“Will you order three hundred millions of gold notes, of the denomination of $1,000 each, printed at once, and arrange to weigh, test, and receive the five hundred millions of bars in my warehouse at the foot of Sixth Street? If it be not irregular, you might receive the ingots where they are, deliver to me at once the two hundred millions of paper money now in the treasury vaults, and the remaining three hundred millions when printed. The gold bars can be removed to the treasury vaults at your convenience. I ask that this method be followed because, if I am to relieve the situation in New York, I must be on hand there with the actual currency. Ordinarily treasury drafts would answer the purpose, but, under present circumstances, they would be useless, as no bank could cash them, and they are not a legal tender. These bandits will have locked up all the money in special deposits, and their well-devised scheme can only be baffled by one who has—outside of any channel within their control, and outside of their knowledge—a vast sum in actual money.” “How, may I ask, do you propose to defeat their plans, Mr. Morning?” “My brokers will purchase for cash all the stocks they offer, and, on deposit of sufficient margin, loan them the stocks back again, to be again sold to me. In brief, I will take all their ‘shorts,’ and all the stocks sold by others which their conspiracy will force upon the market. When they have forced prices down to a point where they are ready to cover their shorts and buy for an advance, I will suddenly jump prices to the level they occupied before the conspirators commenced their operations, and thus commend to their own lips the bitter draught they have prepared for others. I shall know—for I have many sources of information, Mr. Secretary—I shall know what portion of my purchases of stock will come from the conspirators, and what portion from men who will be forced by the panic to part with their holdings. I shall subsequently make good to those others all their losses. The one or two hundred millions which I may by this process extract from Mr. Gray, Mr. Claybank, and Mr. Wolf, I shall not”—and Morning smiled—“restore to them. I shall devote it to founding and maintaining industrial schools.” “Your plan, Mr. Morning, is a brave and gigantic one. Is there no chance of its failure?”