Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. Chapter 8. The Last Great Corner
发布时间 来源
Episode 设置
这章详细讲述了克拉伦斯·桑德斯在1923年操纵Piggly Wiggly连锁商店股票的故事，这是最后一次在全国交易的股票上出现的真正的“轧空”。文章首先以1958年发生的E. L. Bruce公司偶然的准“轧空”事件作为对比，强调了现代股票市场受到多么严格的监管，使得人为的“轧空”几乎成为不可能。
接着，本章深入探讨了“轧空”的历史以及20世纪初华尔街的金融运作，当时这类事件更为常见。康茂德·科尼利厄斯·范德比尔特的成功“轧空”，尤其是在哈莱姆铁路股票上的操作，被认为是无情操纵的例子。1901年灾难性的北方太平洋铁路“轧空”引发了全国性的恐慌，以及1920年艾伦·A·瑞恩对斯图茨汽车公司的“轧空”失败，进一步说明了此类计划的潜在风险和后果。
克拉伦斯·桑德斯是Piggly Wiggly连锁商店的创始人，他被描述为一个来自田纳西州孟菲斯的浮夸、白手起家的人，善于宣传，喜欢炫耀财富，比如他那座未完工的“粉红宫殿”。尽管他取得了成功，桑德斯却有一个致命的缺点：他坚持认为自己是个“乡巴佬”，这常常导致他做出幼稚的决定。
Piggly Wiggly的“轧空”起因于几家以相同名称运营的小公司进入破产管理程序，这为做空Piggly Wiggly Stores Incorporated的股票创造了机会。卖空者散布母公司即将倒闭的谣言，压低了股价，促使桑德斯发起反击。
最初，桑德斯的目标只是为了支撑Piggly Wiggly的股价。他从一群南方银行家那里获得了一笔1000万美元的贷款，并聘请了著名投机商杰西·L·利弗莫尔担任他的幕僚长。桑德斯开始积极购买Piggly Wiggly的股票，抬高了股价，令卖空者感到不安。他那措辞激烈的报纸广告，抨击华尔街赌徒，进一步激化了局势。
随着桑德斯购买攻势的加强，有传言称Piggly Wiggly在芝加哥被“轧空”了。尽管纽约证券交易所否认了这一点，但这种可能性似乎启发了桑德斯，促使他采取了一种独特的策略。他以每股55美元的价格向公众出售5万股Piggly Wiggly股票，即使当时该股票的交易价格更高。这似乎慷慨得有些愚蠢，但其中却有玄机。
桑德斯将股票销售设计为分期付款，首付25美元，之后分三期付款。在最终付款之前，他保留股票的所有权，从而阻止了买家出售股票，补充市场流通量。这种非正统的做法让利弗莫尔都感到不确定。
最终，利弗莫尔退出了Piggly Wiggly的运作，他对桑德斯的策略以及可能引发的市场崩盘感到不安。桑德斯没有被吓倒，继续实施他的计划。1923年3月20日，他设下的陷阱启动了，他要求交付他所有的Piggly Wiggly股票。由于几乎所有可用的股票都掌握在他的手中，卖空者发现自己被逼到了绝境。
股价飙升，一度达到124美元，之后纽约证券交易所介入。由于担心北方太平洋铁路恐慌重演，管理委员会暂停了Piggly Wiggly的交易，并延长了卖空者的交割期限。
延长交割期限对桑德斯的“轧空”是灾难性的。卖空者获得了更多的时间，得以从“场外”市场的私人投资者那里找到股票。由于无法以250美元的价格出售Piggly-Wiggly，桑德斯不得不降至100美元。
桑德斯债台高筑，手中握有大量股票，被迫辞去Piggly Wiggly Stores总裁的职务。他宣布破产，但他那不屈不挠的创业精神依然存在。他继续创办新的连锁超市，但没有取得同样的成功。桑德斯于1953年去世，当时他仍在经营Kedusal超市。尽管他在操纵股市的尝试中失败了，但克拉伦斯·桑德斯仍然是华尔街和美国商业史上一个不朽的人物。
This chapter details the story of Clarence Saunders and the last real corner in a nationally traded stock, Piggly Wiggly Stores, in 1923. It begins by highlighting the more recent, accidental near-corner of the E. L. Bruce Company in 1958 as a point of comparison, emphasizing how regulated modern stock markets have become, making intentional corners virtually impossible.
The chapter then delves into the history of corners and the financial machinations of Wall Street in the early 20th century, where such events were more common. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's successful corners, particularly in Harlem Railway stock, are cited as examples of ruthless manipulation. The disastrous 1901 Northern Pacific corner, which triggered a national panic, and Alan A. Ryan's failed Stutz Motor Company corner in 1920 further illustrate the potential risks and consequences of such schemes.
Clarence Saunders, the founder of Piggly Wiggly Stores, is introduced as a flamboyant, self-made man from Memphis, Tennessee, with a knack for publicity and a penchant for extravagant displays of wealth, like his unfinished "Pink Palace." Despite his success, Saunders possessed a tragic flaw: his insistence on viewing himself as a "hick," which often led to naive decisions.
The Piggly Wiggly corner arose when several smaller companies operating under the same name went into receivership, creating an opportunity for a bear raid on Piggly Wiggly Stores Incorporated stock. Short sellers, spreading rumors of the parent company's impending failure, drove the stock price down, prompting Saunders to launch a counter-offensive.
Initially, Saunders' goal was simply to support the price of Piggly Wiggly stock. He secured a $10 million loan from a group of Southern bankers and enlisted the help of Jesse L. Livermore, a renowned speculator, as his chief of staff. Saunders began buying Piggly Wiggly shares aggressively, driving the price up and unnerving the short sellers. His colorful newspaper advertisements, lambasting Wall Street gamblers, further fueled the situation.
As Saunders' buying campaign intensified, rumors emerged that Piggly Wiggly was cornered in Chicago. Though the New York Stock Exchange denied it, the possibility seems to have inspired Saunders, leading him to a unique strategy. He offered 50,000 shares of Piggly Wiggly stock to the public at $55 a share, even though the stock was trading at a higher price. This seemed like generosity to the point of folly, but there was a catch.
Saunders structured the stock sale on an installment plan, with a $25 down payment and three subsequent installments. He retained possession of the stock certificates until the final payment, preventing buyers from selling the shares and replenishing the floating supply. This unorthodox approach left even Livermore uncertain.
Eventually, Livermore bowed out of the Piggly Wiggly operation, uncomfortable with Saunders' tactics and the potential for a market crash. Undeterred, Saunders proceeded with his plan. On March 20th, 1923, he sprung the trap, calling for delivery of all his Piggly Wiggly stock. With almost every available share under his control, the short sellers found themselves squeezed.
The stock price soared, reaching $124 before the New York Stock Exchange intervened. Fearing a repeat of the Northern Pacific panic, the governing committee suspended trading in Piggly Wiggly and extended the short sellers' delivery deadline.
The extension of the deadline was catastrophic for Saunders' corner. Short sellers, with more time, were able to find shares from private investors in the "over-the-counter" market. Deprived of the opportunity to sell Piggly-Wiggly for $250, Saunders had to reduce to $100.
Saunders, deeply in debt and encumbered with a mountain of stock, was forced to resign as president of Piggly Wiggly Stores. He declared bankruptcy, but his entrepreneurial spirit remained unbroken. He went on to start new grocery chains, though without the same level of success. Saunders died in 1953, still working on the Kedusal grocery store. Despite failing in his attempt at cornering the stock market, Clarence Saunders remains an enduring figure in the history of Wall Street and American business.
中英文字稿 
第八章：最后的伟大拐角
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Chapter 8. The Last Great Corner
在1958年的春季到仲夏之间，美国领先的硬木地板制造商E.L. Bruce公司的普通股票价格从每股不到17美元飙升至每股190美元。这个惊人的上涨过程最终达到了疯狂的顶点——股票在一天之内竟然上涨了100美元。这种情况已经在市场中消失了很久。然而，更令人担忧的是，这次上涨似乎与美国公众对新地板的需求毫无关系。令几乎所有相关人士感到震惊，甚至可能包括一些持有Bruce股票的人，这次股票飙升完全是因为一种股票市场上的技术情况，称为“逼仓”。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Between spring and midsummer 1958, the common stock of the E. L. Bruce Company, the nation's leading maker of hardwood floors, moved from a low of just under $17 a share to a high of $190 a share. This startling, even alarming rise was made in an ascending scale that was climaxed by a frantic crescendo in which the price went up $100 a share in a single day. Nothing of the sort had happened for a generation. Furthermore, and even more alarming, the rise did not seem to have the slightest bid of relation to any sudden hunger on the part of the American public for new hardwood floors. To the consternation of almost everyone concerned, conceivably including even some of the holders of Bruce stock, it seemed to be entirely the result of a technical stock market situation called a corner.
除了像1929年那样的总体恐慌之外，股票市场中最激烈和引人注目的事件就是“逼空”。在19世纪和20世纪初期，“逼空”曾多次威胁到国家经济的稳定。然而，布鲁斯公司的情况并没有这样的威胁。首先，布鲁斯公司相对于整个经济体来说规模太小，即便其股票出现剧烈波动，也难以对整个国家产生重大影响。此外，布鲁斯逼空事件是意外的，是公司控制权争夺的副产品，而非大多数历史上“逼空”那样经过精心策划的操控。最后，这次事件最终并不是真正的“逼空”，而只是接近“逼空”。到了九月份，布鲁斯公司的股票平静下来，并稳定在一个合理的水平。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
With the exception of a general panic, such as a curd in 1929, a corner is the most drastic and spectacular of old developments that can occur in the stock market. And more than once in the 19th and early 20th centuries, corners had threatened to wreck the national economy. The Bruce situation never threatened to do that. For one thing, the Bruce Company was so small in relation to the economy as a whole that even the wildest gyrations in its stock could hardly have had much national effect. For another, the Bruce Corner was accidental, the byproduct of a fight for corporate control, rather than the result of calculated manipulations as most of the historic corners had been. Finally, this one eventually turned out to be not a true corner at all, but only a near thing. In September, Bruce stock quieted down and settled at a reasonable level.
不过，这次事件唤起了人们的记忆。在那些经历过经典风波、或者至少见证最后一波的顽固老华尔街人士心中，这些回忆或许还带着些许怀旧之情。1922年6月，纽约证券交易所开始上市一家名为Pigli Wiggly Stores的公司。这是一家连锁自助超市，主要分布在美国南部和西部，总部位于孟菲斯。此时，华尔街正处于那个金碧辉煌十年中最具戏剧性的金融战之一的舞台上。在联邦政府监管不力的情况下，操盘手们通过操控市场来谋取私利和打击敌人，华尔街时常一片混乱。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But the incident served to stir up memories. Some of them perhaps tinged with nostalgia among those flinty old Wall Streeters who had been around to see the classic corners, or at least the last of them. In June of 1922, the New York Stock Exchange began listing the shares of a corporation called Pigli Wiggly Stores. A chain of retail self-service markets situated mostly in the south and west, with headquarters in Memphis, and the stage was set for one of the most dramatic financial battles of that gaudy decade when Wall Street, only negligently watched over by the federal government, was frequently sent reeling by the machinations of operators seeking to enrich themselves and destroy their enemies.
在这个著名战役的戏剧性元素中，这场在那个时代如此受推崇的战役，以至于媒体仅称其为“Pigli危机”，其中一个亮点就是英雄的个性——或者在一些人眼中是反派的特质。他是一个刚踏入华尔街的新人，一个乡下小子，公开挑战纽约那些油滑的投机者，同时赢得了很大一部分美国乡村居民的支持与喝彩。他就是来自孟菲斯的克拉伦斯·桑德斯，一个41岁，丰满、整洁、英俊的男子，他在家乡已经有了一定的传奇色彩，主要是因为他在那里为自己修建的一座房子。这座被称为“粉宫”的建筑，规模宏大，外面覆有佐治亚州的粉色大理石，围绕着一个令人敬畏的白色大理石罗马中庭建造。根据桑德斯的说法，这座建筑可以屹立千年。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Among the theatrical aspects of this particular battle, a battle so celebrated in its time that headline writers referred to it simply as the Pigli Crisis, was the personality of the hero, or as some people sought the villain, who was a newcomer to Wall Street, a country boy sitting out defiantly amid the cheers of a good part of rural America to lay the slick manipulators of New York by the heels. He was Clarence Saunders of Memphis, a plump, neat, handsome man of 41, who was already something of a legend in his hometown, chiefly because of a house he was putting up there for himself. Called the Pink Palace, it was an enormous structure, faced with pink Georgia marble, and built around an awe-inspiring white marble Roman atrium, and according to Saunders, it would stand for a thousand years.
虽然粉色宫殿尚未完工，但孟菲斯之前从未见过这样的建筑。宫殿的场地计划包括一个私人高尔夫球场，因为桑德斯喜欢在不被打扰的情况下打高尔夫。即使在宫殿完工前，他和妻子以及四个孩子暂住在临时的庄园里，那里也有自己的高尔夫球场。有些人说，他对隐私的偏好是因为当地乡村俱乐部的管理者对他的态度，这些管理者抱怨说，他给出的丰厚小费对他们的球童产生了不良影响，使他们无法正常工作。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Unfinished though it was, the Pink Palace was like nothing Memphis had ever seen before. Its grounds were to include a private golf course, since Saunders liked to do his golfing in seclusion. Even the makeshift estate where he and his wife and four children were camping out, pending completion of the palace, had its own golf course. Some people said that his preference for privacy was induced by the attitude of the local country club governors, who complained that he had corrupted their entire supply of caddies by the grandeur of his tips.
桑德斯于1919年创办了Pigly Wiggly商店，他具备许多美国浮夸企业家的典型特征，例如可疑的慷慨、吸引公众注意的本领、对炫耀的热爱等等。但他也有一些不那么常见的特质，尤其是在言谈和写作中展现出的非凡生动风格，以及一种他可能意识到或未意识到的喜剧天赋。然而，和许多伟人一样，他也有一个弱点，一个悲剧性的缺陷。这就是他坚持把自己看作土包子、傻瓜和冤大头，有时候在这种自我认知中，他真的成了这三者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Saunders, who had founded the Pigly Wiggly Stores in 1919, had most of the standard traits of the flamboyant American promoters. Suspect generosity, a knack for attracting publicity, love of ostentation, and so on. But he also had some much less common traits, notably a remarkably vivid style, both in speech and writing, and a gift of which he may or may not have been aware for comedy. But like so many great men before him he had a weakness, a tragic flaw. It was that he insisted on thinking of himself as a hick, a boob, and a sucker, and in doing so he sometimes became all three.
这个不太可能的人物就是设计了最后一次全国性股票逼空行动的人。在他的鼎盛时期，逼空就像是一场游戏，一场高风险的赌博游戏，简单直接，具备了许多扑克游戏的特征。逼空是华尔街无休止的竞赛中的一个阶段，比赛双方是看涨的"牛"，他们希望股票价格上涨，以及看跌的"熊"，他们希望股票价格下跌。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This unlikely fellow was the man who engineered the last real corner in a nationally traded stock. The game of corner, for in his heyday it was a game, a high-stakes gambling game, pure and simple, embodying a good many of the characteristics of poker, was one phase of the endless Wall Street contest between bulls who want the price of a stock to go up and bears who want it to go down.
当股市行情处于角力状态时，多头的基本操作方法自然是购买股票，而空头则是出售股票。通常情况下，平均而言，空头并不实际持有正在交易的股票，因此他们会采用常见的做空方式。进行做空交易时，交易会在卖方通过经纪人以适当的利率借入股票后得以完成。由于经纪人只是代理人而非股票的直接所有者，他们也需要自己去借入股票。经纪人通过从投资公司流通的股票中获取这些股票，这些股票包括个人投资者留在某些公司用于交易目的的股票，被国家和信托持有并在特定条件下可供交易的股票，等等。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When a game of corner was underway, the bull's basic method of operation was, of course, to buy stock, and the bears was to sell it. Since the average bear didn't own any of the stock issue in contest, he would resort to the common practice of selling short. When a short sale is made, the transaction is consummated with stock that the seller has borrowed at a suitable rate of interest from a broker. Since brokers are merely agents and not outright owners, they in turn must borrow the stock themselves. They do this by tapping the floating supply of stock that is in constant circulation among investment houses, stock that private investors have left with one house or another for trading purposes, stock that is owned by states and trusts and has been released for action under certain prescribed conditions and so on.
本质上，流通供应由某公司中可用于交易的所有股票组成，这些股票并没有被锁在保险箱里或藏在床垫中。尽管这些股票是流通的，但其数量是被严格追踪的。做空者从经纪人那里借来一千股时，他知道自己背上了一笔无法改变的债务。他希望的是股价会下跌，这样他就能以优惠的价格买回所欠的1000股，还清债务并赚取差价。他面临的风险是，出于某种原因，借出股票的人可能会在股价高涨的时候要求他归还这1000股。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In essence, the floating supply consists of all the stock in a particular corporation that is available for trading and is not emured in a safe deposit box or encased in a mattress. Though the supply floats, it is scrupulously kept track of. The short seller, borrowing, say, a thousand shares from his broker, knows that he has incurred an immutable debt. What he hopes, the hope that keeps him alive, is that the market price of the stock will go down, enabling him to buy the thousand shares he owes at a bargain rate, pay off his debt and pocket the difference. What he risks is that the lender, for one reason or another, may demand that he deliver up his thousand borrowed shares at a moment when their market price is at a high.
这时，他逐渐领悟到华尔街古老谚语中残酷的真相。那句谚语说：卖出自己没有的东西，就必须再买回来，否则就会进监狱。在能够操纵市场时，空头卖家的心更加不安，因为他总是在隐蔽的情况下操作，只通过代理人进行交易。他永远不知道买入他股票的人的身份，这可能是即将对他展开攻势的人；也不知道他借来的股票的实际拥有者是谁，这个人可能会从背后发起攻击。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then the grinding truth of the old Wall Street jingle is born in upon him. He who sells what isn't his and must buy it back or go to prison. And in the days when corners were possible, the short seller's sleep was further disturbed by the fact that he was operating behind blank walls, dealing only with agents. He never knew either the identity of the purchaser of his stock, a prospective cornerer, or the identity of the owner of the stock he had borrowed, the same prospective cornerer attacking from the rear.
尽管有时被批评为投机者的工具，但卖空在全国所有交易所中仍以一种严格受限的形式被允许。在不受限制的情况下，卖空曾经是逼空游戏中的标准策略。当一群空头组织严密地进行卖空行动时，他们常常通过散布有关目标股票所属公司的负面谣言来助推自己的目标。这种操作被称为空头袭击。多头的最强有力，但当然也是最冒险的对策是尝试逼空。只有很多交易者进行卖空的股票才能被逼空。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Although it is sometimes condemned as being the tool of the speculator, short selling is still sanctioned in a severely restricted form on all of the nation's exchanges. In its unfettered state, it was the standard gambit in the game of corner. The situation would be set up when a group of bears would go on a well organized spree of short selling and would often help their cause alone by spreading rumors that the company back of the stock in question was on its last legs. This operation was called a bear raid. The bull's most formidable, but of course riskiest counter move, was to try for a corner. Only a stock that many traders were selling short could be cornered.
一种股票正处于真正的熊市袭击中，这种情况是理想的。在这种情况下，试图操控市场的人会尝试买下投资机构持有的流通股票以及足够数量的私有股份，从而将空头逼入绝境。如果尝试成功，当他要求做空者归还借来的股票时，这些空头只能从他这里购买，而且他们必须接受他任意开的价格。理论上，他们唯一的其他选择就是因为无法履行义务而破产或坐牢。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A stock that was in the throes of a real bear raid was ideal. In a latter situation, the would-be cornerer would attempt to buy up the investment houses floating supply of the stock and enough of the privately held shares to freeze out the bears. If the attempt succeeded, when he called for the short sellers to make good the stock they had borrowed, they could buy it from no one but him, and they would have to buy it at any price he chose to ask. Their only alternatives, at least theoretically, being to go into bankruptcy or to jail for failure to meet their obligations.
在过去金融界惊心动魄的巨大斗争中，在亚当·斯密的幽灵仍微笑看着华尔街的年代，操纵市场角落的情况相当常见，并且往往极为惨烈，数以百计的无辜旁观者，以及那些陷入斗争的主角，都在这场财务厮杀中遭受重大损失。历史上最著名的市场操纵者之一是被称为“老海盗”的康涅狄格·范德比尔特，他在1860年代不止三次成功地操纵了市场。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the old days of titanic financial death struggles, when Adam Smith's ghost still smiled on Wall Street, corners were fairly common and were often extremely sanguinary, with hundreds of innocent bystanders, as well as the embattled principals getting their financial heads lop off. The most famous corner in history was that celebrated old pirate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who engineered no less than three successful corners during the 1860s.
他在哈莱姆铁路股票上的经典操作很可能是这样的：他秘密购入了所有能买到的股票，同时散布关于公司即将破产的虚假谣言，以吸引卖空者上钩。他成功设下了一个天衣无缝的陷阱。最终，他以一副好像在帮他们避免入狱的姿态，向被逼入绝境的卖空者提供了每股179美元的股票，而当初他购买这些股票的价格只是这个数字的一小部分。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Probably his classic job was in the stock of the Harlem Railway. I didn't of secretly buying up all its available shares, while simultaneously circulating a series of untruthful rumors of imminent bankruptcy to lure the short sellers in, he achieved an airtight trap. Finally, with the air of a man doing them a favor by saving them from jail, he offered the cornered shorts at $179 a share, the stock he had bought up at a small fraction of that figure.
1901年，北太平洋铁路公司的股票经历了一个极其糟糕的市场逼仓。这场逼仓迫使大量做空北太平洋股票的投资者急需资金来弥补损失，他们因此抛售了大量其他股票，导致了一场具有全球影响力的全国性恐慌。接下来，一个大规模的逼仓事件发生在1920年。艾伦·A·瑞安（Alan A. Ryan）为了打击他在纽约证券交易所的敌人，试图操控备受追捧的斯图茨汽车公司（Stutz Motor Company）股票，而这家公司以生产斯图茨熊猫猫（Stutz Bearcat）汽车而闻名。瑞安成功实现了对斯图茨股票的控盘，迫使股票交易所的卖空者遭遇了资产紧缩。但最终瑞安自己也陷入了麻烦。证券交易所暂停了对斯图茨股票的交易，随之而来的是漫长的诉讼，最后瑞安在这场事件中财务破产。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The most generally disastrous corner was that of 1901 in the stock of Northern Pacific. To raise the huge quantities of cash they needed to cover themselves, the Northern Pacific shorts sold so many other stocks as to cause a national panic with worldwide repercussions. The next to last great corner occurred in 1920, when Alan A. Ryan, a son of the legendary Thomas Fortune Ryan, in order to harass his enemies in the New York Stock Exchange, sought to corner the stock of the Stutz Motor Company, makers of the renowned Stutz Bearcat. Ryan achieved his corner and the stock exchange short sellers were duly squeezed, but Ryan, it turned out, had a bear cat by the tail. The stock exchange suspended Stutz dealings. Lengthy litigation followed, and Ryan came out of the affair financially ruined.
在那个时候和其他时候一样，逼空游戏常常因为游戏规则的争议而面临困境。这种复杂情况也困扰着其他游戏。1930年代的改革立法通过禁止任何故意打压股票的卖空行为，以及其他导致逼仓的操控，几乎使得这种游戏不复存在。如今，当华尔街人士提到逼空时，他们指的是Broad街和Wall街的交汇处。在美国股市中，现在只有像Bruce事件那样的意外逼仓或接近逼仓是可能的。克拉伦斯·桑德斯是最后一个有意参与这类游戏的人。了解他的人对他有不同的评价，有人认为他是一个充满无限想象力和活力的人。而有人则觉得他傲慢、自负，极度自以为是。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then, as at other times, the game of corner suffered from a difficulty that plagues other games, post-mortem disputes about the rules. The reform legislation of the 1930s, by outlawing any short selling that is specifically intended to demoralize the stock, as well as other manipulations leading toward corners, virtually ruled the game out of existence. Wall Streeters who speak of the corner these days are referring to the intersection of broad and wall. In US stock markets, only an accidental corner, or near corner, like the Bruce one, is now possible. Clarence Saunders was the last intentional player of the game. Saunders has been variously characterized by people who knew him well as, a man of limitless imagination and energy. Arrogant and conceited is all get out.
他本质上像一个四岁的小孩在玩耍，却也是他那一代最杰出的人之一。然而，毫无疑问，即使是那些在他推广方案中亏钱的人，也相信他是诚实的化身。他于1881年出生在弗吉尼亚州阿默斯特县的一个贫穷家庭。青少年时期，他在当地杂货店打工，工资极低，每周仅有4美元，这对于那些未来的巨头们来说是踏入职场的正常待遇。他很快取得了进展，先后在田纳西州克拉克斯维尔和孟菲斯的批发杂货公司工作。20多岁时，他组织了一家名为联合商店的小型零售食品连锁店。在经营几年后，他将其出售，然后单独做了一段时间的批发商。1919年，他开始建立一家名为"Pigly Wiggly Stores"的自助零售市场连锁店，这个名字让人觉得十分有趣。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Essentially a four-year-old child playing at things, and one of the most remarkable men of his generation. But there is no doubt that even many of the people who lost money on his promotional schemes believed that he was the soul of honesty. He was born in 1881 to a poor family in Amherst County, Virginia, and in his teens was employed by the local grocer at the pittance that is orthodox for future tycoons taking on their first jobs, in his case $4 a week. Moving ahead fast, he went on to a wholesale grocery company in Clarksville, Tennessee, and then to one in Memphis, and while still in his twenties, organized a small retail food chain called United Stores. He sold that after a few years, did a stint as a wholesale grocer on his own, and then in 1919 began to build a chain of retail self-service markets, to which he gave the engaging name of Pigly Wiggly Stores.
当一位孟菲斯的商业伙伴曾经问他为什么选择这个名字时，他回答道："这样人们就会像你刚才那样问我。" 这些商店发展得如此兴旺，以至于到1922年秋天时，它们的数量已经超过了1200家。其中大约650家是由桑德斯的"小猪威利商店公司"全资拥有。其余的是独立拥有，但它们的店主向母公司支付使用其专利经营方法的版权费。在1923年，那时杂货店通常是穿白围裙的店员服务，常常用手指按着秤，而这种方法让《纽约时报》感到惊讶。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When a Memphis business associate once asked him why he had chosen that name, he replied, so people would ask me what you just did. The stores flourished so exuberantly that by the autumn of 1922 there were over twelve hundred of them. Of these, some 650 were owned outright by Saunders, Pigly Wiggly Stores Incorporated. The rest were independently owned, but their owners paid royalties to the parent company for the right to adopt its patented method of operations. In 1923, an era when a grocery store meant clerks in white aprons, and often a thumb on the scale, this method was described by the New York Times with astonishment.
顾客在Pigly Wiggly超市里，一条又一条走道地闲逛，走道两边是货架。顾客选好商品后，在离开时付款。虽然桑德斯当时没有意识到，但他已经发明了超级市场。随着Pigly Wiggly Stores Incorporated的快速发展，其股票被允许在纽约证券交易所上市。这一事件发生后的六个月内，Pigly Wiggly的股票已经被认为是可靠但不刺激情的股息支付者。就像投机者对桥牌游戏的尊敬而冷淡的态度一样，它是那种被称为“鳏寡孤独股票”的类型。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The customer, in a Pigly Wiggly store, rambles down aisle after aisle on both sides of which are shelves. The customer collects his purchases and pays as he goes out. Although Saunders did not know it, he had invented the supermarket. A natural concomitant of the rapid rise of Pigly Wiggly Stores Incorporated was the acceptance of its shares for listing on the New York Stock Exchange, and within six months of that event, Pigly Wiggly Stock had become known as dependable if unsensational, dividend payer. The kind of widows and orphan stock that speculators regard with the respectful indifference that crapshooters feel about bridge.
然而，这种声誉并未持续太久。1922年11月，在纽约、新泽西和康涅狄格运营连锁杂货店的几家名为Pigly Wiggly的小公司倒闭并进入破产接管程序。这些公司与桑德斯的业务几乎没有任何关联，他只是将其公司的响亮名称的使用权出售给这些公司，向他们出租了一些专利设备，然后就与他们没有进一步关系了。但当这些独立运营的Pigly Wiggly失败后，一群身份从未揭露过的股市操作者，看到了一个千载难逢的空头机会，并通过极为保密的经纪人操纵市场。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This reputation, however, was short-lived. In November 1922, several small companies that had been operating grocery stores in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, under the name Pigly Wiggly, failed and went into receivership. These companies had scarcely any connection with Saunders' concern. He had merely sold them the right to use his firm's catchy trade name, leased them some patented equipment, and washed his hands of them. But when these independent Pigly Wiggly's failed, a group of stock market operators, whose identities never were revealed because they dealt through tight-lipped brokers, saw in the situation a heaven-sent opportunity for a bear raid.
如果个别猪利维格利商店经营不善，他们推测，就可以传播谣言，使得不知情的公众误以为母公司也要倒闭。为了加强这种信念，他们开始大量做空猪利维格利的股票，以压低股价。受此压力影响，这只股票的价格很快下跌。在短短几周内，其股价从年初每股约50美元降到了40美元以下。就在这时，桑德斯向媒体宣布，他将通过一场买入行动来打败华尔街专业人士的策略。桑德斯本人并不是专业人士。事实上，在猪利维格利上市之前，他从未拥有过纽约证券交易所上市的任何股票。几乎没有理由相信，在他开始买入行动时，他有意图试图操控市场。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If individual Pigly Wiggly Stores were failing, they reasoned, then rumors could be spread that would lead the uninformed public to believe that the parent firm was failing too. To further this belief, they began briskly selling Pigly Wiggly short in order to force the price down. The stock yielded readily to their pressure, and within a few weeks its price, which earlier in the year had hovered around $50 a share, dropped to below $40. At this point, Saunders announced to the press that he was about to beat the Wall Street professionals at their own game with a buying campaign. He was by no means a professional himself. In fact, prior to the listing of Pigly Wiggly, he had never owned a single share of any stock quoted on the New York Stock Exchange. There is little reason to believe that at the beginning of his buying campaign, he had any intention of trying for a corner.
看起来更有可能的是，他所宣布的动机——支持股票价格以保护他自己和其他Pigly Wiggly股票持有者的投资——是他唯一的想法。无论如何，他以特有的热情去对抗空头交易者，除了自有资金外，还从孟菲斯、纳什维尔、新奥尔良、查塔努加和圣路易斯的一群银行家那里借了大约1000万美元。传说中，他将超过1000万美元的大额钞票塞进一个手提箱，坐上了开往纽约的火车，并且口袋里塞满了不适合放进手提箱的现金，准备好在华尔街展开战斗。他在多年后强烈否认了这件事，坚称自己一直待在孟菲斯，通过电报和长途电话指挥着对华尔街经纪人的行动。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It seems more likely that his announced motive, the unassailable one of supporting the price of the stock in order to protect his own investment and that of other Pigly Wiggly stockholders, was all he had in mind. In any case, he took on the bears with characteristic zest, supplementing his own funds with a loan of about $10 million from a group of bankers in Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Chattanooga and St. Louis. Legend has it that he stuffed his $10 million plus in bills of large denomination into a suitcase, boarded a train for New York and his pockets bulging with currency that wouldn't fit in the suitcase, marched on Wall Street, ready to do battle. He emphatically denied this in later years, insisting that he had remained in Memphis and masterminded his campaign by means of telegrams and long distance telephone calls to various Wall Street brokers.
无论他当时身在何处，他聚集了大约20名核心经纪人，其中包括杰西·L·利弗莫尔，后者担任他的幕僚长。利弗莫尔是本世纪最著名的美国投机商之一，当时他45岁，尽管如此，他仍偶尔会被讽刺地称为数十年前获得的绰号——华尔街的"少年赌徒"。由于桑德斯普遍认为华尔街人士，尤其是投机商是寄生虫般的恶棍，只想着打压他的股票，因此他决定与利弗莫尔结盟可能是出于无奈，只是为了将这位敌方首领纳入自己的阵营。在与空头的对抗的第一天，桑德斯通过他的经纪人面具，购买了33,000股Pigly Wiggly公司的股票，这些股票大多来自做空者。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Wherever he was at the time, he did round up a core of some 20 brokers among them Jesse L. Livermore, who served as his chief of staff. Livermore, one of the most celebrated American speculators of this century, was then 45 years old, but was still occasionally and derisively referred to by the nickname he had earned a couple of decades earlier, the boy plunger of Wall Street. Since Saunders regarded Wall Streeters in general and speculators in particular as parasitic scoundrels intent only on battering down his stock, it seemed likely that his decision to make an ally of Livermore was a reluctant one, arrived at simply with the idea of getting the enemy chieftain into his own camp. On the first day of his duel with the bears, Saunders, operating behind his mask of brokers, bought 33,000 shares of Pigly Wiggly, mostly from the short sellers.
在一周内，他将总数提升到了105,000股，超过了现有20万股的一半。同时，尽管有所暴露，他开始在南部和西部报纸上刊登一系列广告，激烈且生动地表达自己对华尔街的看法。在其中一则广告中，他质问道：“难道投机者要统治一切吗？”他说，“他骑着白马，虚张声势是他的护甲，掩盖的是一颗懦弱的心。他的头盔是欺骗，马刺随着背信的脚步作响，马蹄声如雷鸣般带来毁灭。良好的商业难道要逃走？难道要颤抖于恐惧之下？难道要成为投机者的战利品？”同时，在华尔街上，利弗莫尔继续购买Pigly Wiggly的股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Within a week, he had brought the total up to 105,000, more than half of the 200,000 shares outstanding. Meanwhile, ventilating his emotions at the cost of tipping his hand, he began running a series of advertisements in which he vigorously and pungently told the readers of southern and western newspapers what he thought of Wall Street. "Shall the gambler rule?" he demanded in one of these effusions. "On a white horse, he rides. Bluff is his coat of mail, and thus shielded is a yellow heart. His helmet is deceit. His spurs clink with treachery, and the hoof beats of his horse thunder destruction. Shall good business flee? Shall it tremble with fear? Shall it be the loot of the speculator?" On Wall Street, Livermore went on buying Pigly Wiggly.
桑德斯的购入活动效果显著。到了1923年1月下旬，这一活动已将股票价格推升到60美元以上，为历史新高。随后，为了加剧卖空者的紧张情绪，来自芝加哥（同样有该股票交易）的消息称，Pigly Wiggly股票被控盘，卖空者若想归还他们借来的股票，就必须向桑德斯寻求补给。纽约证券交易所立即否认了这些报道，宣布Pigly Wiggly的流通股充足。然而，这些报道可能给了桑德斯启发，随之而来的可能就是他在2月中旬作出的一项令人好奇且乍看之下令人费解的举动。在一则广为传播的报纸广告中，他向公众提供出售五万股Pigly Wiggly股票，价格为每股55美元。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The effectiveness of Saunders' buying campaign was readily apparent. By late January of 1923, it had driven the price of the stock up over sixty, or higher than ever before. Then, to intensify the bear-raiders' jitters, reports came in from Chicago, where the stock was also traded, that Pigly Wiggly was cornered, that the short sellers could not replace the stock they had borrowed without coming to Saunders for supplies. The reports were immediately denied by the New York Stock Exchange, which announced that the floating supply of Pigly Wiggly was ample. But they may have put an idea into Saunders' head, and this, in turn, may have prompted a curious and, at first glance, mystifying move he made in mid-February. When, in another widely disseminated newspaper advertisement, he offered to sell fifty thousand shares of Pigly Wiggly stock to the public at fifty-five dollars a share.
广告中有力地指出，该股票每年派发四次股息，每次一美元，回报率超过7%。广告继续以冷静但紧迫的语气说：“这是一项快速交易，可能随时撤销，恕不另行通知。” “能够在重大交易的初期参与，是极少数人一生仅有一次的机会。” 任何对现代经济生活稍有了解的人，都会不禁思考，负责确保金融广告内容真实、客观和冷静的证券交易委员会，对广告中最后两句煽动性的措辞会有何看法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The ad pointed out, persuasively enough, that the stock was paying a dividend of a dollar four times a year, a return of more than seven percent. "This is to be a quick proposition, subject to withdrawal without prior notice," the ad went on, calmly but urgently. "To get in on the ground floor of any big proposition is the opportunity that comes to few, and then only once in a lifetime." Anyone, who is even slightly familiar with modern economic life, can scarcely help wondering what the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with seeing to it that all financial advertising is kept factual, impersonal, and unemotional, would have had to say about the hard sell in those last two sentences.
如果桑德斯的第一份股票发行广告能让美国证券交易委员会的审查员吓得脸色发白的话，那么他在四天后发布的第二份广告几乎可以让他们中风。这是一篇整版的广告，用巨大的黑色字体大声呼喊：机会，机会，它来了，它来了。你听到了吗？你在倾听吗？你理解了吗？你在等待吗？你现在就行动吗？是否有一个新的但以理出现，联盟没有吃掉他？是否有一个新的约瑟出现，使谜题变得清晰？是否有一个新的摩西诞生在新的应许之地？为什么怀疑者问道：克拉伦斯·桑德斯为何如此慷慨对待公众？最后，在明确表示他是在出售普通股而不是推销蛇油后，桑德斯重申了以每股55美元出售的提议，并解释说，他之所以如此慷慨，是因为作为一个有远见的商人，他急切地希望Piggly Wiggly被它的顾客和其他小投资者所有，而不是被华尔街的鲨鱼们掌控。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But if Saunders' first stock offering ad would have caused an SEC examiner to turn pale, his second, published four days later, might well have induced an apoplectic seizure. A full-page affair, it cried out in a huge black type. Opportunity, opportunity, it knocks, it knocks, it knocks. Do you hear? Do you listen? Do you understand? Do you wait? Do you act now? Has a new Daniel appeared and alliance eat him not? Has a new Joseph come that riddles may be made plain? Has a new Moses been born to a new promised land? Why then asks the skeptical, can Clarence Saunders be so generous to the public? After finally making it clear that he was selling common stock and not snake oil, Saunders repeated his offer to sell at $55 a share, and went on to explain that he was being so generous because, as a far-sighted businessman, he was anxious to have pigly-wiggly owned by its customers and other small investors rather than by Wall Street sharks.
对许多人来说，桑德斯的行为看起来就像慷慨到了愚蠢的地步。当时，纽约证券交易所的Pigly-Wiggly股价正逼近70美元。这让人觉得桑德斯是在给任何口袋里有55美元的人一个稳赚15美元的机会，没有风险。虽然桑德斯像新崛起的达尼尔、约瑟夫或摩西是否值得赞美是值得商榷的，但无疑机遇确实在叩门。然而，正如持怀疑态度的人可能猜到的，这其中暗藏玄机。桑德斯作为一个新手仲裁者，提出了这个听起来代价高昂且不太符合商业逻辑的报价，其实是实施了游戏中最巧妙的伎俩之一。在这个市场角逐中，最大的风险之一是，即便击败了对手，最后得到的可能只是得不偿失的胜利。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To many people, though, it appeared that Saunders was being generous to the point of folly. The price of pigly-wiggly on the New York Stock Exchange was just then pushing 70. It looked as if Saunders were handing anyone who had $55 in his pocket a chance to make $15 with no risk. The arrival of a new Daniel, Joseph, or Moses might be debatable, but opportunities certainly did seem to be knocking all right. Actually, as the skeptical must have suspected, there was a catch. In making what sounded like such a costly and un-business-like offer, Saunders, a rank-novecid corner, had devised one of the craftiest dodges ever used in the game. One of the great hazards in Corner was always that even though a player might defeat his opponents, he would discover that he had won a Puric victory.
一旦卖空者被彻底逼出市场，也就是说，"角落"（指在股市中试图控制某只股票价格的人）可能会发现，在这个过程中积累起来的大量股票，反而成了他的沉重负担。如果他一次性将所有股票抛回市场，股票价格很可能会被压低至接近于零。而如果他像桑德斯一样，为了首次进入这个游戏就不得不大量举债，那么他的债权人可能会逼迫他偿还，不仅可能收回他的所有收益，还可能将他推向破产边缘。桑德斯显然很早就意识到了这个风险，所以在角落成形后就计划在获胜前出售部分股票，而不是在之后。他面临的问题是，如何防止自己卖出的股票再度回流到市场上，从而破坏他的垄断计划。他的解决方案是把他55美元的股票以分期付款的方式出售。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Once the short sellers had been squeezed dry, that is, the Corner might find that the reams of stock had accumulated in the process, were a dead weight around his neck. By pushing it all back into the market in one shove, he would drive its price down close to zero. And if, like Saunders, he had had to borrow heavily to get into the game in the first place, his creditors could be expected to close in on him, and perhaps not only to vest him of his gains, but drive him into bankruptcy. Saunders apparently anticipated his hazard almost as soon as a corner was inside, and accordingly made plans to unload some of his stock before winning instead of afterward. His problem was to keep the stock he sold from going right back into the floating supply, thus breaking his corner, and his solution was to sell his $55 shares on the installment plan.
在他二月份的广告中，他规定公众只能通过缴付25美元的首付款来购买股票，余额再分三次支付，每次10美元，分别在6月1日、9月1日和12月1日到期。此外，更重要的是，他表示在最后一笔款项付清之前，他不会将股票证书交给买家。由于买家显然在未拿到股票证书前无法出售股票，因此这些股票无法被用于补充流通供应。这样一来，桑德斯就有时间一直到12月1日来让做空者陷入困境。尽管现在从事后诸葛亮的角度来看，桑德斯的计划很明显，但当时他的操作非常不寻常，以至于一段时间内连证券交易所的管理者和利弗莫尔本人都不太确定这位孟菲斯人到底在打什么算盘。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In his February advertisements, he stipulated that the public could buy shares only by paying $25 down and the balance in three $10 installments due June 1st, September 1st, and December 1st. In addition, and vastly more important, he said he would not turn over the stock certificates to the buyers until the final installment had been paid. Since the buyers obviously couldn't sell the certificates until they had them, the stock could not be used to replenish the floating supply, thus Saunders had until December 1st to squeeze the short sellers dry. Easy as it may be to see through Saunders' plan by hindsight, his maneuver was then so unorthodox that for a while neither the governors of the stock exchange nor Livermore himself could be quite short what the man in Memphis was up to.
股票交易所开始进行正式调查，而利弗莫尔开始变得紧张不安，但他仍继续为桑德斯的账户购买股票，并且成功地将Piglywiggly的股价推高到70以上。在孟菲斯，桑德斯则悠闲地坐在一旁观察。他暂时停止在广告中赞美Piglywiggly的股票，转而专注于赞扬苹果、柚子、洋葱、火腿和Lady Baltimore蛋糕。然而，3月初，他又发布了一则金融广告，重申他的股票报价，并邀请任何有兴趣的人来孟菲斯的办公室和他讨论。他还强调必须迅速行动，时间不多了。到了这时，很明显桑德斯在试图进行逼空，而在华尔街，不仅仅是Piglywiggly的空头开始感到不安。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The stock exchange began making formal inquiries, and Livermore began getting skittish, but he went on buying for Saunders' account, and succeeded in pushing Piglywiggly's price up well above 70. In Memphis, Saunders sat back comfortably. He temporarily ceased singing the praises of Piglywiggly stock in his ads and devoted them to eulogizing apples, grapefruit, onions, hams, and Lady Baltimore cakes. Early in March though, he ran another financial ad, repeating his stock offer and inviting any readers who wanted to discuss it with him to drop in at his Memphis office. He also emphasized that quick action was necessary, time was running out. By now it was apparent that Saunders was trying for a corner, and on Wall Street it was not only the Piglywiggly Bears who were becoming apprehensive.
最终，利弗莫尔可能是在回想1908年他试图垄断棉花市场却几乎损失了一百万美元后，实在无法再忍受下去了。他要求桑德斯来纽约面谈。根据桑德斯后来向记者描述的情况，他是在3月12日上午抵达的，两人之间存在意见分歧。桑德斯说，利弗莫尔就像一个让年轻赌徒吃瘪的人，他给我的印象是他有点担心我的财务状况，并且不愿意卷入任何市场崩盘中。会议的结果是利弗莫尔退出了猪场（Piglywiggly）的运营，只剩下桑德斯单独经营。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Finally Livermore, possibly reflecting that in 1908 he had lost almost a million dollars trying to get a corner in cotton, could stand it no longer. He demanded that Saunders come to New York and talk things over. Saunders arrived in the morning of March 12th, as he later described the meeting to reporters, there was a difference of opinion. Livermore, he said, and his tone was that of a man rather set up over having made a piker out of the boy plunger, gave me the impression that he was a little afraid of my financial situation and that he did not care to be involved in any market crash. The upshot of the conference was at Livermore bowed out of the Piglywiggly operation, leaving Saunders to run it by himself.
桑德斯然后乘火车前往芝加哥处理一些事务。在奥尔巴尼，他收到一封来自证券交易所成员的电报，这位成员是他在"白马骑士"圈子里最接近朋友的人。电报告诉他，他的行为引起了交易所内部的不少反对，并敦促他停止通过以低于交易所报价的价格出售股票来制造第二个市场。到了下一个车站，桑德斯回了一封比较不冷不热的电报。他表示，如果交易所担心可能的逼仓情况，他可以向董事会保证不必担忧，因为他每天都在提供任何所需数量的股票借贷，以维持流动供给。但他并没有说这种情况会持续多久。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Saunders then boarded a train for Chicago to attend to some business there. At Albany he was handed a telegram from a member of the stock exchange who was the nearest thing he had to a friend in the white charger and coat of mail set. The telegram informed him that his antics had provoked a great deal of head shaking in the councils of the exchange and urged him to stop creating a second market by advertising stock for sale at a price so far below the quotation on the exchange. At the next station, Saunders telegraphed back a rather unresponsive reply. If it was a possible corner the exchange was fretting about, he said, he could assure the governors that they could put their fears aside, since he himself was maintaining the floating supply by daily offering stock for loan in any amount desired. But he didn't say how long he would continue to do so.
一周后的星期一，即3月19日，桑德斯在报纸上刊登了一则广告，声称他的股票要约即将撤回。这是最后的提醒。当时，根据他事后的说法，他已经获取了Piglywiggly公司20万流通股中的1,128股，总计198,872股，其中一部分是他本人拥有的，剩下的则是他控制的，也就是他仍然持有股票证书的分期支付股票。实际上，这个数字有相当大的争议。例如，普罗维登斯有一位私人投资者就持有1,100股。不过，不可否认的是，桑德斯几乎掌握了所有可交易的Piglywiggly股票，因此成功地掌控了市场。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A week later on Monday, March 19th, Saunders ran a newspaper ad, stating that his stock offer was about to be withdrawn. This was the last call. At the time, or so he claimed afterward, he had acquired all the 1,128 of Piglywiggly's 200,000 outstanding shares, for a total of 198,872, some of which he owned and the rest of which he controlled, a reference to the installment planned shares, whose certificates he still held. Actually, this figure was open to considerable argument. There was one private investor in Providence, for instance, who alone held 1,100 shares. But there is no denying that Saunders had in his hands practically every single share of Piglywiggly then available for trading, and that he therefore had his corner.
在同一个星期一，据说桑德斯打电话给利弗莫尔，并询问他是否可以放松一下，允许他要求交付所有欠他的Piglywiggly股票，也就是说，请利弗莫尔来完成整个交易。但是利弗莫尔并不同意，据说他回答，显然认为自己已经很明智地退出了整个事件。所以第二天早晨，也就是3月20日星期二，桑德斯自己动手完成了交易。结果那天成了华尔街上最疯狂的一天之一。Piglywiggly以75.5美元开盘，比前一天的收盘价上涨了5.5美元。开盘后一小时，就传出消息，桑德斯已经要求交付他所有的Piglywiggly股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On that same Monday it is believed Saunders telephoned Livermore and asked if he would relent long enough to see the Piglywiggly project through by calling for delivery of all the shares that were owed Saunders. In other words, would Livermore please spring the trap? Nothing doing. Livermore is supposed to have replied, evidently considering himself well out of the whole affair. So the following morning, Tuesday, March 20th, Saunders sprang the trap himself. It turned out to be one of Wall Street's wilder days. Piglywiggly opened at 75 and a half, up five and a half, from the previous day's closing price. In our after the opening, Word arrived that Saunders had called for delivery of all his Piglywiggly stock.
根据交易所的规定，在这种情况下被要求的股票必须在第二天下午2点15分之前交付。但是，正如桑德斯非常清楚的那样，Piglywiggly的股票除了从他那里买之外，根本无处可得。确实，还有一些股票是由私人投资者持有的。而疯狂的空头卖家们为了让这些股票出来流通，不断地提高它们的价格。但是总体而言，Piglywiggly的交易并不多，因为市场上几乎没有多少Piglywiggly股票可以进行交易。股票交易所在进行交易的地方，变成了一个热闹的场面，三分之二的经纪人都围在那儿，一些人在叫价，但大多数人只是挤来挤去、叫喊着，只为了参与这场兴奋的局面。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
According to the rules of the exchange, stock called for under such circumstances had to be produced by 2.15 the following afternoon. But Piglywiggly, as Saunders well knew, simply wasn't to be had, except of course from him. To be sure, there were a few shares around that were still held by private investors and frantic short sellers trying to shake them loose bid their price up and up. But by and large there wasn't much actual trading in Piglywiggly, because there was so little Piglywiggly to be traded. The stock exchange post, where it was bought and sold, became the center of a mob scene, has two-thirds of the brokers on the floor clustered around it, a few of them to bid, but most of them just a push, whoop, and otherwise get in on the excitement.
绝望的卖空者在90美元买入Piglywiggly股票，然后是100美元，再到110美元。这时关于该股票有巨大盈利的报道开始流传。一位普罗维登斯的投资者，在上一年秋季时趁市场还未完全走熊时，以39美元买入了1100股。为了参与这次获利，他来到城里，并以平均105美元的价格卖出了手中的股票，然后乘坐下午的火车返回家乡，获取了超过7万美元的利润。然而，事实证明他本可以赚得更多。到了中午或稍后，Piglywiggly的股价已经升至124美元，并且似乎注定要一路飙升。然而，124美元已经是它达到的最高价。就在这个价格刚被记录下来时，市场上出现了一个传闻：交易所的管理者正在开会，考虑暂停该股票的进一步交易并推迟卖空者的交割期限。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Desperate short sellers bought Piglywiggly at 90, then at 100, then at 110. Reports of sensational profits made the rounds. The Providence investor, who had picked up his 1100 shares at 39 in the previous autumn, while the bear raid wasn't full cry, came to town to be in on the kill, unloaded his holdings at an average price of 105, and then caught an afternoon train back home, taking with him a profit of over $70,000. As it happened, he could have done even better if he had bided his time. By noon or a little after, the price of Piglywiggly had risen to 124, and it seemed destined to zoom straight through the lofty roof above the trader's heads. But 124 was as high as it went. For that figure it barely been recorded when a rumor reached the floor that the governors of the exchange were meeting to consider the suspension of further trading in the stock and the postponement of the short seller's deadline for delivery.
这一行动的效果是给空头一些时间去搜集股票，从而削弱甚至打破桑德斯的控股局面。仅仅因为这个传言，Piglywiggly的股价就跌到了82，到交易所收盘时结束了这场混乱的交易。这个传言被证实为真。营业结束后，交易所的管理委员会宣布暂停Piglywiggly的交易，并延长空头交付股票的最后期限，直到该委员会采取进一步行动。对于这一决定，没有立刻给出官方原因，但委员会的一些成员非正式地透露，如果不打破这种控股局面，他们担心会重演北太平洋的恐慌。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The effect of such action would be to give the bears time to beat the bushes for stock, and thus to weaken, if not break, Saunders' corner. On the basis of the rumor alone, Piglywiggly fell to 82, by the time the exchange's closing bell ended the chaotic session. The rumor proved to be true. After the close of business, the governing committee of the exchange announced both the suspension of trading in Piglywiggly and the extension of the short seller's delivery deadline until further action by this committee. There was no immediate official reason given for this decision, but some members of the committee unofficially let it be known that they had been afraid of a repetition of the Northern Pacific panic if the corner were not broken.
另一方面，一些不太尊重规则的旁观者倾向于怀疑，管理委员会是否因为被逼到绝境的卖空者们的可怜处境而采取行动。这些卖空者中，许多人被认为与两年前Stutz汽车案中的成员一样，是交易所的成员。尽管如此，孟菲斯的桑德斯那天晚上情绪高涨，心情豁达。毕竟，他的账面利润当时已达数百万美元。当然，问题在于他无法兑现这些利润，但他似乎对这个事实反应迟钝，或者没有充分意识到自己的地位已经被削弱。有迹象表明，他上床时心里确信，除了他个人在可恨的证券交易所制造了一个一流的困境外，他还赚了一大笔钱，并证明了一位名不见经传的南方小子如何给城里的精明人上了一课。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On the other hand, irreverent side-liners were inclined to wonder whether the governing committee had not been moved by the pitiful plight of the cornered short sellers, many of whom, as in the Stutz motorcase two years earlier, were believed to be members of the exchange. Despite all this, Saunders in Memphis was in a jubilant, expansive mood that Tuesday evening. After all, his paper profits at that moment ran to several million dollars. The hitch, of course, was that he could not realize them, but he seems to have been slow to grasp that fact, or to understand the extent to which his position had been undermined. The indications are that he went to bed convinced that, besides having personally brought about a first-class mess on the hated stock exchange, he had made himself a bundle, and had demonstrated how poor Southern Boy could teach the city slickers a lesson.
这一切一定带来了令人陶醉的感觉，但就像大多数这样的感觉一样，它并没有持续很久。到了星期三晚上，当桑德斯就"猪危机"发表首次公开讲话时，他的情绪已经变得复杂，既有困惑和挑衅，又夹杂着前一晚的胜利余韵。他在一次新闻采访中宣称，"在某种意义上，是一种威胁逼到了我的喉咙，所以我突然毫无预警地踢翻了华尔街及其一群赌徒和市场操纵者的支柱。这完全是关于我是否能生存下来，同样包括我的生意、我朋友的命运，或者我是否会失败，被指责为田纳西的笨蛋，其结果是华尔街自夸且所谓坚不可摧的力量，被精心计划和迅速行动所反驳。"
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It all must have added up to a heady sensation, but, like most such sensations, it didn't last long. By Wednesday evening, when Saunders issued his first public utterance on the pigly crisis, his mood had changed to an odd mixture of puzzlement, defiance, and a somewhat muted echo of the crowing triumph of the night before. A razor, to my throat, figuratively speaking, is why I suddenly, and without warning, kicked the pegs from under Wall Street, and its gang of gamblers and market manipulators, he declared in a press interview. It was strictly a question of whether I should survive, and likewise my business, in the fortunes of my friends, or whether I should be licked, and pointed to as a boob from Tennessee, and the consequence was that the boastful and supposedly invulnerable Wall Street powers found their methods, contraverted by well-laid plans and quick action.
桑德斯结束他的声明时阐明了他的条件。尽管股票交易所延长了最后期限，他仍然要求所有卖空股票在第二天星期四下午3点之前以每股150美元全部结算。过了这个时间，他的价格将升至250美元。结果在星期四，令桑德斯感到意外的是，只有极少数卖空者前来结算。这些人可能是无法忍受不确定性。然而，治理委员会却打破了桑德斯的计划，宣布皮格利·维格利公司的股票将被永久从交易名单中除名，并给予卖空者从原定最后期限起的整整五天时间，也就是到下周一的下午2点15分来履行其义务。身在孟菲斯的桑德斯，虽然远离事发现场，但他明白这些举措的重要性。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Saunders wound up his statement by laying down his terms. The stock exchange's deadline extension notwithstanding, he would expect settlement in full on all short stock by 3 p.m. the next day, Thursday, at $150 a share. Thereafter, his price would be $250. On Thursday, to Saunders' surprise, very few short sellers came forward to settle. Presumably, those who did couldn't stand the uncertainty. But then the governing committee kicked the pegs from under Saunders, by announcing that the stock of pigly wiggly was permanently stricken from its trading list, and that the short sellers would be given a full five days from the original deadline, that is, until 2.15 the following Monday to meet their obligations. In Memphis, Saunders, far removed from the scene that he was, could not miss the import of these moves.
他现在处于不利的一方，并且他再也无法忽视推迟卖空者最后期限这个关键问题。他在当天晚上递给记者的另一份声明中表示，据我了解，经纪人未能在指定时间通过股票交易所完成结算，就像银行无法完成结算一样。我们都知道这种银行会发生什么，银行检查员会在门上贴上 "关闭" 的标志。对于我来说，纽交所这样一个权威且强大的机构变成这样简直令人难以置信。因此，我依然相信那些根据合约应交给我的股票会以合适的方式结算。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He was now on the losing end of things, nor could he any longer fail to see that the postponement of the short seller's deadline was the vital issue. As I understand it, he said in another statement, handed to reporters that evening, the failure of a broker to meet his clearings through the stock exchange at the appointed time is the same as a bank that would be unable to meet its clearings. And all of us know what would happen to that kind of a bank. The bank examiner would have a sign stuck up on the door with the word closed. It is unbelievable to me that the august and all-powerful New York Stock Exchange is a welter. Therefore, I continue to believe that the shares of stock still do me on contracts will be settled on the proper basis.
《孟菲斯商业呼吁报》的一篇社论支持桑德斯对背叛的指责，称这看起来像是赌徒所说的“赖账”。我们希望这位“本地小子”狠狠地打败他们。碰巧的是，就在同一个星期四，"Pigly Wiggly Stores"公司的年度财务报告公布了。报告显示公司销售额、利润、流动资产等各项重要数字都较前一年大幅上升，形势非常喜人。但没有人关注这一点。此刻，公司真正的价值并不重要，重点是游戏本身。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
An editorial in the Memphis commercial appeal backed up Saunders' cry of treachery, declaring, this looks like what gamblers call welching. We hope the homeboy beats them to a frazzle. That same Thursday, by coincidence, the annual financial report of Pigly Wiggly Stores Incorporated was made public. It was a highly favorable one. Sales, profits, current assets, and all other significant figures were up sharply over the year before. But nobody paid any attention to it. For the moment, the real worth of the company was irrelevant. The point was the game.
星期五早晨，Pigly Wiggly 泡沫破裂。泡沫破裂是因为桑德斯在星期四下午3点后宣布，他预测的股价将涨到每股250美元，但却令人震惊地宣布他只接受每股100美元。桑德斯的纽约律师E.W.布拉德福德被问及为何桑德斯会突然做出这样的让步。布拉德福德勉强地回答说，桑德斯是出于慷慨。但是，很快真相就显现出来了。桑德斯之所以做出让步，是因为他别无选择。股票交易所给予的延迟让空头卖家及其经纪人有机会查看Pigly Wiggly股东名单。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On Friday morning, the Pigly Wiggly bubble burst. It burst because Saunders, who had set his price would rise to $250 a share after 3 p.m. Thursday, made the startling announcement that he would settle for a hundred. E.W. Bradford, Saunders' New York lawyer, was asked why Saunders had suddenly granted this striking concession. Saunders had done it out of the generosity of his heart, Bradford replied, gamely. But the truth was soon obvious. Saunders had made the concession because he'd had to. The postponement granted by the Stock Exchange had given the short sellers and their brokers a chance to scan lists of Pigly Wiggly stockholders.
他们通过这些方法，发现了一些桑德斯未能掌控的小股股票。在阿尔伯克基和苏城，一些对卖空者和市场操控一无所知的寡妇和孤儿们，当被要求从床垫或保险箱里拿出股票并在所谓的场外市场中出售时，感到非常高兴，因为该股票已经无法在交易所交易，他们以至少是购买价一倍的价格出售了他们的10或20股Pigly Wiggly。因此，许多卖空者不必以桑德斯定的250美元的价格从他那里买股票，然后用来偿还贷款。他们能够以大约100美元的价格在场外市场上买入。于是，以一种苦涩的快感，他们用Pigly Wiggly的股票偿还了他们在孟菲斯的对手，而不是用现金，这正是对方最不想要的结果。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And from these, they'd been able to smoke out small blocks of shares that Saunders had not cornered. Widows and orphans in Albuquerque in Sioux City, who knew nothing about short sellers and corners, were only too happy when pressed to dig into their mattresses or safe deposit boxes and sell in the so-called over-the-counter market since the stock could no longer be traded on the exchange, their 10 or 20 shares of Pigly Wiggly for at least double what they had paid for them. Consequently, instead of having to buy stock from Saunders at his price of $250 and then handed back to him in settlement of their loans, many of the short sellers were able to buy it over-the-counter trading at around $100. And thus, with bitter pleasure, pay off their Memphis adversary, not in cash, but in shares of Pigly Wiggly, the very last thing he wanted just in.
到星期五晚上，几乎所有的卖空者都已经摆脱了困境，他们通过场外交易购回股票或以桑德斯突然降低到每股100美元的价格偿还了债务。那天晚上，桑德斯再次发表声明，这次声明虽然依然带有挑衅的语气，但也毫无疑问地透露出痛苦。他写道，华尔街被打败了，然后在寻求庇护。全美的所有机构中，纽约证券交易所是最危险的，因为它有能力摧毁所有敢于反抗它的人。它自成一体，是一个由声称拥有特权的男性组成的团体，他们制订规则让合同在一天有效，然后又在次日废除它以便放过一群赖账的人。从今天起，我的整个人生目标就是确保公众不再遭遇类似事件。我不害怕。让华尔街来抓我，如果他们能的话。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
By Nightfall Friday, virtually all the short sellers were in the clear, having redeemed their indebtedness either by these over-the-counter purchases or by paying Saunders cash at his own suddenly deflated rate of $100 a share. That evening, Saunders released still another statement, and this one, while still defiant, was unmistakably a howl of anguish. Wall Street got licked and then called for mama, it read, of all the institutions in America. The New York Stock Exchange is the worst menace of all in its power to ruin all who dare to oppose it. A law unto itself, an association of men who claim the right that no king or autocrat ever dared to take, to make a rule that applies one day on contracts and abrogate it the next day to let out a bunch of welchers. My whole life from this day on will be aimed toward the end of having the public protected from a like occurrence. I am not afraid. Let Wall Street get me if they can.
但看起来华尔街已经击败了他。他把持的市场已经崩溃，使他对南方银行家组成的财团负债累累，并被大量股票所拖累，而这些股票的近期前景非常不确定。桑德斯对华尔街的猛烈批评并没有被忽视，导致交易所感到有必要为自己辩护。在3月26日星期一，就在Pigly-Wiggly做空者的最后期限过后不久，以及桑德斯的掌控几乎已成为一个无关紧要的问题时，交易所发布了一份详细回顾整个危机的声明，作为对自己的辩解。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But it appeared that Wall Street had got him. His corner was broken, leaving him deeply in debt to the syndicate of southern bankers and encumbered with a mountain of stock whose immediate future was, to say the least, precarious. Saunders' fulminations did not go unheated on Wall Street, and as a result, the exchange felt compelled to justify itself. On Monday, March 26, shortly after the pigly-wiggly short-sellers deadline had passed, and Saunders' corner was, for all practical purposes, a dead issue, the exchange offered its apologia, in the form of a lengthy review of the crisis from beginning to end.
在陈述其立场时，交易所强调了如果不打破这种逼仓局面可能会对公众造成的危害。交易所解释称，如果同时强制执行所有合同以返还股票，可能导致股价被桑德斯先生随意操控，而由于供应不足而进行的竞标可能会引发类似于其他逼仓事件的情况，尤其是1901年北太平洋铁路公司的逼仓事件。这种局面的负面影响不仅限于那些直接受到合同影响的人，还会波及整个市场。
接着，交易所详细说明了采取的两项具体行动：暂停“猪五花”股票交易，以及延长卖空者的最后期限。交易所辩称，这两项措施都在其自身宪章和规则范围内，因此是无可指责的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In presenting its case, the exchange emphasized the public harm that might have been done if the corner had gone unbroken, explaining, the enforcement simultaneously, of all contracts for the return of the stock, would have forced the stock to any price that might be fixed by Mr. Saunders, and competitive bidding for the insufficient supply might have brought about conditions illustrated by other corners, notably the northern Pacific corner in 1901. Then, its syntax yielding to its sincerity, the exchange went on to say that the demoralizing effects of such a situation are not limited to those directly affected by the contracts, but extends to the whole market. Getting down to the two specific actions it had taken, the suspension of trading in pigly-wiggly, and the extension of the short-sellers' deadline, the exchange argued that both of them were within the bounds of its own constitution and rules, and therefore irreproachable.
这个看似傲慢的说法实际上有一定道理。在那个年代，交易所的规则几乎是股市交易的唯一控制手段。至于这些规则是否真正公正地保护了不太懂行的投资者，这个问题至今仍被财务历史学家们争论不休。有强有力的推测证据表明，那些精明的交易者后来自己也对规则产生了怀疑。至于交易所暂停某股票交易的权力，当时交易所宣称这种权力在其章程中有明确规定，这一点无可争议。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Harragant, as this may sound now, the exchange had a point. In those days, its rules were just about the only controls over stock trading. The question of weather, even by their own rules, the slickers really played fair with the boob, is still debated among fiscal antiquarians. There is strong presumptive evidence that the slickers themselves later came to have their doubts. Regarding the right of the exchange to suspend trading in a stock, there can be no argument, since the right was, as the exchange claimed at the time, specifically granted in its constitution.
但将空头卖家履行合约的最后期限推迟的权利，虽然在当时也被提及，但却是另一回事。1925年6月，也就是桑德斯“角落事件”两年后，交易所感到有必要修改其章程，增加一条条款：如果管理委员会认为交易所内某只挂牌证券形成了逼仓局面，管理委员会可以推迟该证券交易合约的交割时间。通过采纳这样一项法律，授权其进行早已执行的操作，交易所似乎至少是暴露了某种心虚。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But the right to postpone the deadline for short-sellers to honor their contracts, though also claimed at the time, is another matter. In June 1925, two years after Saunders' Corner, the exchange felt constrained to amend its constitution, with an article stating that, whenever in the opinion of the governing committee, a corner has been created in a security listed on the exchange. The governing committee may postpone the time for deliveries on exchange contracts therein. By adopting a statute authorizing it to do, what it had done long before, the exchange would seem, at the very least, to have exposed a guilty conscience.
在猪危机的直接影响下，桑德斯迎来了一波同情潮。在腹地，人们将他视作英勇的弱者捍卫者，被无情地碾压。即使在纽约，股票交易所的中心，《泰晤士报》在社论中也承认，在许多人心中，桑德斯代表着圣乔治，而股市则是那条巨龙。《泰晤士报》指出，最终巨龙获胜对国家来说是个坏消息，因为至少有66.66%的人是容易上当受骗的，他们在阅读到一个受骗者成功修理了利益集团并踩住华尔街的脖子时，曾短暂地感到扬眉吐气，而那些恶意操盘手则奄奄一息。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The immediate aftermath of the pigly crisis was a wave of sympathy for Saunders. Throughout the Hinterland, the public image of him became that of a galant champion of the underdog, who had been ruthlessly crushed. Even in New York, the very layer of the stock exchange, the times conceded in an editorial, that in the minds of many people, Saunders represented St. George, and the stock exchange, the dragon, that the dragon triumphed in the end, said the times, was bad news for a nation at least 66 and 2 thirds percent sucker, which had its moment of triumph when it read that a sucker had trimmed the interests and had his foot on Wall Street's neck while the vicious manipulators gasped their lives away.
桑德斯不是那种会忽视众多友好伙伴的人，所以他开始努力利用他们，这对他来说至关重要，因为他的处境确实十分危险。他最大的问题是如何处理欠银行资助者的一千万美元，而他根本没有这笔钱。如果说他的垄断背后有任何计划的话，那就是通过获得巨大收益来偿还大部分债务，从他公开股票出售的收入中偿还剩余债务，然后带着一大笔无债务的"Pigly-Wiggly"股票离开。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Not a man to ignore such a host of friendly fellow suckers, Saunders went to work to turn them to account, and he needed them, for his position was perilous indeed. His biggest problem was what to do about the ten million dollars that he owed his banker backers and didn't have. The basic plan behind his corner, if he had had any plan at all, must have been to make such a killing that he could pay back a big slice of his debt out of the profits, pay back the rest out of the proceeds from his public stock sale, and then walk off with a still huge block of pigly-wiggly stock, free and clear.
尽管按照大多数人的标准，低价的100美元结算已经让他赚了一大笔钱，不过具体赚了多少并不清楚，但可靠估计大约有五十万美元左右。这并不是他原本有理由期望得到的数目，因此他的整个结构就像一座没有关键石的拱桥。在把从空头卖家和公开发行股票中得到的收益还给银行家后，桑德斯发现他仍然欠银行大约500万美元，其中一半在1923年9月1日到期，其余部分在1924年1月1日到期。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Even though the cut rate, $100 settlement, had netted him a killing by most men's standards, just how much of a killing is not known, but it has been reliably estimated at half a million or so. It was not a fraction of what he might have reasonably expected it to be, and because it wasn't, his whole structure became an arch without a keystone. Having paid his bankers what he had received from the short sellers, and from his public stock sale, Saunders found that he still owed them about $5 million, half of it due September 1, 1923, and the balance on January 1, 1924.
他筹集资金的最佳希望在于出售他手头上仍然拥有的一大批Pigly-Wiggly股票。由于他不能再通过交易所出售这些股票，他转而使用他最喜欢的表达方式——报纸广告，这次还增添了邮件促销，提供以每股55美元的价格重新销售Pigly-Wiggly股票。然而，很快就显而易见，同情归同情，但公众要把这种同情转化为现金却是另一回事。无论在纽约、孟菲斯还是泰克萨卡纳，每个人都知道Pigly-Wiggly最近的投机把戏，以及公司总裁财政状况的不妙。即使是桑德斯的那些“忠实者”也不愿参与他的交易，这次筹款活动以惨淡失败告终。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
His best hope of raising the money lay in selling more of the vast bundle of pigly-wiggly shares he still had on hand. Since he could no longer sell them on the exchange, he resorted to his favorite form of self-expression, newspaper advertising, this time supplemented with a mail-order pitch offering pigly-wiggly again at $55. It soon became evident, though, that public sympathy was one thing, and public willingness to translate sympathy into cash was quite another. Everyone, whether in New York, Memphis, or Texarkana, knew about the recent speculative shenanigans in pigly-wiggly, and about the dubious state that the president's finances. Not even Saunders' fellow suckers would have any part of his deal now, and the campaign was a bleak failure.
桑德斯无奈地接受了这个事实，然后转而呼吁孟菲斯邻里的地方和区域自豪感。他运用自己非凡的说服力，试图让大家相信他的财务困境是一个关乎市民的问题。他认为，如果破产了，不仅会影响孟菲斯的声誉和商业才智，还会影响整个南部的荣誉。在他总能找到资金刊登的大型广告中，他写道：“我并不是在乞求施舍，也不希望在我的经济葬礼上收到任何花环。但我请求孟菲斯的每一个人意识到这是一份严肃的声明，目的是为了让那些希望协助这件事情的人了解，他们可以与我合作，与我事业的其他支持者和信任者共同参与一场孟菲斯的运动，让每一个有能力的市民都成为Pigly-Wiggly业务的合伙人，因为这首先是一个好的投资，其次是应该做的正确事情。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Sadly accepting this fact, Saunders next appealed to the local and regional pride of his Memphis neighbors, by turning his remarkable powers of persuasion to the job of convincing them that his financial dilemma was a civic issue. If he should go broke, he argued, it would reflect not only on the character and business acumen of Memphis, but on southern honor in general. I do not ask for charity, he wrote in one of the large ads he always seemed able to find the cash for, and I do not request any flowers for my financial funeral, but I do ask everybody in Memphis to recognize and know that this is a serious statement made for the purpose of acquainting those who wish to assist in this matter, that they may work with me, and with other friends and believers in my business, in a Memphis campaign, to have every man and woman who possibly can in this city become one of the partners of the pigly-wiggly business, because it is a good investment first, and second, because it is the right thing to do.
在他的第二个广告中，他提高了目标，宣称如果Pigly-Wiggly倒闭，将会令整个南部蒙羞。到底是哪种说法成功说服了孟菲斯去帮助Saunders摆脱困境，很难说清楚，但他的某个理由打动了人心。不久之后，孟菲斯的《商业呼声报》开始呼吁市民支持这位身陷困境的本地企业家。这座城市的商业领袖们的反应确实令Saunders感到振奋。一场为期三天的快速宣传活动被策划出来，目标是以每股55美元的价格向孟菲斯的市民出售50,000股他的股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Raising his sights in the second ad he declared, for pigly-wiggly to be ruined, would shame the whole south. Just which argument proved the clincher in persuading Memphis that it should try to pull Saunders' chestnuts out of the fire, as hard to say, but some part of his line of reasoning clicked, and soon the Memphis commercial appeal was urging the town to get behind the embattled local boy. The response of the city's business leaders was truly inspiring to Saunders. A whirlwind three-day campaign was planned, with the object of selling 50,000 shares of his stock to the citizens of Memphis at the old magic figure of $55 a share.
为了给买家一些保证，让他们不至于孤注一掷，规则规定如果整批商品在三天内没有全部售出，那么所有的销售将被取消。商会发起了这项活动，美国军团、Civitan俱乐部和交易所俱乐部都参与其中，甚至连Pigly-Wiggly在孟菲斯的竞争对手Bowers商店和Arrow商店也同意支持这个有意义的项目。数百名有公民意识的志愿者报名参与敲门活动。5月3日，也就是活动开始前五天，250名孟菲斯商人聚集在Geosso酒店参加了启动晚宴。当桑德斯和他的妻子走进餐厅时，现场爆发出热烈的欢呼声。晚餐后的一位演讲者赞美桑德斯是过去一千年来对孟菲斯贡献最大的人，这样的颂扬让以前的奇克索族首领都相形见绌。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In order to give buyers some degree of assurance that they would not later find themselves alone out on a limb, it was stipulated that unless the whole block was sold within the three days, all sales would be called off. The Chamber of Commerce sponsored the drive, the American Legion, the Civitan Club, and the Exchange Club fell into line, and even the Bowers stores and the Arrow stores, both competitors of pigly-wiggly in Memphis agreed to plug the worthy cause. Hundreds of civic-minded volunteers signed up to Ring Doorbells, On May 3, five days before the scheduled start of the campaign, 250 Memphis businessmen assembled at the Geosso Hotel for a kickoff dinner. There were cheers when Saunders, accompanied by his wife, entered the dining room. One of the many after dinner speakers described him as the man who has done more from Memphis than any in the last thousand years, arousing tribute that put God-new Hamany Chickasaw chiefs in their place.
商业竞争和个人分歧如同晨雾被阳光驱散，一位商业通讯记者这样形容那次晚宴。这次活动有了一个辉煌的开端。5月8日的开幕日，孟菲斯街头出现了由童子军陪同的社交名媛，她们佩戴着写有“全力支持克拉伦斯·桑德斯和Pigly-Wiggly”的徽章。商家在橱窗中张贴标语，上书“Pigly-Wiggly的股票，每个家庭一份”。电话和门铃不停地响起。很快，五万股中的23,698股被认购。然而，就在大多数孟菲斯居民奇迹般地确信购买Pigly-Wiggly股票是一种如同为红十字会或社区募捐般高尚的活动之时，不祥的疑虑开始酝酿，一些内部人士突然要求桑德斯同意立即对公司账目进行现场审计。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Business rivalries and personal differences were swept away like mists before the sun, a commercial appeal reporter wrote of the dinner. The drive got off to a splendid start. On the opening day, May 8, society women in Boy Scouts paraded the streets of Memphis wearing badges that read, wear 100% for Clarence Saunders and pigly-wiggly. Merchants adorned their windows with placards, bearing the slogan, a share of pigly-wiggly stock in every home. Telephones and doorbells rang incessantly. In short order, 23,698 of the 50,000 shares had been subscribed for. Yet, at the very moment when most of Memphis had become miraculously convinced that the peddling of pigly-wiggly stock was an activity fully as uplifting as soliciting for the Red Cross or the community chest, ugly doubts were brewing, and some vipers in the home nest suddenly demanded that Saunders consent to an immediate spot audit of his company's books.
出于某种原因，桑德斯拒绝了，但为了安抚怀疑者，他提出如果辞去Pigly-Wiggly公司总裁一职能够促进股票销售活动，他愿意采取这一行动。然而，没有人要求他放弃总裁职务，但在5月9日，即活动的第二天，Pigly-Wiggly的董事会任命了一个由四人组成的监督委员会，包括三名银行家和一名商人，以在局势稳定期间协助他管理公司。同一天，桑德斯还面临另一个令人尴尬的局面。活动的领导者想知道为什么在整个镇上的人都在无偿为他工作时，他还要继续建造价值百万美元的粉色宫殿。他匆忙回复说将会在第二天将房子封起来，并且在他的财务前景再次光明之前，不会继续施工。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Saunders, for whatever reasons, refused, but offered to placate the skeptics by stepping down as president of pigly-wiggly if such a move would facilitate the stock selling campaign. He was not asked to give up the presidency, but on May 9, the second day of the campaign, a watchdog committee of four, three bankers and a businessman, was appointed by the pigly-wiggly directors to help him run the company for an interim period while the dust settled. That same day, Saunders was confronted with another embarrassing situation. Why, the campaign leaders wanted to know was he continuing to build his million-dollar pink palace at a time when the whole town was working for him for nothing. He replied hastily that he would have the place boarded up the very next day and that there would be no further construction until his financial future looked bright again.
这两个问题引起的混乱使得这个活动陷入停滞。在第三天结束时，认购的股份总数仍然不到25,000股，已经完成的销售也被取消了。桑德斯不得不承认这次活动失败了。据说他还补充道，孟菲斯已经失败了。尽管几年前他在为一个新项目寻求孟菲斯的资金时极力否认这一点，但如果他真说过这样的话也不足为奇，因为他显然因为紧张而疲惫不堪，压力重重。在宣布活动结果不佳之前，他和几位孟菲斯的商界领袖进行了一个闭门会议，出来时脸上有淤青，衣领也撕破了。而其他与会的人都没有受伤的痕迹。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The confusion attendant on these two issues brought the drive to a standstill. At the end of the third day, the total number of shares subscribed for was still under 25,000, and the sales that had been made were canceled. Saunders had to admit that the drive had been a failure. Memphis has fizzled, he reportedly added, although he was at great pains to deny this a few years later, when he needed more of Memphis's money for a new venture. It would not be surprising though if he had made some such imprudent remark, for he was understandably suffering from a case of frazzled nerves and was showing the strain. Just before the announcement of the campaign's unhappy end, he went into a closed conference with several Memphis business leaders and came out of it with a bruised cheekbone and a torn collar. None of the other men at the meeting showed any marks of violence.
这一天对桑德斯来说实在不顺。虽然没有证据表明桑德斯在操控猪里猪气公司时有不当行为，但他在试图抛售股票失败后的第一个商业举动却暗示他有充分的理由拒绝对公司账目的突击审计。尽管公司监察委员会提出了无效的抗议，他开始出售的不是猪里猪气公司的股票，而是公司的店铺，部分清算了公司，而没有人知道他会停在哪里。芝加哥的店铺首先被卖掉，接着是丹佛和堪萨斯城的。这么做的公开目的是增加公司的资金储备，以便回购公众不愿接受的股票。然而，也有人怀疑公司的资金储备当时急需补充，这补充并不仅仅是猪里猪气的股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It just wasn't Saunders' day. Although it was never established that Saunders had had his hand improperly in the pigly-wiggly corporate till, during his cornering operation, his first business move after the collapse of his attempt to unload stock suggested that he had at least had good reason to refuse a spot audit of the company's books. In spite of futile grunts of protests from the watchdog committee, he began selling not pigly-wiggly stock, but pigly-wiggly stores, partly liquidating the company, that is, and no one knew where he would stop. The Chicago stores went first, and those in Denver and Kansas City soon followed. His announced intention was to build up the company's treasury so that it could buy the stock that the public had spurned. But there was some suspicion that the treasury desperately needed a transfusion just then, and not of pigly-wiggly stock, either.
桑德斯在六月时非常高兴地报告说：“我已经搞定华尔街和所有人了。”但到了八月中旬，由于9月1日需要偿还贷款的250万美元迫在眉睫，而他手头根本没有这么多现金，也没有希望能筹到这么多钱，他只好辞去皮格利-维格利公司总裁的职位，并将他的资产，包括公司股票、他的豪宅以及其他所有财产都交给了债权人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I've got Wall Street and the whole gang licked, Saunders reported cheerfully in June, but in mid-August, with the September 1st deadline for repayment of $2.5 million on his loan, staring him in the face, and with nothing like that amount of cash either on hand or in prospect, he resigned as president of pigly-wiggly stores incorporated and turned over his assets, his stock in the company, his pink palace, and all the rest of his property to his creditors.
只剩下官方盖章确认桑德斯个人的失败以及他管理下的猪利公司破产了。8月22日，以出售大量几乎无价值股票而闻名的纽约拍卖公司Adrian H. Muller and Son，常被称为证券坟场，以每股一美元的传统清算价拍卖了1,500股猪利公司的股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It remained only for the formal stamp of failure to be put on Saunders personally and on pigly-wiggly under his management. On August 22nd, the New York auction firm of Adrian H. Muller and Son, which dealt in so many next to worthless stocks that its sales room was often called the securities graveyard knocked down 1,500 shares of pigly-wiggly at a dollar a share, the traditional price for securities that had been run into the ground.
接下来的春天，桑德斯经历了正式的破产程序。但这些都算不上高潮。桑德斯职业生涯真正的低谷可能是他被迫卸任公司总裁的那一天。在许多崇拜者看来，他的口才也在那时达到了顶峰。在一场董事会会议后，他受到压迫但仍然不屈不挠地面对记者，宣布辞职。沙哑地补充道：“他们可以占有Pigly-Wiggly的躯壳，但不能拥有其灵魂。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the following spring, Saunders went through formal bankruptcy proceedings. But these were anti-climaxes. The real low point of Saunders' career was probably the day he was forced out of his company's presidency, and it was then that, in the opinion of many of his admirers, he achieved his rhetorical peak. When he emerged, harassed but still defiant from a director's conference, and announced his resignation to reporters, Ahushvel, then Saunders added horsely, They have the body of pigly-wiggly, but they cannot have the soul.
如果桑德斯所说的 "pigly-wiggly" 的灵魂指的是他自己，那么他的灵魂的确依然是自由的，可以以它自己不规则的方式继续前进。他再也没有尝试过另一个类似的游戏，但他的精神远没有被打垮。尽管在官方上他已经破产，他还是找到了那些对他有着坚定信念的人，他们仍愿意资助他，使他依然可以过上与过去相差无几的富裕生活。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If by the soul of pigly-wiggly Saunders meant himself, then it did remain free, free to go marching on in its own erratic way. He never ventured to play another game of corner, but his spirit was far from broken. Although officially bankrupt, he managed to find people of truly rock-like faith who are still willing to finance him, and they enabled him to live on a scale only slightly less grand than in the past.
他不得不在孟菲斯乡村俱乐部打高尔夫，而不是在自己的私人球场上玩。他在球场给球童的小费仍然被俱乐部管理者认为像过去一样具有腐蚀性。确实，他不再拥有“粉红宫殿”了，但这几乎是他不幸境遇的唯一明证。最终，这座未完工的娱乐宫殿落入孟菲斯市之手，市政府拨款15万美元将其完工，并将其改造为一个自然历史和工业艺术博物馆。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Reduced to playing golf at the Memphis Country Club, rather than on his own private course, he handed out caddy tips that the club governors considered as corrupting as ever. To be sure, he no longer owned the Pink Palace, but this was about the only evidence that served to remind his fellow townsmen of his misfortunes. Eventually, the unfinished pleasure dome came into the hands of the city of Memphis, which appropriated $150,000 to finish it and turn it into a museum of natural history and industrial arts.
因此，它继续在孟菲斯维持着桑德斯的传奇。在失败之后，桑德斯花了将近三年的时间，试图纠正他在“猪利-维格利”争斗中所感受到的不公待遇，并阻止他的敌人和债权人让他的处境更加艰难。有一段时间，他一直威胁要起诉证券交易所，指控其合谋违反合同，但一些小的猪利-维格利股东提起的试验性诉讼失败了，于是他放弃了这一想法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As such, it continues to sustain the Saunders legend in Memphis. After his downfall, Saunders spent the better part of three years in seeking redress of the wrongs that he felt he had suffered in the Pigly-Wiggly fight, and in foiling the efforts of his enemies and creditors to make things still more unpleasant for him. For a while, he kept threatening to sue the stock exchange for conspiracy in breach of contract, but a test suit brought by some small pigly-wiggly stockholders failed, and he dropped the idea.
然后，在1926年1月，他得知联邦政府即将以邮件欺诈罪起诉他，因为他在邮购活动中涉嫌利用男性推销Pigly-Wiggly公司的股票。他错误地认为，政府受到他的旧同事孟菲斯的约翰·C·伯奇的怂恿才提起诉讼。伯奇在公司重组后成为Pigly-Wiggly的秘书兼财务主管。桑德斯再也无法忍耐，便前往Pigly-Wiggly总部，当面质问伯奇。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then, in January 1926, he learned that a federal indictment was about to be brought against him for using the males to defraud in his mail order campaign to sell his Pigly-Wiggly stock. He believed, incorrectly, that the government had been egged on to bring the indictment by an old associate of his, John C. Birch of Memphis, who had become Secretary Treasurer of Pigly-Wiggly after the shake-up. His patience once more exhausted, Saunders went around to Pigly-Wiggly headquarters and confronted Birch.
这次会议让桑德斯感觉远比在董事会上争吵更令人满意。那次争吵发生在孟菲斯市民股票销售活动失败的当天。根据桑德斯的说法，伯奇结结巴巴地试图否认指控，于是桑德斯直接给了他一拳，击落了伯奇的眼镜，但没有造成其他严重伤害。伯奇事后把那一拳轻描淡写地说是擦边而过，还为自己找借口，听起来就像是被打败的拳击手在为自己开脱。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This conference proved far more satisfactory to Saunders than his boardroom scuffle on the day the Memphis Civic stock selling drive failed. Birch, according to Saunders, undertook in a stammering way to deny the accusation, whereupon Saunders delivered a right to the jaw, knocking off Birch's glasses but not doing much other damage. Birch afterward belittled the blow as glancing and added an alibi that sounded like that of any outpointed pugilist.
对我的袭击发生得太突然，以至于我没有时间或机会还击桑德斯先生。伯奇拒绝提起指控。大约一个月后，桑德斯因邮件欺诈被起诉，但那时伯奇已经确信他并没有参与任何肮脏勾当，恢复了他友善的老样子。他愉快地宣布，在这个新的事件中，我只有一件事感到遗憾，那就是我与约翰·C·伯奇的拳脚交锋。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The assault upon me was made so suddenly that I did not have time or opportunity to strike Mr. Saunders. Birch refused to press charges. About a month later, the mail fraud indictment was brought against Saunders, but by that time, satisfied that Birch was innocent of any dirty work, he was his amiable old self again. I have only one thing to regret in this new affair, he announced pleasantly, and that is my fistic encounter with John C. Birch.
新的事件并没有持续太久。四月，孟菲斯区法院撤销了起诉，桑德斯与Pigly-Wiggly终于分道扬镳。到那时，公司已逐步复苏，并因为显著改变的企业结构，在接下来的1960年代中蒸蒸日上。家庭主妇们继续在全国数百家Pigly-Wiggly超市的货架间漫步，这些超市现在是由佛罗里达州杰克逊维尔的Pigly-Wiggly公司通过特许经营协议运营的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The new affair didn't last long. In April, the indictment was quashed by the Memphis District Court, and Saunders and Pigly-Wiggly were finally quits. By then, the company was well on its way back up, and with a greatly changed corporate structure, it flourished on into the 1960s. Housewives continued to ramble down the aisles of hundreds of Pigly-Wiggly stores, now operated under franchise agreement with the Pigly-Wiggly Corporation of Jacksonville, Florida.
桑德斯也在重新崛起的路上。1928年，他创办了一个新的连锁杂货店，他称其为"克拉伦斯·桑德斯，唯一拥有者的我的名字商店公司"，但几乎没有其他人这样叫。很快，这些店铺被称为"唯一拥有者商店"，但实际上，这些店并非独自拥有。因为如果没有桑德斯忠实的支持者，它们只会存在于他的想象中。然而，桑德斯选择这个公司名称并不是为了误导公众，而是他用一种讽刺的方式提醒世界：在华尔街让他损失惨重之后，他几乎只剩下名字还能归他所有了。有多少"唯一拥有者"的顾客，或者证券交易所的决策者，理解了他这种意思，这一点难以确定。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Saunders, too, was well on his way back up. In 1928, he started a new grocery chain, which he, but hardly anyone else, called the Clarence Saunders, sole owner of My Name Stores, Inc. Its outlet soon came to be known as sole owner stores, which was precisely what they weren't. For without Saunders' faithful backers, they would have existed only in his mind. Saunders' choice of a corporate title, however, was not designed to mislead the public. Rather, it was his ironic way of reminding the world that, after the skinning Wall Street had given him, his name was about the only thing he still had a clear title to. How many sole owner customers, or governors of the Stock Exchange for that matter, got the point is questionable.
无论如何，新开的商店迅速流行起来，取得了极大的成功，这使得桑德斯从破产中迅速恢复过来，再次变得富有，并在孟菲斯郊外买下一座价值百万美元的庄园。他还组织并资助了一支名为“独资者猛虎队”的职业橄榄球队，这项投资也让他大获成功，因为在秋日的下午，他能在孟菲斯体育场内听到观众呼喊“加油，加油，加油，独资者，独资者，独资者！”。然而，桑德斯的荣耀再次转瞬即逝。大萧条的第一波冲击就对独资者商店造成了毁灭性打击，导致它们在1930年破产，他也再次破产了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In any case, the new stores caught on so rapidly, and did so well that Saunders leaped back up from bankruptcy to riches, and bought a million-dollar estate just outside Memphis. He also organized and underwrote a professional football team called the sole owner Tigers, an investment that paid off handsomely on the fall afternoons when he could hear cries of, rah, rah, rah, sole owner, sole owner, sole owner, ringing through the Memphis stadium. For the second time, Saunders' glory was fleeting. The very first wave of the depression hit sole owner stores such a crushing blow that in 1930 they went bankrupt, and he was broke again.
然而，他再次振作起来，挺过了危机。他找到了投资人，计划开设一个新的连锁杂货店，并为其想出了一个比过去任何一个名字更为奇特的名字：Kedusal。然而，他再也没有赚得大笔财富，也没有再买过价值百万美元的地产，尽管他总是期待着实现这些目标。他将希望寄托在Kedusal这个电动杂货店上，并在此后的20多年里投入大量精力尝试完善它。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But again he pulled himself together and survived the debacle. Finding backers, he planned a new chain of grocery stores and thought up a name for it that was more outlandish if possible than either of its predecessors. Kedusal. He never made another killing, however, or bought another million-dollar estate, though it was always clear that he expected to. His hopes were pinned on the Kedusal, an electrically operated grocery store, and he spent the better part of the last 20 years of his life trying to perfect it.
在一家Kedusal商店，商品被展示在玻璃面板后面，每件商品旁边都有一个插槽，类似于自动售货机中的食物。但相似之处仅到此为止。Kedusal 的客户不用插入硬币来打开面板拿取商品，而是在进入商店时获得一把钥匙，用这个钥匙来进行操作。此外，Saunders 的构想远远超越了仅用钥匙打开面板的初级阶段。每次投入Kedusal 钥匙到插槽时，选择的商品信息会以代码的形式被记录在钥匙内部嵌入的录音磁带上，同时，商品会自动被传送到传送带，送到商店前面的出口处。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In a Kedusal store, the merchandise was displayed behind glass panels, each with a slot beside it, like the food in an automat. There the similarity ended, for instead of inserting coins in the slot to open a panel in lift-out a purchase, Kedusal customers inserted a key that they were given on entering the store. Moreover, Saunders' thinking had advanced far beyond the elementary stage of having the key open the panel. Each time a Kedusal key was inserted in a slot, the identity of the item selected was inscribed in code on a segment of recording tape embedded in the key itself, and simultaneously the item was automatically transferred to a conveyor belt that carried it to an exit gate at the front of the store.
当顾客购物完毕后，他会将钥匙交给门口的服务员，服务员会解读购物记录并计算总账。顾客一旦付款完成，传送带末端的装置便会将包装好的商品直接“弹”到顾客手中。曾在孟菲斯和芝加哥试验过几家Kedusal先锋店，但发现这种机械系统过于复杂且昂贵，无法与超市购物车竞争。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When a customer had finished his shopping, he would present his key to an attendant at the gate who would decipher the tape and add up the bill. As soon as this was paid, the purchases would be catapulted into the customer's arms, all bagged and wrapped, by a device at the end of the conveyor belt. A couple of pilot Kedusal stores were tried out, one in Memphis and another in Chicago, but it was found that the machinery was too complex and expensive to compete with supermarket push cards.
不气馁的桑德斯开始着手制造一个更加复杂的装置。这款食品电器不仅能完成Kedusal的所有功能，还能计算账单。然而，它永远无法在零售店设备市场占据一席之地，因为尚未完成时，桑德斯就于1953年10月去世了，比看到“布鲁斯角落”早了五年。即使在那时，他也完全有资格将其嘲讽为只是一个在打字员之间的小争论。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Undeterred, Saunders set to work on an even more intricate mechanism. The food electric, which would do everything the Kedusal could do and add up the bill as well. It will never corner the retail store equipment market though, because it was still unfinished when Saunders died in October 1953, five years too soon for him to see the Bruce Corner, which in any case, he would have been fully entitled to scoff at as a mere squabble among ribbon clerks.