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interests. You know what you are doing. But George and I had about agreed to offer you an
interest in this thing after a bit. Now you're picking up and leaving. Why, damn it, man, there's
good money in this business."
"I know it," smiled Cowperwood, "but I don't like it. I have other plans in view. I'll never be a
grain and commission man." Mr. Henry Waterman could scarcely understand why obvious
success in this field did not interest him. He feared the effect of his departure on the business.
And once the change was made Cowperwood was convinced that this new work was more
suited to him in every way--as easy and more profitable, of course. In the first place, the firm of
Tighe & Co., unlike that of Waterman & Co., was located in a handsome green-gray stone
building at 66 South Third Street, in what was then, and for a number of years afterward, the
heart of the financial district. Great institutions of national and international import and repute
were near at hand--Drexel & Co., Edward Clark & Co., the Third National Bank, the First
National Bank, the Stock Exchange, and similar institutions. Almost a score of smaller banks
and brokerage firms were also in the vicinity. Edward Tighe, the head and brains of this
concern, was a Boston Irishman, the son of an immigrant who had flourished and done well in
that conservative city. He had come to Philadelphia to interest himself in the speculative life
there. "Sure, it's a right good place for those of us who are awake," he told his friends, with a
slight Irish accent, and he considered himself very much awake. He was a medium-tall man, not
very stout, slightly and prematurely gray, and with a manner which was as lively and good-
natured as it was combative and self-reliant. His upper lip was ornamented by a short, gray
mustache.
"May heaven preserve me," he said, not long after he came there, "these Pennsylvanians never
pay for anything they can issue bonds for." It was the period when Pennsylvania's credit, and for
that matter Philadelphia's, was very bad in spite of its great wealth. "If there's ever a war there'll
be battalions of Pennsylvanians marching around offering notes for their meals. If I could just
live long enough I could get rich buyin' up Pennsylvania notes and bonds. I think they'll pay
some time; but, my God, they're mortal slow! I'll be dead before the State government will ever
catch up on the interest they owe me now."
It was true. The condition of the finances of the state and city was most reprehensible. Both
State and city were rich enough; but there were so many schemes for looting the treasury in
both instances that when any new work had to be undertaken bonds were necessarily issued to
raise the money. These bonds, or warrants, as they were called, pledged interest at six per
cent.; but when the interest fell due, instead of paying it, the city or State treasurer, as the case
might be, stamped the same with the date of presentation, and the warrant then bore interest for
not only its original face value, but the amount then due in interest. In other words, it was being
slowly compounded. But this did not help the man who wanted to raise money, for as security
they could not be hypothecated for more than seventy per cent. of their market value, and they
were not selling at par, but at ninety. A man might buy or accept them in foreclosure, but he had
a long wait. Also, in the final payment of most of them favoritism ruled, for it was only when the
treasurer knew that certain warrants were in the hands of "a friend" that he would advertise that
such and such warrants-- those particular ones that he knew about--would be paid.
What was more, the money system of the United States was only then beginning slowly to
emerge from something approximating chaos to something more nearly approaching order. The
United States Bank, of which Nicholas Biddle was the progenitor, had gone completely in 1841,
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