The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

into the house where he was at dinner, and raised a cry of fire. The rest ran out, but she ran further in to reach Law, who saw what she was at, and like a pecuniary Joseph, ran away as fast as he could.

As the frenzy rose toward its height, and the Regent took advantage of it to issue stock enough to pay the whole national debt, namely, three hundred thousand new shares, at $1,000 each, or a thousand percent in the par value. They were instantly taken. Three times as many would have been instantly taken. So violent were the changes of the market, that shares rose or fell twenty percent within a few hours. A servant was sent to sell two hundred and fifty shares of stock; found on reaching the gardens of the Hotel de Soissons, that since he left his master’s house the price had risen from $1,600 (par value $100 remember) to $2,000. The servant sold, gave his master the proceeds at $1,600 a share, put the remaining $100,000 in his own pocket, and left France that evening. Law’s coachman became so rich that he left service, and set up his own coach; and when his master asked him to find a successor, he brought two candidates, and told Law to choose, and he would take the other himself. There were many absurd cases of vulgarians made rich. There were also many robberies and murders. That committed by the Count de Horn, one of the higher nobility and two accomplices, is a famous case. The Count, a dissipated rascal, poniarded a broker in a tavern for the money the broker carried with him. But he was taken, and, in spite of the utmost and most determined exertions of the nobility, the Regent had him broken on the wheel in public, like any other murderer.

The stock of the Company of the Indies, though it dashed up and down ten and twenty percent from day to day, was from the first immensely inflated. In August 1719, it sold at 610 percent; in a few weeks more it arose to 1,200 percent. All winter it still went up until, in April 1720, it stood at 2,050 percent. That is, one one-hundred dollar share would sell for two thousand and fifty dollars.

At this extreme point of inflation, the bubble stood a little, shining splendidly as bubbles do when they are nearest bursting, and then it received two or three quiet pricks. The Prince de Conti, enraged because Law would not send him some shares on his own terms, sent three wagon-loads of bills to Law’s bank, demanding specie. Law paid it, and complained to the Regent, who made him put two-thirds of it back again. A shrewd stock-gambler drew specie by small sums until he had about $200,000 in coin, and lest he should be forced to return it, he packed it in a cart, covered it with manure, put on a peasant’s disguise, and carted his fortune over the frontiers into Belgium. Some others quietly realized their means in like manner by driblets and funded them abroad.

By such means coin gradually grew very scarce, and signs of a panic appeared. The Regent tried to adjust matters by a decree that coin should be five percent less than paper; as much as to say, It is hereby enacted that there is a great deal more coin than there is! This did not serve, and the Regent decreed again, that coin should be worth ten percent less than paper. Then he decreed that the bank must not pay more than $22 at once in specie; and, finally, by a bold stretch of his authority, he issued an edict that no person should have over $100 in coin, on pain of fine and confiscation. These odious laws made a great deal of trouble, spying, and distress, and rapidly aggravated the difficulty they were meant to cure. The price of shares in the great company began to fall steadily and rapidly. Law and the Regent began to be universally hated, cursed, and threatened. Various foolish and vain attempts were made to stay the coming ruin, by renewing the stories about Louisiana sending out a lot of conscripted laborers, ordering that all payments must be made in paper, and printing a new batch of notes, to the amount of another $300,000,000. Law’s two corporations were also doctored in several ways. The distress and fright grew worse. An edict was issued that Law’s notes and shares should depreciate gradually by law for a year, and then be worth but half their face. This made such a tumult and outcry that the Regent had to retract it in seven days. On this seventh day, Law’s bank stopped paying specie. Law was turned out of his public employments, but still well treated by the Regent in private. He was, however, mobbed and stoned in his coach in the street, had to have a company of Swiss Guards in his house, and at last had to flee to the Regent’s own palace.

I have not space to describe in detail the ruin, misery, tumults, loss and confusion which attended the speedy descent of Law’s paper and shares to entire worthlessness. Thousands of families were made paupers, and trade and commerce destroyed by the painful process. Law himself escaped out of France poor; and, after another obscure and disreputable career of gambling, died in poverty at Venice, in 1729.

Thus this enormous business-humbug first raised a whole nation into a fool’s paradise of imaginary wealth, and then exploded, leaving its projector and many thousands of victims ruined, the country disturbed and distressed, long-enduring consequences, in vicious and lawless and unsteady habits, contracted while the delusion lasted, and no single benefit except one more most dearly-bought lesson of the wicked folly of mere speculation without a real business basis and a real business method. Let not this lesson be lost on the rampant and half-crazed speculators of the present day. Those