Speyer went about saying: “Some one has threatened to shoot me. Let him shoot.” The Gold Exchange Bank was obliged to suspend operations. Its clearances that day amounted to over $300,000,000 of gold. Trading was stopped in the Gold Board. Fisk & Belden suspended and their contracts were repudiated. The fortunes of hundreds were swept away in that day’s battle. Several firms were driven to the wall and announced their failures. The administration was involved in suspicion which it took years to remove. The nation was disgraced and its credit was broken. But Gould, “the guilty plotter of all these criminal proceedings,” went home saved. What he made or what he lost in that struggle is unknown, but though he had involved others in ruin and had betrayed others, he had saved himself from overthrow. To have gone down in the fight would have been a display of heroism. To save himself alone from the wreck was dishonor. It is not strange that in his sworn autobiography delivered to the Committee on Labor and Education, Mr. Gould omitted all mention of Black Friday, but when as a witness before the Committee on Corners he was asked about the Black Friday panic, he calmly said that it was the “result of overtrading,” and that its real cause was “the fluctuations in the price of gold caused by the war!” It is a singular coincidence that exactly twenty-two years after Black Friday, on the very anniversary of the day in 1891, Gould caused another big flurry in Wall street. After several years of depression, a “boom” in stocks was in progress, when the sudden announcement was made that the Missouri Pacific, of which Gould was president, would pass its dividend. The announcement caused a revolution in prices and the “boom” completely collapsed. Mr. Clews tells a graphic story of what he saw: “On the morning of the fatal day, Belden and William Heath had an early breakfast together at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and repaired immediately to their offices. Belden announced that gold was going to 200. ‘This will be the last day of the Gold Room,’ he added. Moved by Belden’s threat, a large number rushed to cover. In the language of Henry N. Smith, ‘They came on with a rush to settle.’ He was settling in the office of Smith, Gould & Martin, at 150 to 145, while Albert Speyer, acting as broker for Fisk and Gould, was bidding up to 160 for a million at a time. It was only when the price came down to 133 that Speyer realized the humorous absurdity of his position. He had then bought 26 millions since morning at 160.