In margin-trading on the New York Stock Exchange, New York Curb, Boston Stock Exchange, Boston Curb, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Stock Exchange, New York Cotton Exchange and kindred institutions, experience among stock-brokers proves that if you stick to the game you have only one chance--YOU CAN LOSE. In railroad, industrial and mining-stock speculation, where you buy the shares outright and hold them for stock market profits, you have two chances; if you are of the average and your operations are for a period continuous--YOU CAN BREAK EVEN IF YOU ARE VERY LUCKY, OR LOSE IF YOU ARE NOT; and in justice to myself I must be allowed to explain that I had a much better opinion of the public's chances ten years ago than I have now, and that experience on the inside has taught me this. The moral to the investor and speculator is "Never Again!" And yet you WILL speculate again. Experience teaches that so long as the chance of speculative gain exists in any enterprise, so long will the American public continue in its efforts to appease its speculative appetite. G. G. R. MY ADVENTURES WITH YOUR MONEY CHAPTER I THE RISE AND FALL OF MAXIM & GAY The place was New York. The time, March, 1901. My age was thirty. My cash capital, tightly placed in my pocket, was $7.30, and I had no other external resources. I was a rover and out of a job. Since August of the year before I had been loafing. My last position, seven months before, was that of a reporter for the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_. My last newspaper assignment was the great Galveston cyclonic hurricane in which 15,000 lives were lost and $100,000,000 in property was destroyed. I covered that catastrophe for the New York _Herald_ and other journals as well as for the New Orleans newspaper. It was a "beat" and I netted a big sum for a few days' hard work, but the money had all been spent for subsistence. At the corner of Fortieth Street and Broadway I met an old-time racetrack friend, Dave Campbell. His face wore a hardy, healthful hue, but he bore unmistakable evidence of being down on his luck. "Buy me a drink," he said. "I've got thirty cents in change and I must have a cigar," I answered, "and you know I like good ones." "Well, I'll take a beer," he said, "and you can buy yourself a perfecto." No sooner said than done. The cigar and the drink were forthcoming. We sat down. It was a café with the regulation news-ticker near the lunch counter. "Do you still bet on the horses?" asked Campbell. "No, I haven't had a bet down in more than a year," I answered. "Well, here's a letter I just received from Frank Mead at New Orleans, and it ought to make you some money," he said. "There's a 'pig' down here named Silver Coin," the letter said, "that has been raced for work recently. I think he's fit and ready and that within the next few days they will place him in a race that he can win, and he will bring home the coonskins at odds of 10 to 1."