QUICK-WON FORTUNES.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 April 1917, Page 7

QUICK-WON FORTUNES.

. AMAZING STORIES OF MONEY' ! MAKING. '' ' ! SOME GET-RICH-QUICK SPECULATIONS. •• !;', Wei .have heard many- stories about ■ birge fortunes being made during the war; especially in America, where deal-ers-in commodities of vital value to the belligerents have made their, pile •with lightning rapidity. But these stories, amazing though they are, pale before some of the yarns told about Yankee financiers in the days of peace. To us they read like' fairy tales, but on the other side of the "herring pond" they are reported to be too common to provoke even a moment's wonder. There are men by the score in the land of dollars who think nothing of adding a million to their pile in a few pleasant hours of • speculation. Recently Mr. Joseph Hoardley, within five minutes of entering the Cotton Exchange, made a round million dollars (£200,000); and when, a few hour* later, he left the Exchange he was £BOO,OOO richer than when he ate his breakfast that morning. During a recent boom on the New York Stock Exchange, inaugurated by the unexpected high dividends declared by the Union Pacific Railways, many men made fortunes ranging from £IOO,000 to £500,000 in a single day's operations. Mr. Harriman is credited with having won £400,000 in a few minutes; Messrs Gates, W. Rockefeller, H. H. Rogers and Stillman cleared sums ranging up to half a million pounds; and Mr. Abraham White, a well-known broker, was able, out of the fruits of a few hours' gambling, to make a birthday present to his wife of a holiday house on the Atlantic oast, which had cost its late owner £150,000. Nor are such feats of rapid gold-win-ning by any means a monopoly of recent times. Long years ago Commodore Vandcrbilt netted a round million pounds by a single shrewd deal in Harlem Railway stock; and Jay Gould, in one of his many meteroio speculations, once made £BOO,OOO clear profit in five minutes in Wall Street. In speculations extending over a few months some enormous fortunes have been realised. By controlling the w nea t supply E. P. Hutchinson, in 1888, was able to unload 10,000,000 bushels at an average profit of seven shillings a bushel, thus adding £3,500,000 to his already colossal pile of gold. At a time of frenzied speculations in the Chicago wheat pit, a few years ago, Mr. James Patten made £IOO,OOO profit in a single deal in five million bushels of maize; and before he emerged from his "corner" his "spoil" had risen to £400,000. But few speculator) have had such consistent luck as Mr. J. R. Keene, known to fame as "The King of the Boars," who, after clearing £300,000 by his clever handling of Brooklyn Rapid Transit stock, made in rapid sequence the following sums by manipulating other slocks. from National Cordage to Northern Pacific:—£ 800,- , £400,000, £OOO,OOO and £500,000. There is, however, one man who can afford to smile even at such amazing money-making feats as these-—Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, whose millions have grown from one to a hundred in less than forty years. Between 1800 and 1800 his fortune leaped from twenty to fifty millions, an average increase of over £3,000,000 a year. Early in the following year, 1800, he stated under oath that he owned £6,200,000 in Standard Oil stock alone: That stock advanced 400 points before the year closed, being then valued at nearly £IBO, its par 'value being £2O. Thus, in one year, Mr. Rockefeller's fortune had grown at the rate of more than i £2,000,000 a month. In this phenomenal year, it is' said, twenty-three American millionaires increased their capital by no less than £60,000,000, half of which is credited to one of them, Mr. Rockefeller, who was actually £30,000,000 richer when the year closed than when it opened.