Chapter 8 - The Cash in the Cellar
By 3:30 PM, the New York Stock Exchange had officially closed its doors on the most catastrophic day in the history of global capitalism.
Sixteen million, four hundred and ten thousand, three hundred and thirty shares had changed hands. The industrial averages had plunged forty points—wiping out fourteen billion dollars of wealth in five hours of trading. The ticker tape would continue running until 7:45 that evening, printing transactions that had been executed while the sun was still high in the sky.
The trading floor was deserted, looking like the interior of a looted warehouse after an artillery bombardment, ankle-deep in shredded order slips and broken pencils.
I walked down the granite steps of the Chemical National Bank on Broadway, guided through the reinforced steel security gates by two armed bank guards carrying short-barreled Remington shotguns.
In the sub-basement vault room, illuminated by a single unshaded bulb hanging from a green cord, sat Edward Vance.
Our head bookkeeper looked completely dismantled. His hair was sticking up in wild tufts, his spectacles were fogged with condensation, and his coat was draped over a massive, heavy iron lockbox resting on the concrete floor between his boots. In his right hand, he clutched a heavy, rusted iron wrench that he had found in the boiler room.
When the heavy steel door creaked open, Edward raised the wrench with a terrified gasp, backing into the corner of the cage.
"Edward," I called out softly, stepping into the yellow light. "It's Julian. Stand down."
The old man stared at me for three long seconds, blinking through his fogged spectacles, before the wrench slipped from his trembling fingers, hitting the concrete floor with a dull, ringing clatter.
"Julian..." Edward wept, collapsing onto the lid of the lockbox, his thin shoulders heaving with uncontrollable sobs. "I thought... I thought the mob had broken into the street. The noise... the sirens... people were pounding on the bank doors shouting that the currency was worthless."
"The currency isn't worthless, Edward," I said, walking over and kneeling down beside him on the cold stone.
I reached out, placing a firm, steady hand on his trembling shoulder.
"Is it all here?" I asked.
Edward pulled a brass key from his waistcoat pocket, inserted it into the heavy padlock of the iron box, and turned it with a sharp, metallic click.
He lifted the heavy lid.
Inside sat forty-two thousand dollars in crisp, green federal currency notes—stacks of tens, twenties, and fifties bound in clean bank paper bands—alongside three heavy canvas sacks containing fifty thousand dollars in minted United States twenty-dollar gold double eagles, transferred directly from Marcus Vance’s private vault an hour earlier.
Ninety-two thousand dollars in sovereign, physical, un-leveraged wealth.
In 1929, that was enough to purchase sixty farms, feed a thousand families for three years, and capitalization-proof an entire commercial district against the coming freeze.
"What... what are we going to do with all this gold, Julian?" Edward whispered, his fingers lightly brushing the canvas sacks. "Montgomery & Sterling is finished. Arthur has resigned his seat on the board. The firm is dissolved."
"Montgomery & Sterling is dead, Edward," I replied, pulling the lockbox lid shut and snapping the heavy brass padlock home. "Good riddance to it. It was built on sand, greed, and other people's misery."
I stood up, offering my hand to the old bookkeeper, hauling him up from the cold floor.
"Tomorrow morning, Edward," I said, looking into his tired, honest eyes, "we open the Hudson River Farmers & Merchants Trust. We’re moving our operations upstate. We’re going to use this cash to extend non-margin, two-percent agricultural loans to every dairy farmer, orchard keeper, and grocer in the Hudson Valley who gets squeezed by the New York banks."
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Edward stared at me, his mouth parting in utter astonishment. "A country credit bank? Julian... there's no fortunes to be made in rural farm loans. The margins are tiny."
"We aren't trying to make a fortune anymore, Edward," I smiled, lifting one side of the heavy iron box while the armed guards stepped forward to assist. "We’re trying to build an ark. And the flood has just begun."
