In the “loan cage” at the trust company John handled daily millions in securities, a great part of which were negotiable.  When almost everybody was so rich he wondered why any one remained poor.  Two or three men of his own age gave up their jobs in other concerns and became traders, while another opened an office of his own.  John was told that they had acted on “good information,” had bought a few hundred shares of Union Pacific, and were now comfortably fixed.  He would have been glad to buy, but copper had left him without anything to buy with.

One day Prescott took him out to lunch and confided to him that one of the big speculators had tipped him off to buy cotton, since there was going to be a failure in the crop.  It was practically a sure thing.  Two thousand dollars’ margin would buy enough cotton to start them in business, even if the rise was only a very small one.

“Why don’t you borrow a couple of bonds?” asked Prescott.

“Borrow from whom?” inquired John.

“Why, from some customer of the trust company.”

“No one would lend them to me,” answered John.

“Well, borrow them, anyhow.  They would never know about it, and you could put them back as soon as we closed the account,” suggested Prescott.

John was shocked, and said so.

“You are easy,” said his comrade.  “Don’t you know that the trust companies do it themselves all the time?  The presidents of the railroads use the holdings of their companies as collateral.  Even the banks use their deposits for trading.  Didn’t old ——­ dump a lot of rotten stuff on you?  Why don’t you get even?  Let me tell you something.  Fully one-half of the men who are now successful financiers got their start by putting up as margin securities deposited with them.  No one ever knew the difference, and now they are on their feet.  If you took two bonds overnight you might put them back in the morning.  Every one does it.  It’s part of the game.”

“But suppose we lost?” asked John.

“You can’t,” said Prescott.  “Cotton is sure to go up.  It’s throwing away the chance of your life.”

John said he couldn’t do such a thing, but when he returned to the office the cashier told him that a merger had been planned between their company and another—­a larger one.  John knew what that meant well enough—­half the clerks would lose their positions.  He was getting thirty-five dollars a week, had married a young wife, and, as he had told the magnate, he “needed it all.”  That night as he put the securities from the “loan cage” back in the vault the bonds burned his fingers.  They were lying around loose, no good to anybody, and only two of them, overnight maybe, would make him independent of salaries and mergers—­a free man and his own master.