O.O. McIntyre
Palladium-Item/January 3, 1928
NEW YORK, Jan 3. New Yorkers are daily victims of Wall street caprices. Residents of the metropolis are used to observing that last week’s high spender is this week living in a hall room of a side street boarding house.
They never whine for they have learned New York’s indifference to losses in the market. It is too old a story. The glamour of a “killing” is the lure drawing hundreds into bankruptcy yearly. And Wall street is responsible for more suicides than the empty pleasures of Broadway.
Statistics show not more than two per cent of the so-called “plungers” have survived disaster in the street. The few winners almost invariably become heavy spenders, which is responsible for the old saying: “Wall street makes ’em and Broadway takes ’em.”
A hundred and one traps are set for a Wall street winner. When he makes a clean-up his achievement Is known an hour afterward by that army of suave pluckers who live by their wits. More than likely that night a lady will drop her handkerchief crossing his path—a prelude to flirtation and possible blackmail.
Indeed, one man who became a millionaire overnight during the war was taken into camp a week later by operators of the ancient wire-tapping racket. In the world of flim-flammers the sudden Wall street winner Is known as “a soft money guy.”
“Bet a Million” Gates once observed it wasn’t so difficult to clean up in the market, but the trick was to keep it. Only three big winners are recorded as having immediately turned from the world of speculation.
I once sat up all night with a harried man who had that afternoon dropped $80,000 in the market. A week before he was winning, and his credit was excellent. After breakfast, he began a feverish campaign over the telephone for fresh funds. He could not raise a penny.
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Clothing leads all industries in New York. The second on the list is printing. I trust you notice the educational touches in this column every now and then. Horizon broadening is becoming one of our specialties.
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There are 17,000 more females in New York than males and yet two men ended it all during the week because the search for feminine companionship was futile.
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Sixteen hundred and fifty trains arrive and depart from the two big New York railroad stations daily. And it has been discovered that not more than an average of 10 persons out of the thousands miss their trains in a day. About. 50 strangers arrive daily without funds and are taken care of by various aid societies.
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This seems to be a day for absolutely useless statistics, so it will not be amiss to sneak in the palpitation paragraph that if all streets in New York were straightened out and placed end to end they would almost reach the Hawaiian Islands.
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Traffic congestion is responsible for a recent slump in the theatres. With curtain time advanced to 8:45 o’clock it has been impossible for patrons to reach seats for the opening of the show. For musical shows the lateness Is not so disrupting, but in dramas the entire theme of the play is often muffed.
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The incessant pleas to take the movies seriously fail to stir me. For instance, the other night a newsreel showed the new Turkish envoy being received by the secretary of state and the orchestra, with no Intent to be humorous, played a hoochie-koochie dance number.
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