Just about every novel I really like is based on the story of someone, usually a young man, who goes to the big city or some other scary place and then returns. On his trip he learns about himself and the author teaches the reader something about a place the reader's probably never been either.
Think of Tom Jones, Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby. When most readers in England were middle or lower class and lived in farm country, Fielding taught them what the upper class of big city life in London was like. Few Americans ever went to sea in whaling ships, but that industry was as important in its time as steel mills would be later. Melville tells you how to fish for whales, but first he describes how the financing of whalers was accomplished. A whaler was about as big a percentage of the GNP as a steel mill would be later, so that was a not unimportant part of the process.
The stock market in the 20s was the main topic of conversation for a great number of middle-class Americans. Scott Fitzgerald took a successful shady market manipulator as a hero, and an honest but not very successful bond salesman as the narrator. But I like the scene where Gatsby takes Nick to lunch the first time. Gatsby is seducing Nick with his charm into re-introducing him to Daisy, whom he intends to woo with his wealth. The wheeler-dealer introduces Nick to Meyer Wolfscheim, and as Wolfscheim leaves, Gatsby remarks, "Meyer's the man who fixed the World Series." Nick is pretty well stunned and thinks that while he had talked about gamblers fixing the Series, he had never stopped to think that one person actually did it.
Fixing the World Series, and the fact that one person could do it, and the fact that until it happened all of the country had believed in the honesty of the game, leads easily back to the world of finance in which Gatsby and Wolfscheim are playing, and without which Gatsby can never hope to regain Daisy. Gatsby may be a parvenu and almost an idealist, but he certainly knows how to motivate people like Nick and Daisy, doesn't he? It is a moment that defines the 20s.
Like Nick, I've had two moments when I had the chance to observe events on which the world seemed to pivot. In late August 1969 I was running an internal consulting team at American Express. The key to the job was trying to get AM-EX's unruly young grad student recruits to understand they had to show up for work on time and to get the work done. I was 29 and not really a child of the 60s. My crew was about five years younger -- but the difference was a whole generation.
"Marty" was one of the nicest of my crew, but also one of the loosest, always late, always an excuse. One Monday morning I got a call saying he couldn't make it to work because he was stuck at a music festival. I had had it and docked him half a week's pay. I'd never heard of Woodstock, N.Y. I later found it was an unincorporated town in the southern Catskills, a quiet year-round resort, and an artists' colony. There were dairy, poultry, and fruit farms. But it would never have been part of history if it were not for Marty, 400,000 or so of his fellow music enthusiasts, two brothers named Roberts, and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair which overran Max Yasgur's farm near Bethel, N.Y.
Well, the mythical Gatsby knew the fictional Wolfscheim, but I can drop a name or two myself, and a real living man who later became my friend (Jack Gillen) was the man who financed the Woodstock Music Festival. Jack was a banker, and the two original promoters were a pair of young brothers named Roberts. They had good reputations, good collateral for their loan, and Jack's bank did the financing. No one could have forecast that the crowd would be as big as it turned out to be. The Roberts had two partners, also children of the 60s. When they saw the crowd was so big they just tore down the gates and let everyone in without collecting any money or even the tickets. The unexpected crowd generated a need for doctors, toilets, food, far beyond what had been forecast. All of that cost money the Roberts had not budgeted for. A city of 400,000 appeared in Woodstock, and my employee Marty got stuck in the traffic.
Eventually it all worked out. Unexpectedly but fortunately the Roberts made enough from the sale of the movie rights to pay off Jack's bank. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez got paid. No one was hurt, and the memory most of us have is that it was a remarkably peaceful and friendly event, proving that people can get along, even in the mud, if they try.
Which brings me to today, two other brothers, a busted fence and a pretty helpful, astonishingly fast-growing community of about 450,000. I won't mention the two other brothers by name (frankly they get too much press anyway) but their last name begins with G. AOL is, as we all know, the largest provider of Internet access in the world. They have 8 million subscribers, provide access to the Internet 220 million times a day and (my favorite statistic) handle 10 million pieces of E-mail a day, more than FEDEX, UPS and the Postal Service of the Principality of Monaco combined.
Well the two G brothers started a stock discussion which is now visited by about 450,000 accounts a month between AOL and the Net. Remember the aerial photographs of Woodstock? That's fewer people than are talking about stocks on the Motley Fool this month. Last month the AOL guys pulled down the ticket booths and let everyone in almost for free. The access roads are jammed. And we all are in this mess trying to get everyone back to normal, though what normal is when the Fool is growing at 14.5% a month is an interesting epistemological exercise.
Anyway, this is not an excuse for bad planning or inadequate customer service, but it is a thought. AOL with its 220 million web-clicks and its 23 million stock quotes a day (243 a second) is an historic event. The Fool with its ongoing discussion of stocks among a community the size of Woodstock is an historic event. Both are far, far more important than who fixed the World Series 70 years ago. But the readers and the posters on the Motley Fool are the Joan Baez and the Bob Dylan of this performance. There are no stars -- or maybe better -- you are the stars. The astonishing thing this time is not that I know Jack Gillen, it's that I have the chance to know all of you. So I thought I'd say "Hi, gee this is a mess and I hope they fix it very soon. But isn't it pretty amazing we all got here in the first place?"
Oh, and one other thing...
Hey, Marty, if you are out there... I am sorry I docked your salary. I am beginning to know way down in my bones how truly bad being caught in a traffic jam feels.
Respectfully,
Michael Dowd
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