commissioner’s report theorized,
“The process of manipulation is by buying and selling to create in the public mind the impression of great activity in the stock.... This Mr. Hirshhorn succeeded in doing with very great skill.... the manipulator can sit in the center of his operations surrounded by telephones and, by using a three- or four-way jitney, as it is called, can buy and sell stocks without brokers who are doing the buying and selling knowing that the manipulation is in process.”
But since it was conspiracy in stock manipulations that the Ontario laws forbade and Joe characteristically had operated alone, the commissioner conceded that Hirshhorn “has not committed any criminal act.” As for Joe’s side of the story, he denies that he ever manipulated Gunnar Gold. “I was in Europe,” he explains. “When I came back, I found the price was down, and I didn’t like what I saw: so I started selling.”
It was in 1936 that there came along what Joe calls “a really big ticket.” It was named Preston East Dome Mines. It established Joe’s fame as a backer of long shots, it proved him more than a match for the sharpest shooters on Bay Street, and it marked his growth and transition from a pure speculator to creative promoter.
Preston East Dome was a gold-mining company formed early in the century in the hopeful shadow of a great gold strike in the Porcupine area of northern Ontario. A fire had swept the area, destroying the company’s installations; Preston East Dome was out of funds, and its stock certificates, selling for less than five cents on the Toronto exchange, were used by their cheerless owners to make change in poker games. Everyone had given up hope of making something of Preston except a geologist named Douglas Wright. Knowing Joe Hirshhorn’s reputation for being fast on his feet, Wright made his way to Joe’s office to tell his story again. Joe liked it and put up $25,000 for a drilling program. Within a few months gold was struck – just 25 feet away from an old shaft.
As Preston stock started climbing upward, the hard-bitten sceptics jeered at reports of the strike, and Bay Street’s “bandits” thought they had spotted an easy target. The stock (they assured themselves) must surely slide again, making it a setup for the short-sale snipers. They sold. Joe kept buying. He kept on buying until he had taken over a large part of Preston’s whole capitalization. Preston’s price kept rising – on past the two-dollar mark. The short sellers were trapped. Their intended victim had given them an expensive and humiliating licking.
The mine, presided over by Joe’s old friend, sharp-witted Toronto lawyer William H. Bouck ... [was] grossing an annual $2,500,000 [by the mid-1950s]. Joe managed judiciously to sell enough of his Preston shares at rising prices to leave himself at one point holding 500,000 shares, which, in effect, had cost him nothing. He sold a number of those at a fat profit, and ... when he threw his remaining Preston holdings into the deal with Rio Tinto, they were valued at $7.55 a share. It was, as Joe says, quite a big ticket.
Thanks to such tickets, Joe, through the Thirties, found himself living in a world ever further removed from the bitter memory of Brooklyn. He now traveled a circuit of two apartments and three homes – the apartments in Toronto and New York, homes in Great Neck, Long Island, Miami and the Poconos. To soften the hours spent poring over corporate balance sheets, he installed a Capehart in every house and bought himself seven pianos. In the Poconos he built a splendid French-provincial house in the 470-acre Huckleberry Hill Farm, with handball courts, swimming pool, Guernsey herds and dormitories big enough to accommodate any 24 school chums his children might like to bring home. “It was built from the heart, that place,” Joe remembers. “But I was the only Jew around for 25 miles. People called us ‘the castle on the hill.’ We were
“The process of manipulation is by buying and selling to create in the public mind the impression of great activity in the stock.... This Mr. Hirshhorn succeeded in doing with very great skill.... the manipulator can sit in the center of his operations surrounded by telephones and, by using a three- or four-way jitney, as it is called, can buy and sell stocks without brokers who are doing the buying and selling knowing that the manipulation is in process.”
But since it was conspiracy in stock manipulations that the Ontario laws forbade and Joe characteristically had operated alone, the commissioner conceded that Hirshhorn “has not committed any criminal act.” As for Joe’s side of the story, he denies that he ever manipulated Gunnar Gold. “I was in Europe,” he explains. “When I came back, I found the price was down, and I didn’t like what I saw: so I started selling.”
It was in 1936 that there came along what Joe calls “a really big ticket.” It was named Preston East Dome Mines. It established Joe’s fame as a backer of long shots, it proved him more than a match for the sharpest shooters on Bay Street, and it marked his growth and transition from a pure speculator to creative promoter.
Preston East Dome was a gold-mining company formed early in the century in the hopeful shadow of a great gold strike in the Porcupine area of northern Ontario. A fire had swept the area, destroying the company’s installations; Preston East Dome was out of funds, and its stock certificates, selling for less than five cents on the Toronto exchange, were used by their cheerless owners to make change in poker games. Everyone had given up hope of making something of Preston except a geologist named Douglas Wright. Knowing Joe Hirshhorn’s reputation for being fast on his feet, Wright made his way to Joe’s office to tell his story again. Joe liked it and put up $25,000 for a drilling program. Within a few months gold was struck – just 25 feet away from an old shaft.
As Preston stock started climbing upward, the hard-bitten sceptics jeered at reports of the strike, and Bay Street’s “bandits” thought they had spotted an easy target. The stock (they assured themselves) must surely slide again, making it a setup for the short-sale snipers. They sold. Joe kept buying. He kept on buying until he had taken over a large part of Preston’s whole capitalization. Preston’s price kept rising – on past the two-dollar mark. The short sellers were trapped. Their intended victim had given them an expensive and humiliating licking.
The mine, presided over by Joe’s old friend, sharp-witted Toronto lawyer William H. Bouck ... [was] grossing an annual $2,500,000 [by the mid-1950s]. Joe managed judiciously to sell enough of his Preston shares at rising prices to leave himself at one point holding 500,000 shares, which, in effect, had cost him nothing. He sold a number of those at a fat profit, and ... when he threw his remaining Preston holdings into the deal with Rio Tinto, they were valued at $7.55 a share. It was, as Joe says, quite a big ticket.
Thanks to such tickets, Joe, through the Thirties, found himself living in a world ever further removed from the bitter memory of Brooklyn. He now traveled a circuit of two apartments and three homes – the apartments in Toronto and New York, homes in Great Neck, Long Island, Miami and the Poconos. To soften the hours spent poring over corporate balance sheets, he installed a Capehart in every house and bought himself seven pianos. In the Poconos he built a splendid French-provincial house in the 470-acre Huckleberry Hill Farm, with handball courts, swimming pool, Guernsey herds and dormitories big enough to accommodate any 24 school chums his children might like to bring home. “It was built from the heart, that place,” Joe remembers. “But I was the only Jew around for 25 miles. People called us ‘the castle on the hill.’ We were
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