From legendary short seller to god of American capital

Chapter 410 Mr. K's Influence on the New York City Subway: Real Estate Opportunities

Back in his apartment in Dakota, Larry locked himself in his room, lit a cigar, and fell into deep thought.

Since last November, I've been studying at Yale University. To put it simply, it's been a slow process of unleashing my "Sinological talent" as a reborn individual. I'm progressing through reading, writing, listening, and speaking simultaneously. The only difficulty lies in rediscovering traditional Chinese characters and a whole host of variant characters.

However, these are not actually difficult problems.

But thanks to Larry Livingston's mastery of Mandarin and Chinese characters, he quickly won the high recognition of the president of Yale University and the head of the Department of Political Economy.

Sinology, or Oriental studies, was becoming increasingly important in the United States at this time, especially after the US-China trade entered a new phase. From the US government to American businessmen, everyone continued to study and communicate with China.

Most of the "China experts" in American academia and politics who were familiar with China in the past came from missionaries.

For example, Samuel Wells Williams, the first sinologist at Yale University and the first professor of Chinese studies in the United States, arrived in Guangzhou as a missionary in 1833 and returned to the United States in 1876. He spent 43 years in China and witnessed almost the entire series of major events in the early modern history of China.

After Samuel Wells Williams passed away in 1884, his son took over his work. However, the Sinology pioneered by Williams was not highly regarded in the United States because the missionaries' views were based on missionary work and idealism, which differed somewhat from the pragmatic demands that the United States needed for its relations with China at that time.

Another point is that the British had complete control over the channels of contact with China, giving them an overwhelming advantage over the United States.

The vast majority of influential foreigners in China were British, such as Robert Hart, who long controlled the Chinese customs.

Hart; Sir Thomas Wade, the British diplomat and sinologist who invented the Wade-Giles system; Sir Claude MacDonald, the British Minister to China; and Timothy Richard, who later played an important role in the Hundred Days' Reform.

In comparison, the United States has far fewer talents in China. Besides Samuel Wells Williams, there is William A. Leander Parsons Martin, a Presbyterian missionary, and William Woodville Rockhill, who is currently a U.S. diplomat in China.

However, these people also have their own problems. Firstly, because they come from missionary and exploration backgrounds, they often cannot truly understand the needs of the American political and business circles. Secondly, because they are all self-taught, they cannot consider Sino-US relations from a higher level of integrated thinking.

Larry Livingston's emergence perfectly met the needs of American academia at that time: a genius-level Chinese language genius, a pure Anglo-Saxon, a devout Protestant from Boston—and damn handsome and rich!

From the perspective of Protestantism in America at this time, being rich means being blessed by God.

After his buffs were fully stacked, Larry was regarded by Yale University President Timothy Dwight V as "the secret weapon of American Oriental studies", "the future master of US-China relations" and "one of his own" for future Western sinologists, and thus received attention from the entire university leadership.

Therefore, Larry received intensive training at Yale, with heavy academic and research workloads; but this also greatly reduced the time he had to manage his own business.

The main reason I took the time to return to New York this time was to handle matters related to Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus—and incidentally, to deal with some specific business matters.

The acquisition of The Wall Street Journal was actually just a casual move.

Anna's words awakened Larry. As a miraculously rising American star, he was surrounded not only by flowers and applause, but also by covetous and watchful eyes.

It's understandable that the German Schmeisser is taking stock of his own situation. After all, the Germans suffered a loss with him and are watching his business grow bigger and bigger, so they might prioritize studying him.

Furthermore, the task his subordinates assigned to Anna was to seduce her—while their motives were questionable, their methods couldn't be described as particularly despicable.

Of course, Larry could never really get involved with Anna. It wasn't that Larry respected her as his "sister-in-law," but rather that he didn't want to get involved with a woman of that status and personality; getting involved would only lead to trouble.

Ultimately, our intelligence system needs to be deployed as soon as possible. On the one hand, there is basic intelligence at the bottom level, such as the "federal investigators" in the convenience store and the gang system linked by Mr. K. These constitute the basic intelligence network, but this level is not enough now. At least the convenience store project should be boldly promoted, first covering several key cities in the East, as well as key cities in the Midwest, including Chicago and Detroit.

Expanding the convenience store network will not only create a retail network advantage at the sales terminals, but also extend intelligence reach and further develop the gang cooperation system—this is an important and urgent task.

This must be put on the agenda immediately!

After figuring this out, Larry rushed to the telegraph room and sent a telegram to Mr. K, asking him to take the earliest train to New York to "serve the king".

But what about the other side of intelligence gathering—high-end intelligence?

Everyone knows that high-end salons or guilds are the easiest places to obtain top-tier intelligence. However, engaging in high-level social interaction is extremely difficult; generally, only elite families like the Astor family can achieve this. For a newly wealthy individual like Larry, it's already remarkable that they don't reject him; how could he possibly host his own event?

There's no use in thinking about this behind closed doors, so Larry decided to take advantage of the land sale to visit King Astor IV first.

Of course, the most crucial thing is money!

Larry is still short of money.

Despite making a lot of money in the past two years, as the business expands, there's never enough money.

At the beginning of the year, Cleveland was elected president, and the Democratic Party won a landslide victory in both the House and Senate—the biggest impact of this on Larry was that silver prices collapsed, and the silver mining stocks that Larry shorted also continued to fall.

But then, a blizzard that swept across the United States from Canada struck the country. The cold air moved southward along the Great Plains of the Midwest and the Mississippi River basin, even causing snowfall in Florida.

This unexpected extreme weather event had two consequences:

In February 1893, a blizzard of unprecedented magnitude swept through New York.

A cold wave, bringing three feet of snow, blocked the streets of Manhattan. Horse-drawn carriages were stuck in icy ruts, steam locomotives on the elevated railway stalled in the snowstorm, and even telegraph lines were frozen and severed. The entire city was paralyzed—Wall Street shut down, department stores closed, and even coal delivery workers were stranded in Brooklyn, unable to cross the river.

For the first time, people truly realized that this metropolis of a million people was still operating on transportation methods from the early 19th century. The streets, already overburdened with piles of horse manure, now even the most basic passage had become a luxury.

It was this snowstorm that brought the long-planned underground railroad project to the forefront. Business leaders, municipal engineers, and editorials in The New York Times all pointed to the same answer: only the subway can keep New York breathing.

New York must grow downwards.

In March, the city council passed the Rapid Transit Act and established the Rapid Transit Commission to plan the subway construction.

The New York subway has gone from a draft to a viable motion.

The biggest impact on Larry is that the subway will drive new real estate opportunities in New York City.

Meanwhile, something unusual also happened in Chicago.

The blizzard that engulfed New York in February 1893 did not stop its cold wave on the east bank of the Hudson River. It traveled westward, freezing the waterways of the Great Lakes, burying the railroad tracks in the Midwest, and, most fatally, severing the last vital transportation artery between Chicago and the eastern ports.

The Northern Pacific Railroad was already walking on thin ice, having just escaped the threat of a workers' strike. Now, as the railroad's construction neared completion, it faced an even more fatal crisis.

Over the past decade, it has expanded rapidly through massive borrowing amidst the frenzy of its owner, James J. Hill, vying with speculators for control of the Northwest Route. It issued hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds to banks in London and New York, using future revenue from the transport of wheat, timber, and minerals as collateral. Its apparent prosperity rested entirely on one premise: that grain from the Midwest granaries must be continuously transported to New York, Liverpool, and Hamburg before the spring harvest.

But after the blizzard, everything came to a standstill, and the North Pacific’s daily freight revenue plummeted by 70%, while its bond interest payments remained unchanged.

Even more critically, market confidence began to collapse.

While New Yorkers struggled to survive in knee-deep snow, Wall Street already sensed impending disaster. If the "world's breadbasket" couldn't even produce a single grain of wheat, wouldn't those railroad bonds with agricultural products as their underlying assets be nothing but castles in the air?

Starting in March, investors began to sell off railway stocks en masse, and banks that had lent money to the North Pacific were on edge and began to tighten their lending.

This caused an unforeseen chain reaction —

Back in New York, newspaper headlines were filled with reports of banks running out of money and credit tightening, and Larry sensed that the stock market was about to collapse.

On one hand, there was the opportunity of a stock market crash that he had been waiting for for three years; on the other hand, there was the urgent need to expand his own power—in fact, Larrygan...

There was no other choice; to back down would mean losing everything.

Alright, since we can't avoid it all, let it all come.

The next morning, Larry prepared gifts and went to visit King Astor IV and his mother, Lady Charlotte Astor.

When the carriage stopped at the manor's cast-iron gate, an old butler in a dark green uniform with his hair neatly combed stepped forward. He had already seen Larry inside the carriage window.

"Mr. Livingston! Madam is waiting in Blue Room."

The old butler recognized Larry and knew he was coming to visit that day. In high society, information always arrives before the guest.

The carriage arrived at the foyer, and the old butler opened the door with a smile. Larry stepped down from the carriage, carrying two carefully prepared gifts.

One set was a bone china tea set specially commissioned for Mrs. Charlotte Astor from a long-established china shop in Rochester, with an exquisite fleur-de-lis pattern on the glaze, the same pattern on the Astor family coat of arms.

Another copy was a first edition of Moby-Dick for John Jacob Astor IV, with Melville's own signature on the title page.

He had been preparing this gift for three months and, through Mr. Porter's connections, had purchased it at a high price from a bibliophile in Boston.

He knew that the 28-year-old family heir was obsessed with literature and adventure, and had just published his science fiction novel, "Journey to Another Planet," last year.

The butler led Larry through a long corridor adorned with Flemish tapestries to the Blue Room in the west wing of the mansion. The room was small, but every piece of furniture was priceless: gilded wooden tables and chairs from the Louis XV era, a crystal chandelier from Murano, Venice, and an original landscape painting by Gainsborough hanging above the fireplace.

Mrs. Charlotte Astor sat in a wing-backed chair by the fireplace. She was sixty-one years old, still quite tall, wearing a deep purple silk morning gown, her silver hair neatly styled in a bun at the back of her head. Fine lines etched on her face were the marks of time, but her pale blue eyes, when they looked at Larry, would immediately crinkle into a smile.

"Oh, Larry! My child—you've finally come." Mrs. Astor's face was full of kind smiles.

"Madam, please forgive me for not coming to see you. I was away from New York for the past few months," Larry said with a very infectious smile, handing the gift to the maid standing beside him. "It's just a small token of my appreciation, please accept it."

Mrs. Astor nodded and smiled in thanks, then said, "I heard from John that you went to Yale University—"

God bless you. I had no idea you possessed such profound knowledge and abilities; it is truly a blessing from God, my child.

Larry smiled and thanked the lady before sitting down in the high-backed chair.

The maid then served Darjeeling tea with a slice of lemon, but without sugar.

Making old ladies happy is a must-learn skill for every handsome young man, and Larry is particularly adept at it. He compiles various strange and unusual stories from his time at Yale into tales, recounting them as if they were his own experiences. Larry's wit and humor captivate the old lady.

The lady kept covering her mouth and smiling.

When Larry's futures trading in Chicago was mentioned, the old lady's face showed a mixture of admiration and surprise. "I heard about your performance in Chicago—" Mrs. Astor took a sip of tea. "Governor Altgilld wrote to me, calling you the guardian of Midwestern farmers." "That's a very romantic statement."

"You flatter me, Governor," Larry smiled. "I simply made a deal that happened to be beneficial to all parties."

"A deal that will cost James Keane his office." A young voice came from the doorway.

John Jacob Astor IV entered. He was still wearing a well-tailored dark gray three-piece suit, his blond hair was neatly combed, and his face carried an expression that was a mixture of aristocratic arrogance and intellectual curiosity.

He sat down in the chair opposite his mother, took the tea offered by the maid, and his gaze fell directly on Larry.

"Hey! Mr. Livingston, are those rumors true? Did you force James Keane to lose his office?"

Larry smiled but didn't answer. Instead, he asked, "Who told you that? That's nonsense. How could I possibly influence his tens of millions in assets?"

King Astor IV shook his head. "He doesn't have that much money, I happen to know that—actually, his style is very aggressive; he makes a lot of money, but he also loses a lot—everyone says he's very wealthy, but that's a misconception, because outsiders only count his accumulated wealth, not the losses he made due to recklessness or impulsive decisions, such as his losses against you in wheat futures."

base."

Larry smiled and remained silent; there was no need to answer that question.

King Astor IV smiled, glanced at his mother, and then asked frankly, "In your letter of visit, you said you wanted to talk to me about 'the future of New York'? What did you mean by that?"

"Subway, sir!" Larry maintained his smile, pulled a folded newspaper from his pocket, and spread it out on the coffee table in front of him. "The snow in February sealed off Manhattan. But in my opinion, it didn't just seal off the streets, it sealed off an era—the era of horse-drawn carriages, elevated railways, and ground transportation. The snow melted, but the problem remains: a city of three million people cannot run on horses and steam locomotives forever."

King Astor IV's eyes lit up. "Every time I see that word in the newspaper, I think of your prophecy—well, get to the point, what are your thoughts?"

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