AN AMERICAN SPECULATOR. James R. Keene's Failures and Triumphs in Speculative Life.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 122, 3 October 1885, Page 3

AN AMERICAN SPECULATOR. James R. Keene's Failures and Triumphs in Speculative Life.

Jay Goulds Greatest Antagonist -An Eventful History— His Career inCalifornia—His Daring Coups and Immense Success— His Final Overthrow — Personal Traits.

I. A slightly built man of light complexion, with cold, penetrating grey eyes, issues from the chocolate coloured building, mansardroofed and mastic-coated, at the corner/ of Exchange Place and Broad-street, and beckons to a cabman. The face is sicklylooking, the expression moody almost to testiness. He is well dressed in a quiet style, with no perceptible display of jewellery, he wears a Derby hat that tends to give him rather a common-place appearance. He enters the cab, and is driven rapidly away. The man inside the rather diagy-looking vehicle, driven by a stout, jolly-faced Jehu, is a man who made 7,000,000 dols. in mining stocks in San Francisco in a few years, and lost most of it in Wall-street. It is James R. Keene.

11. " Before I 'get through with Mr Keene,'' Mr Gould is reported to have eaid some years ego, •' I will break him." It is denied that Mr Gould ever made such a remark. His friends claim that he never indulges in threats. Butwhetherhemakes open threats or not is of little moment. That he had considerable to do with the downfall of the bold and enterprisingCalifornian, however, seems to be a fact beyond question. Jay Gould was his evil genius. Ho is said to have tricked him in several large ventures which they jointly made when they happened to be temporary allies. Then the 1 two men became open enemies. ,

i 111. Mr Keene's parents were English, but he was born in Lynchburg, Va. He is now about 47 years of age. He studied law at the South, but quite early in life went to San Francisco, where for a time he practised his profession. He became interested in the wild mining speculation that formerly kept San Francisco at fever heat ; through hia professional relations with various mining companies, he became well informed on mines and speculation in mining stocks. At that time everybody speculated in these shares. It was as natural to do so as it is now for everybody to speculate in wheat at Chicago, or in petroleum at Oil City, or cotton at New Orleans, or as formerly to speculate in railroad stocks in New York. When rough uncouth men like Flood and OBrien became mining: kings over night; when the keepers of cheap and disreputable groggeries were suddenly lifted to opulence ; when men bribed miners with large sums to reveal the exact outlook on the Comstock lode, where the most profitable mines were located, a man of Mr Keene's restless, daring spirit might well have said that he, too, would try to scale the height whose summit is wealth. He had nerves of steel in those times and an iron will. He made even the reckless Californians stand aghast. At first he was a broker for some of the large firms. He was what was called a curbstone broker, but he pleased his patrons so well that some of them purchased a seat for him on the board. He became the Murat of the San Francisco stock market, a gallant leader, who, as one of his admirers says, " dared to beard the bonanza kings in their den, and came off victorous with many shekels of gold and silver." One of his friends speaks of him as being at one time a " dare-devil sort of a street broker." In the board room he was no less bold.

IV. In those times— about fifteen years ago, especially— the market price of mining shares shot up and down with a suddenness and rapidity that took away the timid speculator's breath, and made him, as we might almost imagine, dizzy. It was a speculative orgy, a gambling debauch. The board was a commercial pandemonium; its scenes and incidents strange and incredible as some of the extravagant fiction in the tales of "A Thousand and One Nights." Servant girls became rich in a day ; the rich were suddenly put down from their seats of opulence and power to the level of those of financially low degree. In the thicket of the speculative battle, " Jim" Keene, as he was generally known, was a conspicuous busine&s knight, charging the common enemy, the Bonanza Kings, with the intrepidity of a Cceur do Lion assailing a stronghold in a worthier warfare. His policy was always to do the opposite thing to that which men like Flood, OBrien, and Sharon apparently favoured. When they said yes, he said no. When they said selll he bought. He was successful to an extraordinary degree. In a single week he made over half a million from Ophir stock, and from the Belcher and Crown Point mines he made two and a-half millions more. After he had accumulated 7,000,000 dola, he came East, with the avowed purpose, it is said, of entering the Wall-street arena as a speculative gladiator to overcome Jay Gould. That was a fatal mistake.

Y. Speculation is a battle. Anyone accustomed to operations on the great Exchanges of New York realises the fact most tho« roughly. But as, in former countries, the kings at war with each other would sometimes settle their quarrel by riding out from the serried lines of their armies and engaging in single combat, so the financial warfare in New York soon after the downfall of the Bank of California and the suicide of Mr Ralston was changed to a business duel between the impetuous and fiery James R. Keene and the cold, passionless Jay Gould. Commodore Vanderbilt was always afraid of Jay Gould. The issue of the battle between the free lance from the West and the cool schemer of the East was awaited with the strongest interest, but it might have been foreseen. The impassive little man with the searching black eyes and quiet ways was victorious ; the gallant Californian was unhorsed.

VI. The struggle continued, however, for a number of years, and not all Mr Keene's losses were due to his ventures on the "bear" side in Wall-street. He speculated largely in wheat, and he lost heavily by a bogus telegram which was sent to Chicago directing his brokers there to sell three million bushels which he owned. He speculated in lard and lost heavily. He dabbled in cotton. He tried to get up a corner in opium during the Turco-Euesian war. He fought the Standard Oil Company in large speculations, in which he met with what the French call various success.

Always fearless, always ready for a speoulative fight, he no sooner met with a reveres in one quarter than he promptly tried bis luck in another. The man is a strange oompound of coolness and excitability, of phlegm and a nervousness that leads him to chew up a dozen unsmoked cigars in a day. Sensitive to a painful degree, all his fortitude is due to the exercise of sheer will power. He is apt to be decidedly morose at times ; his manner is frequently harsh and repellant. But this brusquenesa is due to the fact that for years he has been a martyr to dyspepsia. He has many ingratiating traits of oharaoter. He is a diamond in the rough. One of his San Francisco admirers says of him : "He has hosts of friends—friends whom he grappled with hooks of steel. Generous to a fault, he was brusque at times, but with the heart of a woman, ready to melt at a moment's notice ; open-* handed and open-hearted to the appeal of even an aquaintance —no wonder that Jim Keene was the idol of the market." This represents him as he was in San Francisco. He changed somewhat in New York. He met Sam Ward, and the two became close friends. The Californian became something of a recluse ; he rather avoided society, being content to learn the news and gossip of the day from the famous bon vivant.

VIII. Mr Keene is doing very little business just now. His fortune has dwindled to a few hundred thousand dollars from the princely seven millions, and he wasrecently, it is understood, obliged to ask an extension on notes for some two million dollars. He is not connected with any railroads ; he has always endeavoured to lower the price of their securities, but he has been open and manly in his warfare, not like some directors of the very railroads which Mr Keene has attacked, who secretly Bold the stock short after resorting to various dishonourable expedients to favour their ends. His funds are not so invested that to secure the cash would require a marked sacrifice ; he seems to be waiting for better times before attempting to realise upon the securities which he is known to hold. In his more prosperous days he settled 500,000d015. on his wife, and this the lady has still. His office is on the fourth floor of 30, Broad street, at the corner of Exchange Place, in the building whence we have seen him emerging at the opening of this sketch. He has three rooms, well but not luxuriously furnished. On the walls are various engravings, including some racing pictures. Among the latter is the picture of his Foxhall. He has been quite succesaful with his horseß. One won the Biennial Stakes at Ascot, England, in 1883, though the victory at Paris in 1881 was more brilliant and consoled him for some heavy losses in wheat. This was the victory of his horpe Foxhall, that won the Grand Prix. Mr Keene has been speculating moderately, it is said, within the last few months, both in wheat and stocks, and has made, it appears, a number of successful ventures. He will not deal in puts and calls now, though not because he lacks courage like Russell Sage, who with an agonising recollection of his losses in '' puts" last year of about 5.000.000d015., would not write a " privilege" unless there were ninty-nine chances in a hundred in his favour, or better still, the whole hundred. Mr Keene lost very severely in this once special field of " Uncle Russell Sage" because he was too daring. He is now more cautious; he is feeling his way. He no longer throws 10,000 shares of stock on the market at a time.

IX. In his more prosperous days he lived with his family in a flat of 51, Tenth-afcreet, in the most luxurious style. Sam Ward bought many of his pictures for him, as well ; as the furniture and the handsome equipages which he then had. Mr Keene, in other words, allowed himself to be governed '. by Mr Ward's taste in these matters. ] He at one time appeared to be somewhat disposed to make something of a figure in : society, but if this was so it was doubtless > for the sake of his family, and not from any i personal ambition in that direction. His , poor health and also his temperament tend to make him a recluse. He takes great pride in his children, especially in his son Foxhall, after whom he named the celebrated racer. He now resides near Rockaway, coming to New York every day. He is a sharp, shrewd observer of the business world, looking it over carefully, as a general might a prospective battle-field, and though he shows defectfon at times and is not quite so abstemious in business hours as formerly — relaxing doubtless only for a time as a rule rigidly adhered to in his better days— no one questions the wonderful pluck and energy of this frail-looking man, and it is not at all improbable that he will yet regam much, if not all, of his former prestige. — 0. W. R. "of the Brooklyn Times."