"Thirteen thousand on our selection, Sol."
"One hundred and thirty thousand to $13,000," he answered. "Here's your
ticket."
Sol and I repaired to the press-stand to see the race. Durnell &
Hertz's entry got off in the lead. At the quarter he was in front by
two lengths. At the half the gap of daylight was five lengths. At the
turn into the stretch the horse was leading by nearly a sixteenth of a
mile. Then I heard a noise behind me as if a miniature dynamite bomb
had exploded. Sol's heavy field-glasses had dropped to the floor.
Sol did not wait to see the finish. The horse won in a gallop.
At the office of Maxim & Gay accounts were figured and checks signed
for the full amount of our obligations, and they were immediately
mailed to all subscribers.
At midnight I met Sol in the lobby of the St. Charles Hotel. He looked
worn.
"I guess that will hold us!" he moaned.
"Hold us?" I answered. "Nothing better ever happened. It'll make us!"
"You poor nut!" he exclaimed. "Lose $130,000 in a day and it will make
you! Stop your noise!"
"Listen!" I rejoined. "At an expense of $3,000 for tolls I have
telegraphed a full-page ad to fifty leading city newspapers, telling
the public that we tipped this horse to-day at 10 to 1 and that we
mailed checks to our customers to-night for $130,000. The gain we will
reap in prestige and fresh business will repay our loss on the horse."
The next day the Western Union Telegraph Company found it necessary to
assign three cashiers to the work of issuing checks to the Maxim & Gay
Company for money telegraphed by new customers. Some individual
remittances were as high as $2,000. The money telegraphed us amounted
to about $150,000, and within ten days eighty per cent. of our own
dividend checks were returned to us by our customers, indorsed back to
us with instructions to double their bets, and within two weeks we were
able to figure that in the neighborhood of $375,000 was sent us as a
result.
A DISASTROUS NEWSPAPER WINDUP
During the progress of the New Orleans meeting, I purchased a
controlling interest in the New York _Daily America_--a newspaper
patterned after the _Morning Telegraph_--from a group of members of
the Metropolitan Turf Association, who had sunk about $75,000 in the
enterprise. The _Morning Telegraph_ was in the hands of a receiver. I
calculated that, by transferring the Maxim & Gay advertisements from
the _Morning Telegraph_ to the _Daily America_, I could make the _Daily
America_ pay and force the _Morning Telegraph_ out of the field. Later,
the late William C. Whitney, who was a shining light on the turf as
well as in finance, was induced to purchase the _Morning Telegraph_.
Then trouble began to brew for me.
One morning I was summoned to the offices of August Belmont on Nassau
Street.
"For the good of the turf, you must omit your Maxim & Gay
advertisements from the _Daily America_ and other newspapers
hereafter," declared Mr. Belmont on my entering his room.
"Why?" asked I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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