Brother Henry was for trying him on the outside. It was not always
possible to fill the orders with the stock on hand, and somebody had to
go into the street or the Exchange to buy and usually he did this.
One morning, when way-bills indicated a probable glut of flour and a
shortage of grain--Frank saw it first--the elder Waterman called him
into his office and said:

"Frank, I wish you would see what you can do with this condition that
confronts us on the street. By to-morrow we're going to be overcrowded
with flour. We can't be paying storage charges, and our orders won't eat
it up. We're short on grain. Maybe you could trade out the flour to some
of those brokers and get me enough grain to fill these orders."

"I'd like to try," said his employee.

He knew from his books where the various commission-houses were. He knew
what the local merchants' exchange, and the various commission-merchants
who dealt in these things, had to offer. This was the thing he liked to
do--adjust a trade difficulty of this nature. It was pleasant to be out
in the air again, to be going from door to door. He objected to desk
work and pen work and poring over books. As he said in later years, his
brain was his office. He hurried to the principal commission-merchants,
learning what the state of the flour market was, and offering his
surplus at the very rate he would have expected to get for it if
there had been no prospective glut. Did they want to buy for immediate
delivery (forty-eight hours being immediate) six hundred barrels of
prime flour? He would offer it at nine dollars straight, in the barrel.
They did not. He offered it in fractions, and some agreed to take one
portion, and some another. In about an hour he was all secure on this