Kane & Abel (1979) (8 page)

It was a full year before the grandmothers came out of mourning, and although Anne was still only twenty-eight, she looked older than her years.

The grandmothers, unlike Anne, concealed their grief from William until he finally reproached them.

‘Don’t you miss my father?’ he demanded, gazing at Grandmother Kane, his blue eyes bringing back memories of her son.

‘Yes, child. But he would not have wished us to sit around feeling sorry for ourselves.’

‘But I want us to always remember him - always,’ said William, his voice cracking.

‘William, I am going to speak to you for the first time as though you were quite grown up. We will always keep his memory hallowed between us, and you shall play your own part by living up to what your father would have expected of you. You are now the head of the family and heir to his estate. You must therefore prepare yourself, through diligence and hard work, to be fit for such a responsibility, in the same spirit in which your father carried out his duties.’

William didn’t respond, but he immediately began acting upon his grandmother’s advice. He learned to live with his sorrow without ever complaining, and from that moment on he threw himself steadfastly into his work at school, satisfied only if Grandmother Kane seemed impressed. At no subject did he fail to excel, and in mathematics he was not only top of his class, but far ahead of his years. Anything his father had achieved, he was determined to better. He grew even closer to his mother, and became suspicious of anyone who was not family, so that he was often thought of by his contemporaries as a solitary child, a loner and, unfairly, a snob.

The grandmothers decided on William’s eighth birthday that the time had come for the boy to learn the value of money. With this in mind, they allocated him one dollar a week as pocket money, but insisted that he keep an inventory accounting for every cent he spent. Grandmother Kane presented him with a green leather-bound ledger, at a cost of 95 cents, which she deducted from his first week’s allowance. From then on the grandmothers divided the dollar up every Saturday morning. William could invest 50 cents, spend 20 cents, give 10 cents to charity and keep 20 cents in reserve. At the end of each quarter they would inspect the ledger and his written report on any unusual transactions.

After the first three months had passed, William was well prepared to account for himself. He had given $1.30 to the recently founded Boy Scouts of America, and invested $5.55, which he had asked Grandmother Kane to deposit in a savings account at the bank of his godfather, J. P. Morgan. He had spent $2.60 on a bicycle, and had kept $1.60 in reserve. The ledger was a source of great satisfaction to the grandmothers, even if they weren’t certain about the bicycle: there was no doubt William was the son of Richard Kane.

At school, William made few friends, partly because he was shy of mixing with anyone other than Cabots, Lowells or children from families wealthier than his own. This restricted his choice somewhat, so he became a rather broody child, which worried his mother. She did not approve of the ledger or the investment programme, and would have preferred William to lead a more normal existence: to have lots of young friends rather than a couple of elderly advisors; to get himself dirty and bruised, not always remaining neat and spotless; to collect toads and turtles rather than stocks and company reports - in short, to be like any other little boy. But she never had the courage to voice her misgivings to the grandmothers, and in any case, they were not interested in any other little boy.

On his ninth birthday William presented the ledger to his grandmothers for their annual inspection. The green leather book showed a saving during the past year of more than twenty-five dollars. He was particularly proud to point out to the grandmothers an entry marked ‘B6’, showing that he had taken his money out of J. P. Morgan’s bank immediately on hearing of the death of the great financier, because he had noted that stock in his father’s bank had fallen in value after the death had been announced. William had reinvested the same amount three months later, making a healthy profit.

The grandmothers were suitably impressed, and allowed William to trade in his old bicycle and purchase a new one. At his request Grandmother Kane invested his remaining capital in the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The price of oil, William asserted, could only rise now that Mr Ford had sold over a million model Ts. He kept the ledger meticulously up to date until his twenty-first birthday. Had the grandmothers still been alive then, they would have been proud of the final entry in the right-hand column marked ASSETS.

In September 1915, following a relaxed summer holiday at the family house in the Hamptons, William returned to Sayre Academy. Once he was back at school, he began to look for competition among pupils older than himself. Whatever he took up, he was never satisfied until he excelled at it, and beating his contemporaries provided him with few challenges. He began to realize that most people from backgrounds as privileged as his lacked any real incentive to compete, and that fiercer rivalry was to be found from boys who had not been born with his advantages. He even wondered if it was an advantage to be disadvantaged.

In 1915 a craze for collecting matchbox labels hit Sayre Academy. William observed this frenzy for several days but did not join in. Within a fortnight, common labels were changing hands for a dime, while rarer examples commanded as much as fifty cents. William considered the situation for another week, and although he had no interest in being a collector, he decided this was the moment to become a dealer.

On the following Saturday he visited Leavitt and Pierce, one of the largest tobacconist’s in Boston, and spent the afternoon taking down the names and addresses of major matchbox manufacturers throughout the world, making a special note of those from nations that were not at war. He invested five dollars in notepaper, envelopes and stamps, and wrote to the chairman or president of every company he had listed. His letter was simple and to the point, despite having been redrafted several times.

Within two weeks, William had had a 55 per cent rate of reply, which yielded seventy-eight different labels. Nearly all his correspondents also returned the three-cent stamp, as he had anticipated they would.

William immediately opened a label market at school, always checking what he could sell on even before he had made a purchase or swoop. He noticed that some boys had no interest in the rarity of the matchbox labels, only in their appearance, and for them he offered several examples in order to obtain rare trophies for the more discerning collectors. After a further two weeks of buying and selling he sensed that the market had reached its peak, and that if he was not careful, with the Christmas holidays fast approaching, he might end up with surplus stock. With much trumpeted advance publicity in the form of a printed handbill which cost him a half-cent a sheet - placed on every boy’s desk - William announced that he would be holding an auction of his matchbox labels, all 211 of them. The auction took place in the school washroom during the lunch hour, and was better attended than most school hockey games.

After the hammer had come down for the final time, William had grossed $56.32, a net profit of $51.32 on his original investment. He put $25 on deposit with the bank at 2.5 per cent interest, bought himself a camera for $10, gave $5 to the Young Men’s Christian Association, which had broadened its activities to helping immigrants who were flooding to America from war-torn Europe, bought his mother a bunch of flowers and put the remaining $7 into his cash account. The market in matchbox labels collapsed a few days before term ended. William had got out at the top of the market. The grandmothers nodded sagely when they were informed of the details: it was not dissimilar to the way their husbands had made their fortunes in the panic of 1873.

During the holidays, William could not resist finding out if it was possible to obtain a better return on his capital than the 2.5 per cent yielded on his savings account. For the next three months he invested - again through Grandmother Kane - in stocks recommended by
The Wall Street Journal
. During that time he lost more than half the money he had made on the matchbox labels. He never again relied solely on the expertise of
The Wall Street Journal
. If its correspondents were so well informed, why did they need to work for a newspaper? he concluded.

Annoyed with his loss of almost $30, William decided that it must be recouped during the summer holidays. After he’d worked out which parties and other functions his mother would expect him to attend, he found he was left with only fourteen free days, just enough time to embark upon a new venture. He sold all his remaining
Wall Street Journal
recommended shares, which only netted him $12. With this money he bought a flat piece of wood, a set of pram wheels, axles and a piece of rope, at a cost, after some bargaining, of $5. He then put on a flat cloth cap and an old suit he had outgrown and went off to the central railroad station. William stood outside the exit, looking hungry and tired. He informed selected travellers that the main hotels in Boston were near the station, and there was no need for them to waste their money on a taxi or one of the surviving hansom carriages, as he could transport their luggage on his moving board for 20 per cent of what they charged; he added that the walk would also do them good. Working for six hours a day, he found he could pocket roughly $4.

Five days before the new school term was due to begin, William had made back all his original losses and chalked up a further $9 profit. Then he hit a problem. The taxi drivers were starting to get annoyed with him. He assured them that he would retire, aged ten, if each one of them gave him 50 cents to cover the cost of his homemade dolly. They agreed, and he made a further $8.50. On the way home to Beacon Hill he sold the dolly to a school friend for $2, promising him he would not return to his old beat at the station. The friend quickly discovered that the taxi drivers were lying in wait for him; moreover, it didn’t help that it rained for the rest of the week. On the day he returned to school, William put his money back on deposit in the bank, at 2.5 per cent.