"Not since the darkest days of the depression have Wall Street and Park Avenue been so agitated as by yesterday's announcement that the New York Stock Exchange has suspended the firm of Richard Whitney & Co. By luncheon time the dismal word had penetrated even such frivolous retreats as the Colony Restaurant and '21.' For once, Mrs. Harrison Williams' clothes, Carrie Munn's crazy hats and Bob Topping's latest escapade ceased to be favorite topics of conversation. . . . Not in our time, in our fathers' time nor in our grandfathers' time has there been such a social debacle. . . ."
This, on the word of knowing Nancy Randolph, society reporter of the proletarian New York News, was what cafe society thought about the Whitney crash last week. Cafeteria society was shocked, too, and downtown they were taking it harder than any other financial scandal of the century. True, Joseph Wright Harriman and Bernard K. Marcus had misapplied bank funds and been sent to jail. Charley Mitchell was penalized for tax deficiencies and Al Wiggin had paid off stockholders to stop their suits. There was old Sam Insull, too, although Wall Street is never very surprised at the shenanigans of a Chicagoan. But Dick Whitney was a Morgan broker. He was the President of the New York Stock Exchange for five years. ''The terrible thing about the Whitney scandal.'' wrote Financial Editor Leslie Gould of the New York Journal & American, "is . . . that the broker was the White Knight of the financial district. Whitney was Sir Richard when he went into battle in shining armor against the 1929 crash and again when he stood up and defied Washington and the reformers. Now it turns out that this Great White Knight was an optical illusion. . . ."
Small wonder that while ex-White Knight Whitney pleaded guilty to a New York County indictment for grand larceny and was arrested as well by New York State last week, the bar of the Stock Exchange, on the word of the presiding keep, enjoyed an increase in business calculated at exactly 275%.