hemisphere by shouting through an open window. But he couldn't very well ignore the evidence.
He snatched Gloria's knitting away and dragged her up. "Come on!" he snapped. "We're going out."
"CAN y' imagine the guy's noive? A lousy hundred a week! I says, `Zimmerman,' I says, `you don't want a cutter,' I says, `you want a butcher.' He says, `Louie, I kept you when things was slow,' he says. I says, `Zimmerman, things has changed. I'm going in business for myself,' I says —"
"Hunnid a week! I laughs at my boss when he offas me a hunnid and a quawta. I sure tol' him wheh to put his lousy job. Me — I'm gonna cawna cloaks and suits, see if I don't!"
"Haw! Haw! You? How you gonna buck me?"
A short, puffing, harried man waddled toward the knot of boastful gabblers, crying plaintively: "Boys! Boys! I'm renting a whole flaw, maybe the whole building yet, but woikas I got to have. Name ya prices! I'll meet any offer in the city!"
"You can't pay what we're asking —"
The businessman wrung his hands in agony. "I don't care what you're asking! Woikas I got to have! I'm telling you, I'm going to be the biggest clothing manufacturer in the woild! Only, woikas I got to have!"
"Listen to him!" said a meek-looking runt sarcastically. "He's gonna be the biggest manufacturer! What about me? Soon's I get down to the bank and borrow a few hundred thousand, I'll buy him out. I'll buy out everybody in the block; then I'll start working on the rest of the city."
Hale didn't know whether to follow the unhappily confident employer or the derisively confident employees. Watching either of them solve their problems would be interesting. Still — hallucinations? He was pretty sure he was sane; but sometimes under great strain minds crack. He asked Gloria: "Did you hear what I heard?"
"What is it, a strike? Everybody's walking out of the buildings."
"Did you hear them refuse a hundred and a quarter a week?" he insisted.
"Yes. Then it's a strike, isn't it?"
Hale knew he hadn't imagined the crowds pouring into the streets, with screaming employers chasing after them. But a strike? If this was happening all over his hemisphere, it was the biggest, most universal walkout in history! And not a simple walkout either, but a unanimous desire to become employers!
Hale was satisfied to follow along with the crowd. Gloria clung to his arm and shrank against him for protection from the jabbering throng who, she probably thought, weren't quite clean. He listened.
"Sure I come to work this morning, same as always. I see this ad in the paper —"
"The bank ad? Yeah, I saw it, too. So what'd you do?"
"I go in and show the boss this ad and he says he'll give me a raise if I don't quit and then the rest of the gang pile in with the same story about quitting and —"
IT WAS a repetition of the stories being told all around him. Hale drew Gloria over to a newsstand that was being closed. Every newspaper had been sold, but for half a dollar the agent offered him a soiled, torn copy of the Socialist Appeal. He got behind the stand and looked through the paper. The first of six full-page advertisements cried out:
THE BANKERS' TRUST COMPANY BELIEVES:
1) In the future of America! No other single country in the world possesses the lavish resources that lie under our feet and everywhere around us, begging to be developed.
2) In the ability of Americans! Single-handed, starting with nothing whatever, our ancestors raised America from a wilderness to the greatest industrial power on earth!
3) In ourselves! We have aided, with money and sound advice, in the birth and expansion of a staggering number of American industries, the names and histories of which strike pride in the heart of every true patriotic American!
WE GLADLY ASSUME THE RESPONSIBILITY:
Of assisting to full growth the most amazing national rebirth in the history of humanity! We are, therefore, prepared to extend every aid: financial, managerial if necessary, advisory under all circumstances, since we base our advice on the experience of ninety-seven years of successful finance:
TO EVERY MAN WHO CAN SHOW PROOF, FINANCIAL OR OTHERWISE, THAT HE HAS A SOUND, WORKABLE, CONCRETE BUSINESS IDEA AND LACKS ONLY SUFFICIENT FUNDS FOR ITS PROPER DEVELOPMENT OR EXPANSION!
In order to remove all obstacles in the path of national confidence in our great and glorious future, the Bankers' Trust Company:
REDUCES INTEREST TO 1/2 OF 1%! NO COLLATERAL! NO CO-SIGNERS! ONLY A ROUTINE CHECKUP OF YOUR PLAN! WE BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE OF THIS COUNTRY!
Hale pursed his dried lips and tried to whistle in amazement. The Socialist Appeal taking a bank's advertisement! A quick glance at the other bank's ads in the paper had shown him only a remarkable similarity to the Bankers' Trust effusion. But on the next page, in big block letters, he found:
WORKERS! THE SOCIALIST APPEAL, ON BEHALF OF THE PARTY IT REPRESENTS, STRESSES THE IMPORTANCE OF TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE BANKS' OFFERS! BY DEVELOPING THE RESOURCES AND MEANS OF PRODUCTION OF OUR COUNTRY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO INHERIT THE RICHEST FRUITS OF CAPITALISTIC CIVILIZATION! THE GREATER OUR INDUSTRIES, THE GREATER OUR EVENTUAL PROSPERITY! IF WE ARE TO SEIZE POWER, LET US BE SURE THAT CAPITALIST EFFICIENCY AND ORGANIZATION HAVE CREATED THE WORLD'S RICHEST COUNTRY FOR US! WORKERS OF AMERICA, WE ARE CONFIDENT OF THE FUTURE THAT WILL MAKE US MASTERS OF OUR FATE!