The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968 Page: 14
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
office in Hartford, Connecticut. The broker-investor alliance required
more confidence and mutual trust than most parties could consistently
impart year after year. The lack of perception regarding each other's
situation eventually led to recriminations and misunderstandings,
even among longtime associates. William McKenzie, secretary and di-
rector of the Alliance Trust Company of Dundee, as close a friend
as Francis Smith and Company had in the British Isles, had numerous
piques with his San Antonio agents. On September 26, 1900, McKen-
zie bemoaned, "We have so often 'fought bled and died,' over the
question your letter suggests that we have not the heart to discuss it
further.""
What Scotsman McKenzie did not have "the heart to discuss fur-
ther" was the Alliance Trust's investment return and the commission
charges."' No problem in broker-lender-borrower interchange caused
as much resentment as the interest and commission rate. Each party,
with his vested interest on his sleeve and his hand over his pocketbook,
decried foul at any suggestion that he personally might be unreason-
able. This financial arteriosclerosis should hardly be surprising. What
perplexed Francis Smith was that after five years of negotiations he
was still forced to explain the intricacies of the money market to his
seemingly uncomprehending clients.
A major difficulty was the unceasing fluctuation in the monetary
situation. A commission firm involved in international lending ob-
viously had to consider not only the interoceanic economic situations,
but also the national and local financial manipulations. Few periods
in American history were as fraught with monetary turmoil as the late
nineteenth century."8 The Francis Smith-British correspondence is
"8McKenzie to H. P. Drought, September 26, 1900oo, Francis Smith Collection.
"7Though McKenzie proved to be one of Francis Smith and Company's most consistent
Scottish friends, he had the habit of bewailing his fate. In a long epistle in September,
1899, he orated to Bolton Smith, "Do you think that I am practicing or lecturing you
too much? I hope not because I dislike myself very much the vocation of preaching and
of the candid friend. Please excuse me if I have seemed to exercise this role too promi-
nently and don't display a perception which will accomplish a thousand times more good
both to you and to us than all those little controversies which have spoilt so many sheets of
paper." McKenzie to Bolton Smith, September 8, 1899, Carlile Bolton-Smith Collection.
8"Varying interpretations of this era are offered in Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era;
a Social and Political History of American Finance, I865-z879 (Princeton, 1964) ; Cedric
B. Cowing, Populists, Plungers, and Progressives; a Social History of Stock and Commodity
Speculation, 189o-x936 (Princeton, 1965); Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz,
A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-z96o (Princeton, 1963); Don Carlos Barrett,
The Greenbacks and Resumption of Specie Payments, 1862-1879 (Cambridge, 1931);
Rendigs Fels, American Business Cycles, 1865-1897 (Chapel Hill, 1959); Wesley Clair
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968, periodical, 1968; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117145/m1/32/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.