I myself never spoke to any of the great stock manipulators that the Street still talks about. I don’t mean leaders; I mean manipulators. They were all before my time, although when I first came to New York, _James R. Keene, greatest of them all_, was in his prime. But I was a mere youngster then, exclusively concerned with duplicating, in a reputable broker’s office, the success I had enjoyed in the bucket shops of my native city. And, then, too, at the time Keene was busy with the U.S. Steel stocks--his manipulative masterpiece--I had no experience with manipulation, no real knowledge of it or of its value or meaning, and, for that matter, no great need of such knowledge. If I thought about it at all I suppose I must have regarded it as a well-dressed form of thimble-rigging, of which the lowbrow form was such tricks as had been tried on me in the bucket shops. Such talk as I since have heard on the subject has consisted in great part of surmises and suspicions; of guesses rather than intelligent analyses. More than one man who knew him well has told me that Keene was the boldest and most brilliant operator that ever worked in Wall Street. That is saying a great deal, for there have been some great traders. Their names are now all but forgotten, but nevertheless they were kings in their day--for a day! They were pulled up out of obscurity into the sunlight of financial fame by the ticker tape--and the little paper ribbon didn’t prove strong enough to keep them suspended there long enough for them to become historical fixtures. At all events Keene was by all odds the best manipulator of his day--and it was a long and exciting day. He capitalized his knowledge of the game, his experience as an operator and his talents when he sold his services to the Havemeyer brothers, who wanted him to develop a market for the Sugar stocks. He was broke at the time or he would have continued to trade on his own hook; and he was some plunger! He was successful with Sugar; made the shares trading favourites, and that made them easily vendible. After that, he was asked time and again to take charge of pools. I am told that in these pool operations he never asked nor accepted a fee, but paid for his share like the other members of the pool. The market conduct of the stock, of course, was exclusively in his charge. Often there was talk of treachery--on both sides. His feud with the Whitney-Ryan clique arose from such accusations. It is not difficult for a manipulator to be misunderstood by his associates. They don’t see his needs as he himself does. I know this from my own experience.