Coming sure and fast, that profit of millions! But it never reached me. No; it wasn’t side-tracked by a sudden change in conditions. The market did not experience an abrupt reversal of form. Coffee did not pour into the country. What happened? The unexpectable! What had never happened in anybody’s experience; what I therefore had no reason to guard against. I added a new one to the long list of hazards of speculation that I must always keep before me. It was simply that the fellows who had sold me the coffee, the shorts, knew what was in store for them, and in their efforts to squirm out of the position into which they had sold themselves, devised a new way of welshing. They rushed to Washington for help, and got it. Perhaps you remember that the Government had evolved various plans for preventing further profiteering in necessities. You know how most of them worked. Well, the philanthropic coffee shorts appeared before the Price Fixing Committee of the War Industries Board--I think that was the official designation--and made a patriotic appeal to that body to protect the American breakfaster. They asserted that a professional speculator, one Lawrence Livingston, had cornered, or was about to corner, coffee. If his speculative plans were not brought to naught he would take advantage of the conditions created by the war and the American people would be forced to pay exorbitant prices for their daily coffee. It was unthinkable to the patriots who had sold me cargoes of coffee they couldn’t find ships for, that one hundred millions of Americans, more or less, should pay tribute to conscienceless speculators. They represented the coffee trade, not the coffee gamblers, and they were willing to help the Government curb profiteering actual or prospective.