Just before the market opened I could see from my office window a dense crowd of brokers assembled around the Ely Central specialists. Although ominously silent, they were struggling for position and were tensely nervous. It was plain that the over-Sunday anti-Scheftels newspaper publicity had racked Ely Central stockholders and created a panicky movement to liquidate, which was about to find vent in violent explosion. It was evident that the Scheftels corporation would have to conserve every resource if the day was to be saved. The market opened. Instantly there was terrific action. Hundreds of hands were waving wildly in the air. Everybody wanted to sell and nobody wanted to buy. The chorus was deafening. Screams rent the air. The tumult was heard blocks away. Every newspaper had a man on the spot. Brokers from the New York Stock Exchange left their posts and came to see the big show; the Stock Exchange was half emptied. The spectacle had been advertised widely and everybody was keenly awake and wrought up to a high pitch of excitement over what had been scheduled to occur. Had the Scheftels brokers been supplied with orders to buy one-quarter of a million shares of stock at the closing market price of the Saturday before, $4 1-8, it was very apparent that they would have been unable to hold the market. The opening sale was at $4. Downward to the $3 point the stock traveled, breaking from 25 to 50 cents between sales. Through $3 and on down to the $2 point the price crashed. Blocks of 10,000 shares were madly thrown into the vortex of trading. The Curb was a struggling, screaming, maddened throng of brokers. Every trader appeared to be determined to crush the market structure. At $2 a share there was a temporary check in the decline, but the bears renewed their onslaught, gaining confidence by the outpour of selling orders. Within less than an hour after the opening the stock hit $1 1-2 a share. At this juncture the Scheftels broker in Ely Central reported that he had executed all the stop-loss and good-till-cancelled orders entrusted to him with the exception of 19,000 shares. "The Scheftels company will take the lot at $1 1-2," I said.