The Pit

Summary

Chicago’s gargantuan grain exchange becomes a coliseum where wheat futures are flung like javelins at the heavens; Curtis Jadwin, callow titan in bespoke wool, strides onto this marble battlefield intoxicated by ticker-tape incantations whispered by the grizzled conjurer Charles Cressler. Across town, Gounod’s Faust spills velvet harmonies into a gas-lit opera house; Jadwin’s gaze plummets from the gods into the orbit of Laura Dearborn—soprano of society columns, promised to the brush-wielding dreamer Sheldon Corthell. Courtship ignites with the ferocity of a foundry blast: carriage rides through silver fog, orchids smuggled into theater boxes, vows exchanged beneath a stained-glass apse. Yet matrimony’s bloom wilts once Jadwin’s fingertips learn the narcotic tremor of margin calls; he awakens before dawn to ride elevators that smell of ink and panic, leaving Laura marooned in a mansion echoing with the hush of unopened love letters. Corthell returns, palette knife in hand, to paint her solitude in shades of cobalt and skin; their conspiracy to flee to Florence or perhaps oblivion is sketched on café napkins and signed with trembling lips. But the market, that ravenous deity, devours Jadwin’s last silo of credit; ruin crashes through the parquet like a winter river through ice. In the hush after the margin clerk’s grim tally, Laura discards her silk-masked lover, kneels amid ticker tape confetti, and cradles the man who bartered her for bushels, while outside the Board of Trade horns howl like Cerberus at the gates of a new Gilded Age.

Synopsis

Novice businessman Curtis Jadwin ( Wilton Lackaye ) is introduced to the world of grain speculation by veteran broker Charles Cressler ( Alec B. Francis ). At a performance of Faust , Curtis meets and falls in love with Laura Dearborn ( Gail Kane ), the sweetheart of artist Sheldon Corthell ( Milton Sills ). Curtis pursues Laura and finally convinces her to marry him, but soon after their wedding, he neglects her for his business. In her loneliness, Laura renews her relationship with Sheldon and the lovers plan to elope. When Curtis is ruined on the market, however, Laura rejects her lover and comforts her husband.