How to Torment a Robber Baron
Even as the seasons turned in August 1873, the little boy who was master of the Crown Prince's Palace in Berlin had not changed his ways in the slightest.
"Your Highness, a telegram has arrived from America."
Waldemar carefully studied the costly telegram.
Malicious rumors are circulating about the railroad companies. The time has nearly come for Jay Cooke & Company, the major shareholder of those railroads, to collapse.
In the original history, Jay Cooke & Company had fallen on the eighteenth of September, yet the butterfly effects he himself had set in motion made it impossible now to predict the exact hour.
Waldemar summoned a servant and had a telegram dispatched to John Connor.
Using the British royal family's agents as the front, prepare short selling positions against Union Pacific stock.
Of all the countless firms he might have chosen, he singled out the poorly performing Union Pacific precisely because it was the quarry of that notorious corporate raider Jay Gould.
Waldemar meant to plant his spoon in the delicious cake Gould had baked and claim his share of the short-selling profits.
Before long a fresh telegram landed on his desk: Jay Cooke & Company had gone bankrupt on the eighteenth of September, just as in the original timeline.
Waldemar waited in tense anticipation for the results of the short sales.
Union Pacific shares, which in August 1873 had drifted between fourteen and eighteen dollars, crashed after the bankruptcy to a catastrophic four-dollar range—far more brutal than history had recorded.
That monumental plunge owed a great deal, of course, to the massive naked short selling Waldemar had unleashed.
The capital he had committed in America totaled only eighty-seven hundred dollars (roughly 4.9 dollars to the pound), yet the short position, swollen by fictitious naked shares, approached one hundred thousand dollars.
Even for a railroad colossus whose market capitalization exceeded thirty-six million dollars, that sum was impossible to ignore.
With this merciless assault he began covering his position and sweeping up shares again well before the price touched four and a half dollars—lower still than the original history.
John Connor voiced open regret at the decision.
"Your Highness, if we simply let the price fall a little further we might gain still more. Why not bet a bit longer on the decline?"
"No. If we keep this position we will be ruined."
Waldemar already knew that Jay Gould would soon begin quietly scooping up Union Pacific stock.
Thanks to the prince's swift repurchase, the shares turned upward once more.
In the long run, holding them would let Jay Gould inflate their value for me—something of a pity.
By closing the position and deducting commissions and other costs, Waldemar had swollen his assets to fifty-eight thousand dollars.
An astronomical return, yet he had no intention of resting content.
When one considered the vast fortunes enjoyed by the robber barons of America's Gilded Age, a few tens of thousands of dollars were pocket change.
Time to move on to the next target.
His eldest brother was an unreliable ruler who would wreck the country, and the empire's future remained cloudy. The only thing he could truly trust was the capital in his hands.
If I am choosing next, it is oil.
Even Rockefeller, destined to become the richest man in the world, had been called the Oil King, had he not?
The wealth of the Rockefeller clan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was so legendary that even ordinary folk of later generations still knew the name.
Of course Waldemar had no wish to enter the oil business himself. Age and ability aside, he felt no confidence competing openly against the lawless cowboys of the Gilded Age who behaved as though statutes simply did not exist.
Rather than tangle with outlaw cowboys, the sensible course is to buy shares in Standard Oil—the final victor.
He asked his agent whether any means existed of acquiring Standard Oil stock.
The answer was disappointing.
"Your Highness, the Standard Oil you inquired about is a privately held company. There is no way to obtain its shares on any exchange."
"Is there no way to secure them through over-the-counter trading?"
What was impossible for an ordinary man might still be arranged through the British royal connections.
John Connor's reply was far from encouraging.
"If we pay a premium we could obtain a certain quantity, but never the amount Your Highness desires."
"So there is no way, then."
"Yes. Standard Oil is famous for never selling a single share on the market—except when it issues stock as payment for the companies it acquires."
"You said they pay with stock for acquisitions, correct?"
Waldemar had already conceived a method of extracting as many Standard Oil shares as he wished.
Even if you hate giving stock away, Rockefeller, once I control the oil you will come running first and beg me to accept your shares.
He instructed John Connor to begin purchasing land in Corsicana, a small farming town in Navarro County, Texas—chiefly the "prospective well sites" required for water supply, together with broad tracts of undeveloped suburban ground.
John Connor, who oversaw the New World ventures in Waldemar's name, observed that even under the best circumstances more than twenty years would be needed to recover the investment; Waldemar only smiled.
That place will become the heart of American oil development from 1894 onward.
The Corsicana field initially yielded an average of two and a half barrels a day, yet once serious drilling capital was poured in from 1898 it produced four thousand barrels daily—an immense volume capable of threatening Standard Oil's 1873 monopoly of roughly ten thousand barrels a day.
John Connor forwarded from Germany a report on the Corsicana lands acquired by Edward, the British royal property manager.
"Your Highness, the purchase results are as follows."
A little higher than hoped, yet still inside the expected range.
Waldemar paid the elevated prices no mind.
"Continue buying."
Acquisitions in the Corsicana district pressed on through December 1873.
As the outlays mounted, John Connor grew anxious that the prince might suffer real losses.
"Your Highness, the shortfall from land purchases is already considerable. Even Mr. Edward, the British royal property manager, fears this will injure both Her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess and Your Highness."
"It is quite all right. You will soon understand why I have acted this way."
Encouraged by Waldemar's serene confidence, John Connor signaled Edward to keep buying.
"His Highness requests that land purchases continue."
"Understood."
While Edward industriously gathered acreage, Waldemar received a thoroughly British royal education inside his mother's court from English tutors.
He himself far preferred the liberal schooling of the British royal house to the conservative regimen of the Prussian court.
Frankly I find it hard to believe this counts as liberal education, yet compared with the stifling Prussian style it looks a hundred times better.
Of course the fact that his English governess Emily was a beautiful unmarried young woman added a certain bonus.
English governess, English superintendent of education, English servants, English companions—Waldemar grew up in the Crown Princess's household more like a British prince than a German one.
Is that truly so terrible?
He decided that growing up English was no great misfortune.
That very upbringing largely explained why Waldemar, for all that he was called the genius of the Hohenzollerns, never won the favor of the imperial couple.
The younger sisters who shared his nursery fared little better.
"Brother Baldi, Grandfather and Grandmother never prepare gifts for us. They only remember the big brothers and the big sister."
"Pay them no mind. Big brother will look after you instead."
For reasons such as these the grandchildren of the German royal house split into two camps: the elder children raised under the stern, conservative hand of Wilhelm I and Empress Augusta, and the younger set raised under the freer influence of Crown Princess Victoria.
Waldemar and the little ones never received the imperial couple's affection, yet they monopolized the love of the Crown Prince and Princess and of the British royal family on their mother's side.
Waldemar in particular, having displayed his genius, received thick presents from Queen Victoria every birthday.
If only they had been cash, I should have been even more grateful to Grandmother.
Of course neither his grandmother nor the British royal house were stingy with money. In the original history Queen Victoria left enormous bequests to her German grandchildren before she died. If even the unloved grandsons Wilhelm and Heinrich received so much, there was no need to speak of the favored Waldemar.
After finishing his appointed lessons Waldemar opened a newspaper. Reading the daily telegrams from America and scanning the German and British papers was part of his fixed routine.
While he leafed through the pages a little girl approached with careful steps and whispered shyly into his ear.
"Brother Baldi."
"What is it?"
Waldemar found his sister Princess Sophie, two years his junior, thoroughly adorable, yet he was not especially eager to play with her.
Unfortunately Princess Sophie felt otherwise.
"Tell me a story from long ago."
She treated every Hohenzollern sibling as a potential playmate, yet she especially favored Waldemar, who was close in age and easy to locate whenever the whim seized her.
"Ah."
Catching the silent plea in the eyes of the lady-in-waiting who trailed the princess, Waldemar resigned himself and launched into a rambling fairy tale.
"Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a country called Russia there lived a teacher named Vladimir Putin. That teacher loved to serve tea to his guests, and it was said the tea was so delicious that even if two people drank it and both died, no one would ever know."
"If it tastes that good I want some too."
Drink that and you die.
It is laced with radiation, after all.
Waldemar gently restrained the sparkling-eyed girl and continued.
"One day Teacher Putin received a popularity vote from the people. When the ballots were counted his approval rating stood at seventy percent."
"So seventy out of a hundred people liked him? That is wonderful, isn't it?"
"No. The turnout was one hundred forty percent, so only fifty out of a hundred actually liked him."
Princess Sophie frowned in bafflement.
"If there are a hundred people, only a hundred should vote. How can a hundred forty people vote?"
"Many Russians, just like our little princess, could not understand the situation either. At that time a man named Stalin left these words: Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. Therefore when our princess grows up, try not to be someone who casts votes, but someone who counts them—like Putin."
At her brother's instructive tale Sophie puffed out her cheeks.
"Brother's stories are pure nonsense."
She said so, yet she adored Waldemar's nonsense stories with all her heart.
"Shall I tell you another, then?"
"Yes."
Not long after he began the next tale Sophie was already asleep.
"Sophie?"
"Mm."
Waldemar had the lady-in-waiting carry away his little sister, who was drooling with her face buried in his lap.
That little brat Sophie will grow up soon enough, won't she?
The thought made him feel how swiftly time was flying.
After reincarnating I wished every day to become an adult, yet at moments like this I am not so certain.
Waldemar popped into his mouth the sweet candy Sophie had left behind.