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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Cerf:

No, not in Columbia. That money was in a savings bank.

Q:

So you didn't start to do anything with it...

Cerf:

Until I got downtown. And then it was always very small amounts, but getting my fingers wet. I was just learning about the market and making some terrible mistakes, too, I remember once there was a company called Piggly Wiggly stores, grocery stores. It was on one of those wild speculative binges, and the stock went up and up and up, and everybody knew that this was ridiculous. So a friend and I decided to go short of Piggly Wiggly, but we did it too soon. The stock went on up, and though we only had a little odd lot, we couldn't stand the strain. After it went up about 15 points, we covered. You know, the sky's the limit when you're short. Piggly Wiggly collapsed soon thereafter. But it was too late for us!

But, at any rate, here I was thinking of buying a seat on the Exchange. I had been told I would be made a junior partner if I did.

At this point Richard Simon comes into the picture very strongly, because when I got out of college and went down to Wall Street, I was the one who loved books and had read them all the time and was editor of Jester. Dick Simon never read ten books through in his entire life, I'm sure, but he got a job with a publisher. I don't know how it came about, but suddenly he was working for Boni and Liveright as a salesman learning the business. And every time I met him, I would rage





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