Had the Scheftels brokers been supplied with orders to buy one-quarter of a million shares of stock at the closing market price of the Saturday before, $4 1-8, it was very apparent that they would have been unable to hold the market. The opening sale was at $4. Downward to the $3 point the stock traveled, breaking from 25 to 50 cents between sales. Through $3 and on down to the $2 point the price crashed. Blocks of 10,000 shares were madly thrown into the vortex of trading. The Curb was a struggling, screaming, maddened throng of brokers. Every trader appeared to be determined to crush the market structure. At $2 a share there was a temporary check in the decline, but the bears renewed their onslaught, gaining confidence by the outpour of selling orders. Within less than an hour after the opening the stock hit $1 1-2 a share. At this juncture the Scheftels broker in Ely Central reported that he had executed all the stop-loss and good-till-cancelled orders entrusted to him with the exception of 19,000 shares.
"The Scheftels company will take the lot at $1 1-2," I said.
In lending succor at $1 1-2 per share I was really stretching a point, although at this figure the net market shrinkage of the Ely Central capitalization was in excess of $3,000,000. This melting of market value was awful to contemplate. On the other hand the newspaper agitation was unmitigated in its violence, stockholders were convulsed, a break of serious proportions was certain, and it was up to me to conserve every dollar. The moment the Scheftels bid of $1.50 a share made its appearance on the Curb and the selling from the same source for the account of customers was discontinued, it was seen that the force of the drive had spent itself, at least for the time being. Support now came from the "shorts." They started to cash their profits on their short sales of the days previous. Crazed selling was transformed to frantic buying.
The scene at this juncture was dramatic. It was the momentary culmination of a cumulative, convulsive cataclysm. In refraining from selling for its own account the Scheftels corporation violated one of the sacred rules and privileges not only of the New York Curb but of the New York Stock Exchange. In both of these markets it is the custom, where brokers have advance information of an impending calamity, to beat the public to the market and get out their own lines first, leaving customers to take care of themselves.