“Not if I can have your co-operation, Mr. Secretary, in keeping secret for a week or ten days the fact that you have, under the law of February, 1894, received five hundred millions of ingot gold, and issued treasury notes therefor. These scoundrels will have locked up all the available money in the great financial centers. They know that, under the present law, the three hundred millions of paper and coin money in the government vaults cannot be released so as to flow into the channels of commerce except by deposits of gold or silver bullion to take its place. My secret has been carefully kept, and they do not dream of the existence in private ownership of five hundred millions, or even fifty millions, in gold bars. If I can keep this secret from them until the hour to strike arrives, I will give them a lesson that will cure them for the future of any disposition to lock up money and constrict the arterial blood of commerce for the purposes of private gain.” “But will not their losses be largely on paper, Mr. Morning? What if they refuse to pay?” “I shall not go into court with them, Mr. Secretary, and it will not be necessary. Let me further illustrate. They sell one thousand shares say of Northwestern at $110, and I buy it. They take the $110,000 received by them from my broker and add to it ten or twenty thousand dollars for margin, and borrow from me the one thousand shares of Northwestern just sold me, depositing the one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty thousand dollars as security for the return of the borrowed stock. When Northwestern, under the pressure of their sales, descends to $100, they put up additional margin for the stock borrowed, and borrow more stock on the same terms. If they continue this process until they have forced Northwestern down to $80 or $70, and could then buy enough to replace the borrowed stock and call in the money they had deposited as ‘margin,’ they would make as profit the difference between the low price at which they purchased and the average of their sales. But if Northwestern should suddenly jump in price to a point higher than the value to which they had margined it, then my brokers would purchase, at this high rate, enough Northwestern to make good the stock loaned to them, using for that purpose the money deposited by the conspirators as ‘margin.’ I propose to let these gentlemen have all the rope they want, and when they attempt to turn and become buyers, I will spring stocks at once to their original price, and confiscate all their margins.”