Mary Russel - Dreamers of the Day

You might be surprised to know how many women played the market in the twenties. In fact, there were so many of us that stockbrokers often reserved special ladies’ salons in their offices. These were filled from the opening bell to the close with society women who had money to burn, with the wives of university professors and prosperous businessmen, and with heiresses like me. Perhaps that’s what made it easy to speculate in large sums: none of us had earned our wealth with the sweat of our own brows. The other thing was, in the twenties, money just didn’t seem as serious as it had before and would again later.

The stock market was like Old Faithful, regularly spouting fortunes. Playing it was fun—like being paid to shop! And it was a social event, as well: someplace convivial to go, like a bridge club but infinitely more exciting. There were the ticker tapes with their exotic alphabetical symbols, clattering along like racehorses. You had to read them in a rush, and the ladies who could decipher them the quickest were held in high esteem. Awed by the panache with which more experienced women snapped out orders to the brokers, neophytes stood by diffidently until they raised the nerve to ask for a translation.

Once you’d cracked the secret code, though, all you needed to know was, “Buy low and sell high.” Purchase shares in the morning and by that very afternoon, sometimes, you could sell them for enough to pay for a daughter’s lavish wedding, or your own mink coat, or a brand-new automobile.

By then, it seemed we all had gasoline-engine cars. Plutocrats had once travelled at ten miles an hour behind a pair or two of horses, but now women like us could go thirty in a Ford. The fuel-tank wagon was becoming as familiar as the coal truck, delivering cheap and convenient heating oil to factories and dwellings. I didn’t own a house anymore, but I could just imagine how lovely it must have been to awaken in a nice, warm home without having to go down into the cellar to shovel coal into the boiler. Why, Americans would no more give up our autos and oil furnaces than go back to candlelight and cooking over an open fire! So I did well with Standard Oil of Ohio, as you can imagine.

I bought into several airlines, as well, having heard Winston rhapsodize about the potential of the air. Man had achieved a three-dimensional existence, and before the decade was over, Trans-Continental could fly you from one coast to the other in under forty-eight hours. I missed out on R.C.A., though. I thought the stock was already too high when I discovered how much I enjoyed radio, but its ascent was only starting. Theaters, newspapers, and pulpits had a new competitor. Before long everyone listened to the radio and every program, night and day, was sponsored by an advertiser, and each advertisement fed the hunger for more and more.

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Mr. Arthur D. Little observed in 1924, “but only because she doesn’t have carpets to clean.” Appliances, fashions, furniture! The whole world seemed one glorious bazaar, filled with splendid things to buy. So we bought: wildly, extravagantly, recklessly, on credit and on margin.

Many ladies in the brokerage salons were well connected and hinted at tips from high sources. These women were watched and their bets followed by the lesser players. It was like someone ordering dessert in a restaurant: Mmmm, that looks good … Waiter, I believe I’ll have one of those as well. More often than not, in those days, the speculation paid off; but if you looked carefully, you might have noticed that most people were buying because other people had bought.

I, at least, had some logic behind my choices. I considered, for example, the arms manufacturers that Karl had endorsed, but war was the last thing on anyone’s mind in the twenties. With the Great War behind us, we truly believed that the problems of the turbulent past were solved. Yes, there had been terrible sacrifices, tragic losses, appalling destruction, but never again would men of such uncompromising, irresponsible stupidity rise to power. And look how good things were! Why would nations fight when they could do business instead?

So I went into iron and steel companies instead of armaments, on the theory that they would make money in wartime or in peace. I was really quite successful and, after a while, not even Mumma tried to second-guess me. Weeks and weeks would go by without my thinking of her at all, busy as I was.

Looking back, I must say that the twenties and my forties were the best years of my life. I made lots of friends—and yes, I took a lover occasionally. Even Rosie set a style! Several of the stock market ladies thought she was so cute that they sought out the breeder who’d taken Mumma’s last dachshunds in 1919. Before long several of Rosie’s grandnieces were curled on laps around the salon. If the little ones’ housebreaking remained somewhat unreliable, well, the steady flow of our commission money made it worthwhile for the broker to replace his carpeting now and then.

When the morning’s killing was especially gratifying, our gang would go out for brunch in one of the fun new places that had sprung up just off East Ninth. Women who’d never been to a restaurant in their lives before the war now considered cooking too dreary to bother with. We’d order waffles and sausages to share with the dogs, and finish up with coffee and ice cream. We spread tips around like rose petals.

After dessert I’d cry, “Let’s go share the wealth with Mildred!” and we’d all troop off to Halle’s. Every week there was something fabulous to try on: the latest Chanel suit in rose-beige jersey, or patterned stockings to wear under those new skirts with the asymmetrical hems, or “Mary Janes” with the diamanté trim on the straps. We kept up with all the changes.

It never occurred to anyone to think, I have enough. It’s time to walk away from the table. Tomorrow was another day. We’d all be back for more.

And then, it was over.

To this moment, I can remember every detail of Black Thursday. All around me, disheveled panicky women stared at the ticker tape in stunned despair, or wept, or even fainted as their stocks dropped and dropped again. Balances that had done nothing but grow long strings of zeros suddenly became zeros. Late in that afternoon, there were frantic telephone calls, sobbing confessions, pleas for understanding. Husbands who hadn’t even known their wives were playing the market found out that they’d been bankrupted.

And it wasn’t just the investment money that was lost. Many ladies had borrowed from brokers to speculate on sure things that were going bust before our eyes. “How can my balance be less than zero?” one saucer-eyed lady asked when the broker told her she owed him over $10,000. “That’s more than my house cost! I don’t understand—it’s simply not possible for something to be less than zero!”

It was possible, as anyone who’d taught fifth-grade mathematics could have told her. You may be relieved to know that I was not as foolish as that poor woman. I never borrowed from the broker. For one thing, I’d had a horror of debt since my parents’ bankruptcy. And I knew the difference between playing the market and investing, thank you very much. An investment is a transfer of capital to an enterprise that uses it to create future wealth by generating goods and services that secure income or profit. Playing the market is just gambling: betting that some fool will pay more this afternoon for what you bought this morning.

But when prices are dropping like stones, there are bargains to be had. It’s time to buy low, I thought with cool confidence, and poured good money after bad. In the next few weeks, my net worth melted like a block of ice in August. Before it was over, even the puddle evaporated. I was forced to sell the last of my stocks at the bottom of the market, in the summer of ’32.