The Pit

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Winston, a great, broad-shouldered bass-voiced fellow of some
thirty-five years, who was associated with Landry in executing the
orders of the Gretry-Converse house, came up to him, and, omitting
any salutation, remarked, deliberately, slowly:

"What's all this about this trouble between Turkey and England?"

But before Landry could reply a third trader for the Gretry Company
joined the two. This was a young fellow named Rusbridge, lean,
black-haired, a constant excitement glinting in his deep-set eyes.

"Say," he exclaimed, "there's something in that, there's something
in that!"

"Where did you hear it?" demanded Landry.

"Oh--everywhere." Rusbridge made a vague gesture with one arm.
"Hirsch seemed to know all about it. It appears that there's talk of
mobilising the Mediterranean squadron. Darned if I know."

"Might ask that 'Inter-Ocean' reporter. He'd be likely to know. I've
seen him 'round here this morning, or you might telephone the
Associated Press," suggested Landry. "The office never said a word
to me."

"Oh, the 'Associated.' They know a lot always, don't they?" jeered
Winston. "Yes, I rung 'em up. They 'couldn't confirm the rumour.'
That's always the way. You can spend half a million a year in leased
wires and special service and subscriptions to news agencies, and
you get the first smell of news like this right here on the floor.
Remember that time when the Northwestern millers sold a hundred and
fifty thousand barrels at one lick? The floor was talking of it
three hours before the news slips were sent 'round, or a single wire
was in. Suppose we had waited for the Associated people or the
Commercial people then?"

"It's that Higgins-Pasha incident, I'll bet," observed Rusbridge,
his eyes snapping.

"I heard something about that this morning," returned Landry. "But
only that it was--"

"There! What did I tell you?" interrupted Rusbridge. "I said it was
everywhere. There's no smoke without some fire. And I wouldn't be a
bit surprised if we get cables before noon that the British War
Office had sent an ultimatum."

And very naturally a few minutes later Winston, at that time
standing on the steps of the corn pit, heard from a certain broker,
who had it from a friend who had just received a despatch from some
one "in the know," that the British Secretary of State for War had
forwarded an ultimatum to the Porte, and that diplomatic relations
between Turkey and England were about to be suspended.

All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talking of nothing
else, and on the outskirts of every group one could overhear the
words: "Seizure of custom house," "ultimatum," "Eastern question,"
"Higgins-Pasha incident." It was the rumour of the day, and before
very long the pit traders began to receive a multitude of despatches
countermanding selling orders, and directing them not to close out
trades under certain very advanced quotations. The brokers began
wiring their principals that the market promised to open strong and
bullish.

But by now it was near to half-past nine. From the Western Union
desks the clicking of the throng of instruments rose into the air in
an incessant staccato stridulation. The messenger boys ran back and
forth at top speed, dodging in and out among the knots of clerks and
traders, colliding with one another, and without interruption
intoning the names of those for whom they had despatches. The throng
of traders concentrated upon the pits, and at every moment the
deep-toned hum of the murmur of many voices swelled like the rising
of a tide.

And at this moment, as Landry stood on the rim of the wheat pit,
looking towards the telephone booth under the visitors' gallery, he
saw the osseous, stoop-shouldered figure of Mr. Cressler--who,
though he never speculated, appeared regularly upon the Board every
morning--making his way towards one of the windows in the front of
the building. His pocket was full of wheat, taken from a bag on one
of the sample tables. Opening the window, he scattered the grain
upon the sill, and stood for a long moment absorbed and interested
in the dazzling flutter of the wings of innumerable pigeons who came
to settle upon the ledge, pecking the grain with little, nervous,
fastidious taps of their yellow beaks.

Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial on the wall
behind him. It was twenty-five minutes after nine. He stood in his
accustomed place on the north side of the Wheat Pit, upon the
topmost stair. The Pit was full. Below him and on either side of him
were the brokers, scalpers, and traders--Hirsch, Semple, Kelly,
Winston, and Rusbridge. The redoubtable Leaycraft, who, bidding for
himself, was supposed to hold the longest line of May wheat of any
one man in the Pit, the insignificant Grossmann, a Jew who wore a
flannel shirt, and to whose outcries no one ever paid the least
attention. Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, the inseparable trio
who represented the Porteous gang, silent men, middle-aged, who had
but to speak in order to buy or sell a million bushels on the spot.
And others, and still others, veterans of sixty-five, recruits just
out of their teens, men who--some of them--in the past had for a
moment dominated the entire Pit, but who now were content to play
the part of "eighth-chasers," buying and selling on the same day,
content with a profit of ten dollars. Others who might at that very
moment be nursing plans which in a week's time would make them
millionaires; still others who, under a mask of nonchalance, strove
to hide the chagrin of yesterday's defeat. And they were there,
ready, inordinately alert, ears turned to the faintest sound, eyes
searching for the vaguest trace of meaning in those of their rivals,
nervous, keyed to the highest tension, ready to thrust deep into the
slightest opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon the smallest
undefended spot. Grossmann, the little Jew of the grimy flannel
shirt, perspired in the stress of the suspense, all but powerless to
maintain silence till the signal should be given, drawing trembling
fingers across his mouth. Winston, brawny, solid, unperturbed, his
hands behind his back, waited immovably planted on his feet with all
the gravity of a statue, his eyes preternaturally watchful, keeping
Kelly--whom he had divined had some "funny business" on
hand--perpetually in sight. The Porteous trio--Fairchild, Paterson,
and Goodlock--as if unalarmed, unassailable, all but turned their
backs to the Pit, laughing among themselves.

The official reporter climbed to his perch in the little cage on the
edge of the Pit, shutting the door after him. By now the chanting of
the messenger boys was an uninterrupted chorus. From all sides of
the building, and in every direction they crossed and recrossed each
other, always running, their hands full of yellow envelopes. From
the telephone alcoves came the prolonged, musical rasp of the call
bells. In the Western Union booths the keys of the multitude of
instruments raged incessantly. Bare-headed young men hurried up to
one another, conferred an instant comparing despatches, then
separated, darting away at top speed. Men called to each other
half-way across the building. Over by the bulletin boards clerks and
agents made careful memoranda of primary receipts, and noted down
the amount of wheat on passage, the exports and the imports.

And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph, the intoning of
the messenger boys, the shouts and cries of clerks and traders, the
shuffle and trampling of hundreds of feet, the whirring of telephone
signals rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to form a
vast note, prolonged, sustained, that reverberated from vault to
vault of the airy roof, and issued from every doorway, every opened
window in one long roll of uninterrupted thunder. In the Wheat Pit
the bids, no longer obedient of restraint, began one by one to burst
out, like the first isolated shots of a skirmish line. Grossmann had
flung out an arm crying:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth," while Kelly
and Semple had almost simultaneously shouted, "'Give seven-eighths
for May!"

The official reporter had been leaning far over to catch the first
quotations, one eye upon the clock at the end of the room. The hour
and minute hands were at right angles.

Then suddenly, cutting squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the
floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong. Instantly a
tumult was unchained. Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures,
and from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of
hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air. All
articulate expression was lost in the single explosion of sound as
the traders surged downwards to the centre of the Pit, grabbing each
other, struggling towards each other, tramping, stamping, charging
through with might and main. Promptly the hand on the great dial
above the clock stirred and trembled, and as though driven by the
tempest breath of the Pit moved upward through the degrees of its
circle. It paused, wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant
the hundreds of telegraph keys scattered throughout the building
began clicking off the news to the whole country, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific and from Mackinac to Mexico, that the Chicago market
had made a slight advance and that May wheat, which had closed the
day before at ninety-three and three-eighths, had opened that
morning at ninety-four and a half.

But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales. The redoubtable
Leaycraft and the Porteous trio, Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock,
shook their heads when the Pit offered ninety-four for parts of
their holdings. The price held firm. Goodlock even began to offer
ninety-four. At every suspicion of a flurry Grossmann, always with
the same gesture as though hurling a javelin, always with the same
lamentable wail of distress, cried out:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth."

He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number of
"contracts," or lots of five thousand bushels, which he wished to
sell, each finger representing one "contract."

And it was at this moment that selling orders began suddenly to pour
in upon the Gretry-Converse traders. Even other houses--Teller and
West, Burbank & Co., Mattieson and Knight--received their share. The
movement was inexplicable, puzzling. With a powerful Bull clique
dominating the trading and every prospect of a strong market, who
was it who ventured to sell short?

Landry among others found himself commissioned to sell. His orders
were to unload three hundred thousand bushels on any advance over
and above ninety-four. He kept his eye on Leaycraft, certain that he
would force up the figure. But, as it happened, it was not Leaycraft
but the Porteous trio who made the advance. Standing in the centre
of the Pit, Patterson suddenly flung up his hand and drew it towards
him, clutching the air--the conventional gesture of the buyer.

"'Give an eighth for May."

Landry was at him in a second. Twenty voices shouted "sold," and as
many traders sprang towards him with outstretched arms. Landry,
however, was before them, and his rush carried Paterson half way
across the middle space of the Pit.

"Sold, sold."

Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the transaction the hand
on the dial advanced again, and again held firm.

But after this the activity of the Pit fell away. The trading
languished. By degrees the tension of the opening was relaxed.
Landry, however, had refrained from selling more than ten
"contracts" to Paterson. He had a feeling that another advance would
come later on. Rapidly he made his plans. He would sell another
fifty thousand bushels if the price went to ninety-four and a half,
and would then "feel" the market, letting go small lots here and
there, to test its strength, then, the instant he felt the market
strong enough, throw a full hundred thousand upon it with a rush
before it had time to break. He could feel--almost at his very
finger tips--how this market moved, how it strengthened, how it
weakened. He knew just when to nurse it, to humor it, to let it
settle, and when to crowd it, when to hustle it, when it would stand
rough handling.

Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time, but no one so
much as pretended to listen. The Porteous trio and Leaycraft kept
the price steady at ninety-four and an eighth, but showed no
inclination to force it higher. For a full five minutes not a trade
was recorded. The Pit waited for the Report on the Visible Supply.

And it was during this lull in the morning's business that the
idiocy of the English ultimatum to the Porte melted away. As
inexplicably and as suddenly as the rumour had started, it now
disappeared. Everyone, simultaneously, seemed to ridicule it.
England declare war on Turkey! Where was the joke? Who was the damn
fool to have started that old, worn-out war scare? But, for all
that, there was no reaction from the advance. It seemed to be
understood that either Leaycraft or the Porteous crowd stood ready
to support the market; and in place of the ultimatum story a feeling
began to gain ground that the expected report would indicate a
falling off in the "visible," and that it was quite on the cards
that the market might even advance another point.

As the interest in the immediate situation declined, the crowd in
the Pit grew less dense. Portions of it were deserted; even
Grossmann, discouraged, retired to a bench under the visitors'
gallery. And a spirit of horse-play, sheer foolishness, strangely
inconsistent with the hot-eyed excitement of the few moments after
the opening invaded the remaining groups. Leaycraft, the formidable,
as well as Paterson of the Porteous gang, and even the solemn
Winston, found an apparently inexhaustible diversion in folding
their telegrams into pointed javelins and sending them sailing
across the room, watching the course of the missiles with profound
gravity. A visitor in the gallery--no doubt a Western farmer on a
holiday--having put his feet upon the rail, the entire Pit began to
groan "boots, boots, boots."

A little later a certain broker came scurrying across the floor from
the direction of the telephone room. Panting, he flung himself up
the steps of the Pit, forced his way among the traders with vigorous
workings of his elbows, and shouted a bid.

"He's sick," shouted Hirsch. "Look out, he's sick. He's going to
have a fit." He grabbed the broker by both arms and hustled him into
the centre of the Pit. The others caught up the cry, a score of
hands pushed the newcomer from man to man. The Pit traders clutched
him, pulled his necktie loose, knocked off his hat, vociferating all
the while at top voice, "He's sick! He's sick!"

Other brokers and traders came up, and Grossmann, mistaking the
commotion for a flurry, ran into the Pit, his eyes wide, waving his
arm and wailing:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a quarter."

But the victim, good-natured, readjusted his battered hat, and again
repeated his bid.

"Ah, go to bed," protested Hirsch.

"He's the man who struck Billy Paterson."

"Say, a horse bit him. Look out for him, he's going to have a
duck-fit."

The incident appeared to be the inspiration for a new "josh" that
had a great success, and a group of traders organized themselves
into an "anti-cravat committee," and made the rounds of the Pit,
twitching the carefully tied scarfs of the unwary out of place.
Grossman, indignant at "t'ose monkey-doodle pizeness," withdrew from
the centre of the Pit. But while he stood in front of Leaycraft, his
back turned, muttering his disgust, the latter, while carrying on a
grave conversation with his neighbour, carefully stuck a file of
paper javelins all around the Jew's hat band, and then--still
without mirth and still continuing to talk--set them on fire.

Landry imagined by now that ninety-four and an eighth was as high a
figure as he could reasonably expect that morning, and so began to
"work off" his selling orders. Little by little he sold the wheat
"short," till all but one large lot was gone.

Then all at once, and for no discoverable immediate reason, wheat,
amid an explosion of shouts and vociferations, jumped to ninety-four
and a quarter, and before the Pit could take breath, had advanced
another eighth, broken to one-quarter, then jumped to the
five-eighths mark.

It was the Report on the Visible Supply beyond question, and though
it had not yet been posted, this sudden flurry was a sign that it
was not only near at hand, but would be bullish.

A few moments later it was bulletined in the gallery beneath the
dial, and proved a tremendous surprise to nearly every man upon the
floor. No one had imagined the supply was so ample, so
all-sufficient to meet the demand. Promptly the Pit responded. Wheat
began to pour in heavily. Hirsch, Kelly, Grossmann, Leaycraft, the
stolid Winston, and the excitable Rusbridge were hard at it. The
price began to give. Suddenly it broke sharply. The hand on the
great dial dropped to ninety-three and seven-eighths.

Landry was beside himself. He had not foreseen this break. There was
no reckoning on that cursed "visible," and he still had 50,000
bushels to dispose of. There was no telling now how low the price
might sink. He must act quickly, radically. He fought his way
towards the Porteous crowd, reached over the shoulder of the little
Jew Grossmann, who stood in his way, and thrust his hand almost into
Paterson's face, shouting:

"'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths."

It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders of the early
morning.

The other shook his head.

"'Sell fifty May at three-quarters."

Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another break was coming.
It was in the very air around him. He could almost physically feel
the pressure of renewed avalanches of wheat crowding down the price.
Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.

"'Sell fifty May at five-eighths."

"Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering a challenge.

And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward rush of the
price, Luck, the golden goddess, passed with the flirt and flash of
glittering wings, and hardly before the ticker in Gretry's office
had signalled the decline, the memorandum of the trade was down upon
Landry's card and Curtis Jadwin stood pledged to deliver, before
noon on the last day of May, one million bushels of wheat into the
hands of the representatives of the great Bulls of the Board of
Trade.

But by now the real business of the morning was over. The Pit knew
it. Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still
stood in his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from
time to time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful
outcry of "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and three-quarters."

Nobody listened. The traders stood around in expectant attitudes,
looking into one another's faces, waiting for what they could not
exactly say; loath to leave the Pit lest something should "turn up"
the moment their backs were turned.

By degrees the clamour died away, ceased, began again irregularly,
then abruptly stilled. Here and there a bid was called, an offer
made, like the intermittent crack of small arms after the stopping
of the cannonade.

"'Sell five May at one-eighth."

"'Sell twenty at one-quarter."

"'Give one-eighth for May."

For an instant the shoutings were renewed. Then suddenly the gong
struck. The traders began slowly to leave the Pit. One of the floor
officers, an old fellow in uniform and vizored cap, appeared, gently
shouldering towards the door the groups wherein the bidding and
offering were still languidly going on. His voice full of
remonstration, he repeated continually:

"Time's up, gentlemen. Go on now and get your lunch. Lunch time now.
Go on now, or I'll have to report you. Time's up."

The tide set toward the doorways. In the gallery the few visitors
rose, putting on coats and wraps. Over by the check counter, to the
right of the south entrance to the floor, a throng of brokers and
traders jostled each other, reaching over one another's shoulders
for hats and ulsters. In steadily increasing numbers they poured out
of the north and south entrances, on their way to turn in their
trading cards to the offices.

Little by little the floor emptied. The provision and grain pits
were deserted, and as the clamour of the place lapsed away the
telegraph instruments began to make themselves heard once more,
together with the chanting of the messenger boys.

Swept clean in the morning, the floor itself, seen now through the
thinning groups, was littered from end to end with scattered
grain--oats, wheat, corn, and barley, with wisps of hay, peanut
shells, apple parings, and orange peel, with torn newspapers, odds
and ends of memoranda, crushed paper darts, and above all with a
countless multitude of yellow telegraph forms, thousands upon
thousands, crumpled and muddied under the trampling of innumerable
feet. It was the debris of the battle-field, the abandoned
impedimenta and broken weapons of contending armies, the detritus of
conflict, torn, broken, and rent, that at the end of each day's
combat encumbered the field.

At last even the click of the last of telegraph keys died down.
Shouldering themselves into their overcoats, the operators departed,
calling back and forth to one another, making "dates," and cracking
jokes. Washerwomen appeared with steaming pails, porters pushing
great brooms before them began gathering the refuse of the floor
into heaps.

Between the wheat and corn pits a band of young fellows, some of
them absolute boys, appeared. These were the settlement clerks. They
carried long account books. It was their duty to get the trades of
the day into a "ring"--to trace the course of a lot of wheat which
had changed hands perhaps a score of times during the trading--and
their calls of "Wheat sold to Teller and West," "May wheat sold to
Burbank & Co.," "May oats sold to Matthewson and Knight," "Wheat
sold to Gretry, Converse & Co.," began to echo from wall to wall of
the almost deserted room.

A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of nickel and red
leather, issued from the coat-room and picked her way across the
floor. Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating
friendliness, and as one after another of the departing traders
spoke to her, raised her tail in the air and arched her back against
the legs of the empty chairs. The janitor put in an appearance,
lowering the tall colored windows with a long rod. A noise of
hammering and the scrape of saws began to issue from a corner where
a couple of carpenters tinkered about one of the sample tables.

Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once
there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the
carpenters' saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with
the washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters
re-echoed as if in a church.

The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steaming
water before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in
shirt-sleeves swept entire bushels of spilled wheat, crushed,
broken, and sodden, into his dust pans.

The day's campaign was over. It was past two o'clock. On the great
dial against the eastern wall the indicator stood--sentinel
fashion--at ninety-three. Not till the following morning would the
whirlpool, the great central force that spun the Niagara of wheat in
its grip, thunder and bellow again.

Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and janitor,
departed. An unbroken silence, the peacefulness of an untroubled
calm, settled over the place. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded
through the west windows in long parallel shafts full of floating
golden motes. There was no sound; nothing stirred. The floor of the
Board of Trade was deserted. Alone, on the edge of the abandoned
Wheat Pit, in a spot where the sunlight fell warmest--an atom of
life, lost in the immensity of the empty floor--the grey cat made
her toilet, diligently licking the fur on the inside of her thigh,
one leg, as if dislocated, thrust into the air above her head.

IV

In the front parlor of the Cresslers' house a little company was
gathered--Laura Dearborn and Page, Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and
young Miss Gretry, an awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen,
dressed extravagantly in a decollete gown of blue silk. Curtis
Jadwin and Cressler himself stood by the open fireplace smoking.
Landry Court fidgeted on the sofa, pretending to listen to the
Gretry girl, who told an interminable story of a visit to some
wealthy relative who had a country seat in Wisconsin and who raised
fancy poultry. She possessed, it appeared, three thousand hens,
Brahma, Faverolles, Houdans, Dorkings, even peacocks and tame
quails.

Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat, an unlighted cigarette between
his fingers, discussed the spring exhibit of water-colors with Laura
and Mrs. Cressler, Page listening with languid interest. Aunt Wess'
turned the leaves of a family album, counting the number of
photographs of Mrs. Cressler which it contained.

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