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Title: Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

Author: Thomas William Lawson

Release date: August 16, 2008 [eBook #26330]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENZIED
FINANCE, VOL. 1: THE CRIME OF AMALGAMATED ***

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in
this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of
this document.

thomas w. lawson after twelve
months of "frenzied finance"

FRENZIED FINANCE
BY

THOMAS W. LAWSON
of boston

VOLUME I

THE CRIME OF AMALGAMATED
NEW YORK
THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY
1905
Copyright, 1905, by
THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY
These articles are reprinted from "Everybody's Magazine"
Copyright, 1904, by the Ridgway-Thayer Company
Copyright, 1905, by the Ridgway-Thayer Company
All rights reserved
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

TO

PENITENCE AND PUNISHMENT
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

To Penitence: that those whose deviltry is exposed within its pages may see
in a true light the wrongs they have wrought—and repent.
To Punishment: that the unpenalized crimes of which it is the chronicle may
appear in such hideousness to the world as forever to disgrace their
perpetrators.
To Penitence: that the transgressors, learning the error of their ways, may
reform.
To Punishment: that the sins of the century crying to heaven for vengeance
may on earth be visited with condemnation stern enough to halt greed at the
kill.
To Punishment: that public indignation may be so aroused against the
practices of high finance that it shall come to be as culpable to graft and
cozen within the law as it is lawless to-day to counterfeit and steal.
To Penitence: that in the minds of all who read this eventful history there
may grow up a knowledge and a conviction that the gaining of vast wealth
is not worth the sacrifice of manhood, and that poverty and abstinence with
honor are better worth having than millions and luxury at the cost of candor
and rectitude.

TO MY AUDIENCE

SAINTS, SINNERS, AND IN-BETWEENS
Before you enter the confines of "Frenzied Finance," here spread out—for
your inspection, at least; enlightenment, perhaps—halt one brief moment. If
the men and things to be encountered within are real—did live or live now
—you must deal with them one way. If these embodiments are but figments
of my mind and pen, you must regard them from a different view-point.
Therefore, before turning the page, it behooves you to find for yourself an
answer to the grave question:
Is it the truth that is dealt with here? In weighing the evidence remember:
My profession is business. My writing is an incident. "Frenzied Finance"
was set down during the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth hours of busy days. I
pass it up as the history of affairs of which I was a part. The men who move
within the book's pages are still on the turf. A period of twelve years is
covered. So far, eighteen instalments, in all some 400,000 words, have been
published. The spigot is still running. I have written from memory,
necessarily. While it is true that fiction is expressed in the same forms and
phrases as truth, no man ever lived who could shape 400,000 words into the
kinds of pictures I have painted and pass them off for aught but what they
were. The character of my palette made it mechanically impossible to shade
or temper the pigments, for the story was written in instalments, and
circumstances were such that often one month's issue was out to the public
before the next instalment was on paper. Considering all this, the
consistency of the chronicle as it stands is the best evidence of its truth. In
submitting it to my readers I desire to reiterate:
It is truth—of the kind that carries its own bell and candle. Within the
narrative itself are the reagents required to test and prove its genuineness.
Were man endowed with the propensity of a Münchhausen, the cunning of a
Machiavelli, the imagination of Scheherezade, the ability of a Shakespeare,
and the hellishness of his Satanic Majesty, he could not play upon 400,000
words, or one-quarter that number, and make the play peal truth for a single

hour to the audience who will read this book, or to one-thousandth part the
audience that has already read it in Everybody's Magazine.
Such as the story is, it is before you. If in its perusal you fathom my
intentions, my hopes, my desires, I shall have been repaid for the pain its
writing has brought me. At least you will find the history of a colossal
business affair involving millions of dollars and manned by the financial
leaders of the moment. It is a fair representation of financial methods and
commercial morals as they exist in America at the beginning of the
twentieth century. As a contemporary document the narrative should have
value; as history it is not, I believe, without interest. As a message it has had
its influence. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that no man in his own
generation has seen such a crop come forth from seed of his own sowing
since the long bygone days when the wandering king planted dragons' teeth
on the Phœnician plain and raised up an army of warriors.

FOREWORD
There will be set down in this book, in as simple and direct a fashion as I
can write it, the story of Amalgamated Copper and of the "System" of
which it is the most flagrant example. This "System" is a process or a
device for the incubation of wealth from the people's savings in the banks,
trust, and insurance companies, and the public funds. Through its workings
during the last twenty years there has grown up in this country a set of
colossal corporations in which unmeasured success and continued
immunity from punishment have bred an insolent disregard of law, of
common morality, and of public and private right, together with a grim
determination to hold on to, at all hazards, the great possessions they have
gulped or captured. It is the same "System" which has taken from the
millions of our people billions of dollars, and given them over to a score or
two of men with power to use and enjoy them as absolutely as though these
billions had been earned dollar by dollar by the labor of their bodies and
minds. Yet in telling the story of Amalgamated, the most brazen and
voracious maw of this "System," I desire it understood that I take no issue
with men; it is with a principle I am concerned. With the men I have had
close and intimate intercourse, and from my knowledge of the means they
have used, and the manner in which they have used them, and the causes
and effects of their performances, I have no hesitation in stating that the
good they have done, the evils they have created, and the indelible imprints
they have made on mankind are the products of a condition and not of their
individualities, and that if not one of them had ever been born the same
good and evil would to-day exist. Others would have done what they did,
and would have to answer for what has been done, as they must. So I say
the men are merely individuals; the "System" is the thing at fault, and it is
the "System" that must be rectified. Better far for me not to tell the story I
am going to tell; better far for the victims of Amalgamated not to know who
plundered them and how, than to have them know it only to wreak
vengeance on individuals and overlook the "System," which, if allowed to
continue, surely will in time, a short time, destroy the nation by
precipitating fratricidal war.

The enormous losses, millions upon millions—to my personal knowledge
over a hundred millions of dollars—which were made because of
Amalgamated; the large number of suicides—to my personal knowledge
over thirty—which were directly caused by Amalgamated; the large number
of previously reputable citizens who were made prison convicts—to my
personal knowledge over twenty—directly because of Amalgamated, were
caused by acts of this "System" of which Henry H. Rogers and his
immediate associates were the direct administrators; and yet Mr. Rogers and
his immediate associates, while these great wrongs were occurring, led
social lives which, measured by the most rigid yardstick of mental or moral
rectitude, were as near perfect as it is possible for human lives to be. As
husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, friends, they were ideal, cleanly of body
and of mind, with heads filled with sentiment and hearts filled with
sympathies; their personal lives were like their homes and their gardens—
revealing only the brightest things of this world, the singing, humming,
sweet-smelling things which so strongly speak to us of the other world we
are yet to know. As workers in the world's vineyards, they labored six days
and rested upon the Sabbath, and gave thanks to Him from whom all
blessings flow that He allowed them, His humble creatures, to have their
earthly being. And yet these men, to whose eyes I have seen come the tears
for others' sufferings, and whose voices I have heard grow husky in
recounting the woes of their less fortunate brothers—these men under the
spell of the brutal code of modern dollar-making are converted into beasts
of prey, and put to shame the denizens of the deep which devour their kind
that they may live.
In the harness of the "System" these men knew no Sabbath, no Him; they
had no time to offer thanks, no care for earthly or celestial being; from their
eyes no human power could squeeze a tear, no suffering wring a pang from
their hearts. They were immune to every feeling known to God or man.
They knew only dollars. Their relatives of a moment since, their friends of
yesterday and long, long ago, they regarded only as lumps of matter with
which to feed the whirring, grinding, gnashing mill which poured forth into
their bins—dollars.
In telling the story of Amalgamated I hope to have profited by my long and
intimate study of this cruel, tigerishly cruel "System," so as to be able to
deaden myself to all those human sympathies which I have heard its

votaries so many times subordinate to "It's business." I shall try only to
keep before me how the Indians of the forest, as our forefathers drove them
farther and farther into the unknown West, got bitter consolation out of the
oft-chanted precept of their white brethren of civilization, "An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth," reminding myself that whatever of misery or
unhappiness my story may bring to the few, it will be as nothing to that
which they have brought to the many.
In asking for the serious, earnest consideration of the public, I shall be
honest in giving to it my qualifications, my motives, and my desires for
writing this narrative. For thirty-four years I have been actively connected
with matters financial. As banker, broker, and corporation man, I have, from
the vantage-point of one who actually handled the things he studied, studied
the causes which created the conditions which made possible the "System"
which produced the Amalgamated affair. In my thirty-four years of business
experience I have seen the great fortunes, which are the motive power of
the "System" referred to, come out of the far West as specks upon the
financial horizon and grow and grow as they travelled Eastward, until in
their length, breadth, and thickness they obscured the rising sun. At short
range I have seen the giant money machine put together; I have touched
elbows with the men who made it, as they fitted this wheel and adjusted that
gear, while at the same time I broke bread and slept with the every-day
people who, with the industry of the ant and the patience of the spider,
toiled to pile in the pennies, the nickels, and the dimes which have kept the
"System's" hopper full.
At my first meeting with the creators of Amalgamated it was clearly and
distinctly understood that under no circumstances would I enlist in that
"System's" interests other than for such special services as, after due
thought and investigation, I should decide to be such as I could in fairness
to myself and my clients work for; and when I give the details of this first
meeting in my narrative it will be evident to its readers that in telling the
story of Amalgamated I am violating no confidence, nor in any way
encroaching upon the niceties of that business code which is, and should be,
the foundation of all legitimate financial dealings, nor in any way misusing
knowledge which, if acquired under other circumstances, might be sacred.

Amalgamated was one service the "System" asked of me. It was created
because of my work. It was largely because of my efforts that its foundation
was successfully laid. It was very largely because of what I stood for and
because of the public's confidence in the fulfilment of the promises I made
that the public invested its savings to an extent of over $200,000,000; and it
was almost wholly because of the broken promises and trickery of the
creators of the "System" that the public lost the enormous sums it did.
My motives for writing the story of Amalgamated are manifold: I have
unwittingly been made the instrument by which thousands upon thousands
of investors in America and Europe have been plundered. I wish them to
know my position as to the past that they may acquit me of intentional
wrong-doing; as to the present that they may know that I am using all my
powers to right the wrongs that have been committed, and as to the future
that they may see how I propose to compel restitution.
My desire in writing the story of Amalgamated, while tinged perhaps with
hatred for and revenge against the "System" as a whole and some of its
votaries, is more truly pervaded with a strong conviction that the most
effective way to educate the public to realize the evils of which such affairs
as the Amalgamated are the direct result, is to expose before it the brutal
facts as to the conception, birth, and nursery-breeding of this the foremost
of all the unsavory offspring of the "System." Thus it may learn that it is
within its power to destroy the brood already in existence and render
impossible similar creations.
In the course of my task I shall describe such parts of the general financial
structure as will place my readers, especially those unfamiliar with its more
complicated conditions, in a mental state to comprehend the methods by
which the savings they think are safely guarded in the banks, trust and
insurance companies, are so manipulated by the votaries of frenzied finance
as to be in constant jeopardy. I shall show them that while the press, the
books, the stump, and our halls of statesmanship are full to overflowing
with the whys, wherefores, and what-nots of "tariff," "currency," "silver,"
"gold," and "labor"; while our market systems are perfected educational
machines for disseminating accurate statistics about the necessaries and
luxuries of life, the water and land carriers, real estate, and other material
things which the people have been taught to believe are the only things that

vitally affect their savings; that while they imagine they understand the
system by which speculation and investments are controlled and worked,
and that the causes and effects of this system are at all times get-at-able by
them through their bankers and their brokers; there is a tangible,
complicated, yet simple trick of financial legerdemain, operated twenty-
four hours in each day in the year, and which the press, the books, the
politicians, and the statesmen never touch upon—a trick by means of which
the savings of the people and the public funds of the Government, whether
in the national banks, savings-banks, trust or insurance companies, are
always at the absolute service and mercy of the votaries of frenzied finance.
Therefore, in the course of my story of Amalgamated will come a few
kindergarten pictures of how the necessaries and luxuries of the people are
"incorporated"; of how the evidences of corporation ownership are
manufactured; of the individuals who "manufacture" them; of the
individuals who control and make or unmake their values; of the meeting-
place of these individuals, within and without the stock-exchanges; of some
of the corporations and of some of the signs and tokens of corporation
ownership; of some of their histories; of some of their doings, and of some
of their contemplated doings. These kindergarten pictures I will endeavor to
paint, not in that "over-the-head" verbosity or "under-the-feet" profundity
and intricacy of the political economy pedant, which are as the canvases of
the Whistler school to the masses; but rather will I use the brush of the
artisan who in giving us our white fences, our gray cottages, and our green
blinds sets off those things which make up the pictures the people really
understand and dearly prize.
In the last few years the public has heard many stories of this Juggernaut
"System," which has grown to be the greatest private power in our land—
greater almost than the power which governs the nation, because it is not
only great within itself but by its peculiar workings is really a part of the
power which governs the people. Particularly has it been told the story of
Standard Oil by Mr. Henry D. Lloyd in his able work, "Wealth Against
Commonwealth," and by Miss Ida M. Tarbell in her recent historical
sketches; but however thorough these writers may have been in gathering
the facts, statistics, and evidences, however relentless their pens and vivid
their pictures, they dealt but with things that are dead; things that to the
present generation are but skeletons whose dry and whitened bones cannot

possibly bring to the hearts, minds, and souls of the men and women of to-
day that all-consuming passion for revenge, that burning desire for justice,
without which no movement to benefit the people can be made successful.
In telling my story I shall, for I must, tell it fairly, and to make sure of this I
pledge myself to keep to the exact facts as they occurred, not allowing
myself to be overawed by their greatness into contracting them, nor to be
tempted by their littleness into expanding them. In doing this I know,
because of the peculiarity of the subject and my intimate relation to it, no
other way than to do it in the first person. As I have already stated, I would
prefer to deal with my subject through the principles involved rather than
with the men concerned; but as I shall be compelled to call spades spades, I
must, of necessity, use the names of men and of institutions fearlessly and
without favor.
In the beginning it will be necessary, for that clear understanding of the
whole subject which is one of my principal objects, to treat at sufficient
length the Bay State Gas intricacies and trickeries, in which in a certain
sense Amalgamated had its being. This will compel me to devote a chapter
to one of the most picturesquely notorious characters of the age, John
Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, of Delaware, Everywhere, and Nowhere.
The main part of my narrative must of necessity deal with the two real
heads of Standard Oil and Amalgamated, Mr. Henry H. Rogers and Mr.
William Rockefeller; and with the biggest financial institution of America,
if not of the world, the National City Bank of New York, and its head and
dominating spirit, Mr. James Stillman.
An important chapter should be that devoted to the conception and
formation of the United Metals Selling Company, which was specially
organized to control the copper industry of the world without coming within
the restrictions of the laws for the prevention or regulation of monopolies.
I shall also deal at length with a notorious character, who, like the spot upon
the sun, looms up in all American copper affairs whenever they appear in
the full vision of the public eye—Mr. F. Augustus Heinze, of Montana.
There will be a chapter of more or less length devoted to one of the most
important episodes in Amalgamated affairs, wherein I shall describe one of

Wall Street's most picturesque, able, and intensely interesting men, Mr.
James R. Keene.
I shall touch on a bit of the nation's history in which within a few days of
the national election of 1896 a hurry-up call for additional funds to the
extent of $5,000,000 was so promptly met as to overturn the people in five
States and thereby preserve the destinies of the Republican party, of which I
am and have always been a member.
I shall draw a picture of two dress-suit cases of money being slipped across
the table at the foot of a judge's bench in the court-room, from its custodian
to its new owners, upon the rendering of a court decision; and I shall show
how the new owners frustrated a plot having for its object their waylaying
and the recovery of the bags of money.
I shall devote some space to pointing out the evils and dangers of the latter-
day methods of corrupting law-makers, and show how one entire
Massachusetts Legislature, with the exception of a few members, was dealt
with as openly as the fishmongers procure their stock-in-trade upon the
wharves; how upon the last day of the Legislature, because their deferred
cash payments were not promptly forthcoming, its members turned, and
made necessary the hurried departure for foreign shores of a great lawyer
and his secretary, with bags of quickly gathered gold, and all evidences of
the crimes committed and attempted; how after the ship arrived at an island
in foreign seas the great lawyer's dead body received hurried burial, and his
secretary's was later dropped, with weights about its feet, to the ocean's
depths; and how ever since the natives whisper among themselves their
gruesome suspicions.
I shall devote a chapter to the doings of certain financial reputation
sandbaggers and blackmailers; show how through their agencies they hold
up corporations and their managers for large sums, which upon being paid
start into motion a perfected system for the false moulding of public
opinion for the purpose of making more easy the plundering of the people. I
shall photograph the men and draw accurate diagrams of the machinery
through which their nefarious trade is carried on.
My story will carry me down Wall Street, into the Stock Exchange, through
its hundred and one or million and one open and hidden passages, and into

State Street, that ever-hung hammock of financial somnolence, and into the
courts of justice of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Massachusetts, and Montana, and into many other interesting abodes of
justice and injustice, of trickery, fraud, and simple, honest trustfulness.
When my story is ended and the great American people, whose simple but
proud boast is that they cannot be fooled in the same place by the same
methods and the same instruments twice, know as much as I now know of
Amalgamated and its relation to the "System" which has for years as boldly,
as coarsely, and as cruelly robbed them as the coolie slaves are robbed by
their masters—it will be for them to decide whether my story has been,
because of the facts which entered into it, so well told that they will not be
satisfied with the restitution of the vast sums which the Amalgamated took
from them, which United States Steel took from them, and which other
financial enterprises took in lesser amounts but by equally flagrant
methods; but will demand the overthrow of the "System" itself. It will be
for them to decide; and if their decision should be for a conclusive revolt, I
shall be amply repaid for the pains and the miseries which must necessarily
follow in the wake of a task such as the one I undertook when I decided to
tell the story of Amalgamated.

CONTENTS
page
Foreword vii
PART I
CHAPTER
I. The Tortuous Course of Amalgamated 1
II. The "System's" Method of Finance and Management 5
III. The Men in Power Behind the "System" 13
IV. My Own Responsibility 23
V. The Power of Dollars 33
VI. Construction of "Standard Oil's" "Dollar-Making" 41
Mill
VII. Juggling with Millions of the People's Money 52
VIII. "Standard Oil" Invests "Made Dollars" in Gas 56
IX. A Votary of the "System" 60
X. Addicks Comes to Boston 67
XI. How Addicks Captured Boston Gas 71
XII. Stock-Brokers not all Bad 79
XIII. The "System" versus Westinghouse 88
XIV. The Alliance with Addicks 93
XV. The Great Bay State Gas Fight 103
XVI. Peace Negotiations with Rogers 110
XVII. A Memorable Conference 113
XVIII. The Duplicity of Addicks 125
XIX. Enter H. M. Whitney 133
XX. An Awkward Attack of Appendicitis 142
XXI. Bribing a Legislature 149
XXII. Plundered of the Plunder 162
XXIII. Two Gentlemen of Frenzied Finance 170
XXIV. Buying a Bunch of States 176
XXV. Athletics of Finance 182

XXVI. The Circling of the Vultures 187
XXVII. Court Corruption and Coin 191
XXVIII. Peace at Last 195
PART II
I. The Magic World of Finance 197
II. The "System" and the Louisiana Lottery Compared 202
III. The Fundamentals of Finance 208
IV. The Magic "Jimmy" 213
V. How the "System" does Business 217
VI. How Wall Street's Manipulations Affect the Country 223
VII. Economics of Copper 226
VIII. My plan for "Coppers" 233
IX. Birth of "Coppers" 237
X. Rogers Grasps "Coppers" 245
XI. The Copper Campaign Opens 253
XII. The Buncoing of the Stockholders of Utah 261
XIII. The Trap in Finance 266
XIV. Lawyer Untermyer Discovers the "Nigger" 274
XV. Degrees in Crime 281
XVI. Mr. Rogers Unmasks 283
XVII. "Extract Every Dollar" 289
XVIII. The Biters Bit 301
XIX. The Despoiling of Leonard Lewisohn 307
XX. The Christening of Amalgamated 311
XXI. Fixing the Responsibility 320
XXII. The Responsibility Fastened 332
XXIII. The First Crime of Amalgamated 340
XXIV. The Subscription Opens 346
XXV. Dollar Hydrophobia 351
XXVI. Deviltry Afoot 359
XXVII. The Black Flag Hoisted 364
XXVIII. The Bogus Subscription 370
XXIX. The Aftermath 376
XXX. The Morning After 385

XXXI. I Walk the Plank 389
XXXII. Perfecting the Double Cross 397
XXXIII. A Retrospect and a Moral 405
LAWSON AND HIS CRITICS
I. The Insurance Controversy 413
II. The Enemies I Have Made 487
III. Explanations 539

FRENZIED FINANCE

THE STORY OF AMALGAMATED

PART I

CHAPTER I
THE TORTUOUS COURSE OF AMALGAMATED

Amalgamated Copper was begotten in 1898, born in 1899, and in the first
five years of its existence plundered the public to the extent of over one
hundred millions of dollars.
It was a creature of that incubator of trust and corporation frauds, the State
of New Jersey, and was organized ostensibly to mine, manufacture, buy,
sell, and deal in copper, one of the staples, the necessities, of civilization.
It is a corporation with $155,000,000 capital, 1,550,000 shares of the par
value of $100 each.
Its entire stock was sold to the public at an average of $115 per share ($100
to $130), and in 1903 the price had declined to $33 per share.
From its inception it was known as a "Standard Oil" creature, because its
birthplace was the National City Bank of New York (the "Standard Oil"
bank), and its parents the leading "Standard Oil" lights, Henry H. Rogers,
William Rockefeller, and James Stillman.
It has from its birth to present writing been responsible for more hell than
any other trust or financial thing since the world began. Because of it the
people have sustained incalculable losses and have suffered untold miseries.
But for the existence of the National City Bank of New York, the
tremendous losses and necessarily corresponding profits could not have
been made.
I laid out the plans upon which Amalgamated was constructed, and, had
they been followed, there would have been reared a great financial edifice,
immensely profitable, permanently prosperous, one of the world's big
institutions.

The conditions of which Amalgamated was the consequence had their birth
in Bay State Gas. To explain them I must go back a few years.
In 1894 J. Edward Addicks, of Delaware, Everywhere, and Nowhere, the
Boston Gas King, invaded the gas preserves of the "Standard Oil" in
Brooklyn, N. Y., and the "Standard Oil," to compel him to withdraw, moved
on his pre-empted gas domains in Boston, Mass.
Late in 1894 a fierce battle was raging in Boston between Gas King
Addicks and Gas King Rogers; the very air was filled with denunciation
and defiance—bribery and municipal corruption; and King Addicks was
defeated all along the line and in full retreat, with his ammunition down to
the last few rounds.
Early in 1895 I took command of the Addicks forces against "Standard Oil."
By the middle of 1895 the Addicks troopers had the "Standard Oil" invaders
"on the run."
In August, 1895, Henry H. Rogers and myself came together for the first
time, at his house in New York, and we practically settled the Boston gas
war.
Early in 1896 we actually settled the gas war, and "Standard Oil"
transferred all its Boston gas properties ($6,000,000) to the Addicks crowd.
In October, 1896, the whole Bay State Gas outfit passed from the control of
Addicks and his cohorts into the hands of a receiver, and as a result of this
receivership, with its accumulated complications, "Standard Oil," in
November, 1896, regained all its old Boston companies, and in addition all
the Addicks companies, with the exception of the Bay State Gas Company
of Delaware.
In 1896 I perfected and formulated the plans for "Coppers," a broad and
comprehensive project, having for its basis the buying and consolidating of
all the best-producing copper properties in Europe and America, and the
educating of the world up to their great merits as safe and profitable
investments.
In 1897 I laid these plans before "Standard Oil."

In 1898 "Standard Oil" was so far educated up to my plans on "Coppers" as
to accept them.
In 1899 Amalgamated, intended to be the second or third section of
"Coppers," was suddenly shifted by "Standard Oil" into the first section,
and with a full head of steam ran out of the "City Bank" station, carrying
the largest and best train-load of passengers ever sent to destruction on any
financial trunk-line.
In 1899, after the allotment of the Amalgamated public subscription, the
public for the first time, in a dazed and benumbed way, realized it had been
"taken in" on this subscription, and a shiver went down America's financial
spinal column.
In 1900, after the price of Amalgamated had slumped to 75 instead of
advancing to 150, to 200, as had been promised, the "Standard Oil"-
Amalgamated-City Bank fraternity called Wall Street's king of
manipulators, James R. Keene, to the rescue, and under his adroit handling
of the stock in the market Amalgamated was sent soaring over its flotation
price of 100.
In 1901 Boston & Montana and Butte & Boston, after long delay, drew out
of the "Standard Oil" station as the second section of Amalgamated,
carrying an immense load of investors and speculators to what was at that
time confidently believed would be Dollar Utopia; and the price of the
enlarged Amalgamated fairly flew to 130. These were the stocks which I
had originally advertised would be part of the first section of the
consolidated "Coppers," and which, after Amalgamated had been run in
ahead of them, I advertised would follow in due course.
In the latter part of 1901 President McKinley was assassinated, and the
great panic which might have ensued was averted by the marvellous power
of J. Pierpont Morgan.
Then the Amalgamated dividend, without warning and in open defiance of
the absolute pledges of its creators, was cut, and the public, including even
James R. Keene, found itself on that wild toboggan whirl which landed it
battered and sore, at the foot of a financial precipice.

This, briefly, is the tortuous course of Amalgamated, and it is along this
twisting, winding, up-alley-and-down-lane way I must ask my readers to
travel if they would know the story as it is.

CHAPTER II
THE "SYSTEM'S" METHOD OF FINANCE AND
MANAGEMENT

At the lower end of the greatest thoroughfare in the greatest city of the New
World is a huge structure of plain gray-stone. Solid as a prison, towering as
a steeple, its cold and forbidding façade seems to rebuke the heedless levity
of the passing crowd, and frown on the frivolity of the stray sunbeams
which in the late afternoon play around its impassive cornices. Men point to
its stern portals, glance quickly up at the rows of unwinking windows,
nudge each other, and hurry onward, as the Spaniards used to do when
going by the offices of the Inquisition. The building is No. 26 Broadway.
26 Broadway, New York City, is the home of the Standard Oil. Its countless
miles of railroads may zigzag in and out of every State and city in America,
and its never-ending twistings of snaky pipe-lines burrow into all parts of
the North American continent which are lubricated by nature; its mines may
be in the West, its manufactories in the East, its colleges in the South, and
its churches in the North; its head-quarters may be in the centre of the
universe and its branches on every shore washed by the ocean; its untold
millions may levy tribute wherever the voice of man is heard, but its home
is the tall stone building in old New York, which under the name "26
Broadway" has become almost as well known wherever dollars are juggled
as is "Standard Oil."
Wall Street and the financial world know that there are two "Standard Oils,"
but to the public there is no clear distinction between Standard Oil, the
corporation which deals in oil and things which pertain to the manufacture
and transportation of oil, and "Standard Oil," the giant, indefinite system
which sometimes embraces all the "Standard Oil" group of individuals and
corporations, and sometimes only certain of the individuals.
This giant creature, "Standard Oil," can best be described so that the
average man may understand it as a group of money-owners—some

individuals and some corporations—who have a right to use the name
"Standard Oil" in any business undertakings they engage in. The right to
use the name is of priceless value, for it carries with it "assured success."
Standard Oil, the seller of oil to the people, transacts its business as does
any other corporation. It plays no part in my story and I shall not hereafter
touch upon its affairs, but confine my meaning, wherever I use the name
"Standard Oil," to the larger and many times more important "System."
There are only three men who can lend the name "Standard Oil," even in
the most remote way to any project, for there is no more heinous crime
against the "Standard Oil" decalogue than using the name "Standard Oil"
unauthorizedly. The three men are Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller,
and John D. Rockefeller. Sometimes John D. Rockefeller uses the name
alone in projects in which Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller have
no interests. Henry H. Rogers or William Rockefeller seldom, if ever, uses
the name in projects with which neither of the other two is associated.
Sometimes, but not often, John D. and William Rockefeller use the name in
connection with projects of their own in which Henry H. Rogers has no
interest. Henry H. Rogers and John D. Rockefeller, I believe, never are
associated in projects in which William Rockefeller has no interest. Henry
H. Rogers and William Rockefeller frequently bring to bear the influence of
the magic-working syllables in connection with joint affairs in which John
D. Rockefeller has no interest—in fact, during the past ten years the name
"Standard Oil" has been used more in their combined undertakings than in
all others put together.
There are eight distinct groups of individuals and corporations which go to
make up the big "Standard Oil":
1st. The Standard Oil, seller of oil to the people, which is made up of many
sub-corporations either by actual ownership or by ownership of their stock
or bonds. Probably no person other than Henry H. Rogers, William
Rockefeller, and John D. Rockefeller knows exactly what the assets of the
Standard Oil corporation are, although John D. Rockefeller, Jr., son of John
D. Rockefeller, and William G. Rockefeller, that able and excellent business
man, son of William Rockefeller and the probable future head of "Standard

Oil," are being rapidly educated in this great secret. In this first institution
all "Standard Oil" individuals and estates are direct owners.
2d. Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, and John D. Rockefeller, active
heads, and included with them their sons.
3d. A large group of active captains and first lieutenants, men who conduct
the affairs of the different corporations or sections of corporations in which
some or all of the "Standard Oil" are interested. Many of these are the sons
or the second generation of men who held like positions in Standard Oil's
earlier days. Of these Daniel O'Day and Charles Pratt are fair examples.
4th. A large group of captains retired from active service in the Standard Oil
army, who participate only in a general way in the management of its
affairs, and whose principal business is looking after their own investments.
These men are each worth from $5,000,000 or $10,000,000 to $50,000,000
or $75,000,000. The Paynes and the Flaglers are fair illustrations of this
group.
5th. The estates of deceased members of this wonderful "Standard Oil"
family, which are still largely controlled by some or all of the prominent
"Standard Oil" men.
6th. "Standard Oil" banks and banking institutions, and the system of
national banks, trust companies, and insurance companies, of which
"Standard Oil" has, by ownership and otherwise, practically absolute
control. The head of this group is James Stillman, and it is when these
institutions are called into play in connection with "Standard Oil" business
that he is one of the "Standard Oil" leaders, second to neither of the
Rockefellers nor to Mr. Rogers.
7th. The "Standard Oil" army of followers, capitalists, and workers in all
parts of the world, men who require nothing more than the order, "Go
ahead," "Pull off," "Buy," "Sell," or "Stand Pat," to render as absolute
obedience and enthusiastic cooperation as though they knew, to the smallest
detail, the purposes which lay behind the giving of the order.
8th. The countless hordes of politicians, statesmen, law-makers and
enforcers, who, at home or as representatives of the nation abroad, go to
make up our political structure, and judges and lawyers.

To the world at large, which looks on and sees this giant institution move
through the ranks of business without noise or dissension and with the ease
and smoothness of a creature one-millionth its size, it would seem that there
must be some wonderful and complicated code of rules to guide and control
the thousands of lieutenants and privates who conduct its affairs. This is
partially true, partially false. "Standard Oil's" governing rules are as rigid as
the laws of the Medes and Persians, yet so simple as to be easily understood
by any one.
First, there is a fundamental law, from which no one—neither the great nor
the small—is exempt. In substance it is: "Every 'Standard Oil' man must
wear the 'Standard Oil' collar."
This collar is riveted on to each one as he is taken into "the band," and can
only be removed with the head of the wearer.
Here is the code. The penalty for infringing the following rules is instant
"removal."
1. Keep your mouth closed, as silence is gold, and gold is what
we exist for.
2. Collect our debts to-day. Pay the other fellow's debts to-
morrow. To-day is always here, to-morrow may never come.
3. Conduct all our business so that the buyer and the seller must
come to us. Keep the seller waiting; the longer he waits the less
he'll take. Hurry the buyer, as his money brings us interest.
4. Make all profitable bargains in the name of "Standard Oil,"
chancy ones in the names of dummies. "Standard Oil" never
goes back on a bargain.
5. Never put "Standard Oil" trades in writing, as your memory
and the other fellow's forgetfulness will always be re-enforced
with our organization. Never forget our Legal Department is
paid by the year, and our land is full of courts and judges.
6. As competition is the life of trade—our trade, and monopoly
the death of trade—our competitor's trade, employ both

judiciously.
7. Never enter into a "butting" contest with the Government.
Our Government is by the people and for the people, and we are
the people, and those people who are not us can be hired by us.
8. Always do "right." Right makes might, might makes dollars,
dollars make right, and we have the dollars.
All business of the gigantic "Standard Oil" system is dealt with through two
great departments. Mr. Rogers is head of the executive, and William
Rockefeller the head of the financial department. All new schemes, whether
suggested by outsiders or initiated within the institution, go to Mr. Rogers.
Regardless of their nature or character, he first takes them under
advisement. If a scheme prove good enough to run the gantlet of Mr.
Rogers' tremendously high standard, the promoter, after he has set forth his
plans and estimates, hears with astonishment these words:
"Wait while I go upstairs. I'll say Yes or No upon my return."
And upon his return it is almost always "Yes." If the project, however, does
not come up to his exacting requirements, it is turned down without further
ado or consultation with any of his associates.
Those intimate with affairs at 26 Broadway have grown curiously familiar
with this expression, "I am going upstairs." "Upstairs" means two distinct
and separate things. When a matter in Mr. Rogers' department is awaiting
his return from "upstairs," it means he has gone to place the scheme before
William Rockefeller, on the thirteenth floor, and laying a thing before
William Rockefeller by Mr. Rogers consists of a brief, vigorous statement
of Mr. Rogers' own conclusions and a request for his associate's judgment
of it. William Rockefeller's strong quality is his ability to estimate quickly
the practical value of a given scheme. His approval means he will finance it,
and William Rockefeller's "say-so" is as absolute in the financing of things
as is Mr. Rogers' in passing upon their feasibility. It does not matter whether
it is an undertaking calling for the employment of $50,000 capital or
$50,000,000 or $500,000,000, Mr. Rockefeller's "Yes" or "No" is all there is
to it. He having passed on it, Mr. Rogers supervises its execution.

The other "upstairs" is one that is heard every week-day of the year except
summer Saturdays. At 26 Broadway, just before eleven o'clock each
morning, there is a flutter in the offices of all the leading heads of
departments from Henry H. Rogers down, for going "upstairs" to the eleven
o'clock meeting is in the mind of each "Standard Oil" man the one all-
important event of every working day.
In the big room, on the fifteenth floor, at 26 Broadway, there gather each
day, between the hour of eleven and twelve o'clock, all the active men
whose efforts make "Standard Oil" what "Standard Oil" is; here also come
to meet and mingle with the active heads the retired captains when "they are
in town." Around a large table they sit. Reports are presented, views
exchanged, policies talked over, republics and empires made and unmade. If
the Recorders in the next world have kept complete minutes of what has
happened "upstairs" at 26 Broadway they must have tremendously large
fire-proof safes. It is at the meeting "upstairs" that the "melons are cut," and
if one of the retired captains were asked why he was in such a rush to be on
hand each day when in town, and if he were in a talkative mood—which he
would not be—he would answer: "They may be cutting a new melon, and
there's nothing like being on hand when the juice runs out."
If a new melon has been cut—an Amalgamated Copper, for instance—it is
at one of these meetings that the different "Standard Oil" men are informed
for the first time that the scheme, about which they may have read or heard
much outside, is far enough along for them to participate in it. Each is told
what sized slice he may have if he cares for any. It is a very exceptional
thing for any one to ask for more than he has been apportioned, and an
unheard-of thing for any one to refuse to take his slice, although there is
absolutely no compulsion in the connection.
And here, perhaps, may not come amiss an incident which illustrates what
may happen in a few minutes "upstairs."
Before Amalgamated was launched, in bringing together the different
properties of which it was composed I negotiated for the acquisition of the
Parrott mine, the majority of whose stock was held by certain old and
wealthy brass manufacturers in Connecticut. They had never seen any of the
Rockefellers nor Henry H. Rogers, but we were several months getting the

deal into shape before it was finally arranged, and they became familiar
with the great "Standard Oil" institution. So much so that the chief of the
owners—to whom was delegated the duty of turning over the securities to
my principals—looked forward with much eagerness to the time when he
must necessarily meet the mysterious and important personages who guided
26 Broadway's destinies. Finally the day came, and at precisely a quarter of
eleven I let him into one of the numerous private offices which are a part of
Mr. Rogers' suite. He had under his arm a bundle of papers representing the
stocks which he was to exchange for the purchase money, amounting to
$4,086,000, and I think he fully expected that in their examination, in the
receipting for so large an amount of money, and in the general talkings over,
which he thought must of course be a necessary part of the delivery, the
greater part of the day would be taken up. It took me some six or seven
minutes to get him located, and it was close on to five minutes of eleven
when Mr. Rogers stepped into the room. I was well into the introduction,
when out came Mr. Rogers' watch, and with what must have appeared to the
visitor as astonished consternation.
"I do hope you will excuse me," he exclaimed in the middle of a handshake,
"but, my gracious, I am overdue upstairs," and he bolted.
His place was taken fifty seconds after by Mr. Rogers' secretary, who in less
than five minutes had exchanged a check of $4,086,000, made out to herself
and indorsed in blank, for the bundle of stocks, and in another minute I was
ushering the old gentleman into the elevator.
When he came to on the sidewalk he got his breath sufficiently to say:
"Phew! I thought my trade was a big one, but that friend of yours, Rogers,
must have had some other fellow upstairs who was going to turn in
$40,000,000 of stuff, because he did appear dreadfully excited!"
The success of "Standard Oil" is largely due to two things—to the loyalty of
its members to each other and to "Standard Oil," and to the punishment of
its enemies. Each member before initiation knows its religion to be reward
for friends and extermination for foes. Once within the magic circle, a man
realizes he is getting all that any one else on earth can afford to pay him for
like services, and still more thrown in for full measure. Moreover, while a
"Standard Oil" man's reward is always ample and satisfactory, he is

constantly reminded in a thousand and one ways that punishment for
disloyalty is sure and terrible, and that in no corner of the earth can he
escape it, nor can any power on earth protect him from it.
"Standard Oil" is never loud in its rewards nor its punishments. It does not
care for the public's praise nor for its condemnation, but endeavors to avoid
both by keeping its "business" to itself. As an instance, in connection with
certain gas settlements I made with "Standard Oil," it voluntarily paid one
of its agents for a few days' work $250,000. He had expected at the outside
$25,000. When I published the fact, as I had a right to, "Standard Oil" was
mad as hornets—as upset, indeed, as though it had been detected in
cheating the man out of two-thirds of his just due, instead of having paid
him ten times what was coming to him.

CHAPTER III
THE MEN IN POWER BEHIND THE "SYSTEM"

In the great Thing known to the world as "Standard Oil," the most perfect
embodiment of a "system" which I will endeavor to get before my readers
in later chapters, there are three heads, Henry H. Rogers, William
Rockefeller, and John D. Rockefeller. All the other members are
distinctively lieutenants, or subordinate workers, unless possibly I except
James Stillman, who, from his peculiar connection with "Standard Oil" and
his individually independent position, should perhaps be placed in the
category of heads.
Some one has said: "If you would know who is the head of a family, slip
into the home." The world, the big, arbitrary, hit-or-miss, too-much-in-a-
hurry-to-correct-its-mistakes world, has decided that the master of
"Standard Oil" is John D. Rockefeller, and John D. Rockefeller it is to all
but those who have a pass-key to the "Standard Oil" home. To those the
head of "Standard Oil"—the "Standard Oil" the world knows as it knows St.
Paul, Shakespeare, or Jack the Giant-killer, or any of the things it knows
well but not at all—is Henry H. Rogers. John D. Rockefeller may have
more money, more actual dollars, than Henry H. Rogers, or all other
members of the "Standard Oil" family, and in the early days of "Standard
Oil" may have been looked up to as the big gun by his partners, and allowed
to take the hugest hunks of the profits, and may have so handled and
judiciously invested these as to be at the beginning of the twentieth century
the richest man on earth, but none of these things alters the fact that the big
brain, the big body, the head of "Standard Oil," is Henry H. Rogers.
Take station at the entrance of 26 Broadway and watch the different
members of the "Standard Oil" family as they enter the building: you will
exclaim once and only once: "There goes the Master!" And the man who
calls forth the cry will be Henry H. Rogers.

The big, jovial detective who stands all day long with one foot resting on
the sidewalk and one on the first stone step of the home of "Standard Oil"
will make oath he shows no different sign to Henry H. Rogers than to a
Rockefeller, a Payne, a Flagler, a Pratt, or an O'Day; yet watch him when
Mr. Rogers passes up the steps—an unconscious deference marks his
salutation—the tribute of the soldier to the commanding general.
Follow through the door bearing the sign, "Henry H. Rogers, President of
the National Transit Co.," on the eleventh floor, and pass from the outer
office into the beautiful, spacious mahogany apartment beyond, with its
decorations of bronze bulls and bears and yacht-models, its walls covered
with neatly framed autograph letters from Lincoln, Grant, "Tom" Reed,
Mark Twain, and other real, big men, and it will come over you like a flash
that here, unmistakably, is the sanctum sanctorum of the mightiest business
institution of modern times. If a single doubt lingers, read what the men in
the frames have said to Henry H. Rogers, and you will have proof positive
that these judges of human nature knew this man, not only as the master of
"Standard Oil," but also as a sturdy and resolute friend whose jovial
humanity they had recognized and enjoyed.
Did my readers ever hear of the National Transit Company? Very few have
—yet the presidency of it is the modest title of Henry H. Rogers. When the
world is ladling out honors to the "Standard Oil" kings, and spouting of
their wondrous riches, how often is Henry H. Rogers mentioned? Not often,
for he is never where the public can get a glimpse of him—he is too busy
pulling the wires and playing the buttons in the shadows just behind the
throne. Had it not been that that divinity which disposes of men's purposes
compelled this man, as he neared the end of his remarkable career, to come
into the open on Amalgamated, he might never have been known as the real
master of "Standard Oil." But if he is missing when the public is hurrahing,
he is sufficiently in evidence when clouds lower or when the danger-signal
is run to the masthead at 26 Broadway. He who reads "Standard Oil" history
will note that, from its first deal until this day, whenever bricks, cabbages,
or aged eggs were being presented to "Standard Oil," always were Henry H.
Rogers' towering form and defiant eye to be seen in the foreground where
the missiles flew thickest.

During the past twenty years, whenever the great political parties have
lined-up for their regular once-in-four-years' tussle, there would be found
Henry H. Rogers, calm as a race-track gambler, "sizing-up" the entries, their
weights and handicaps. Every twist and turn in the pedigrees and records of
Republicans and Democrats are as familiar to him as the "dope-sheets" are
to the gambler, for is he not at the receiving end of the greatest information
bureau in the world?
A Standard Oil agent is in every hamlet in the country, and who better than
these trained and intelligent observers to interpret the varying trends of
feelings in their communities? Tabulated and analyzed, these reports enable
Rogers, the sagacious politician, to diagnose the drift of the country far
ahead of the most astute of campaign managers. He is never in doubt about
who will win the election. Before the contest is under way he has picked his
winner and is beside him with generous offers of war expenses.
When labor would howl its anathemas at Standard Oil, and the Rockefellers
and other stout-hearted generals and captains of this band of merry money-
makers would fall to discussing conciliation and retreat, it was always
Henry H. Rogers who fired at his associates his now famous panacea for all
Standard Oil opposition: "We'll see Standard Oil in hell before we will
allow any body of men on earth to dictate how we shall conduct our
business!" And the fact that "Standard Oil" still does its business in the
Elysian fields of success, where is neither sulphur nor the fumes of sulphur,
is additional evidence of whose will it is that sways its destinies.
An impression of the despotic character of the man and of his manner of
despatching the infinite details of the multitudinous business he must deal
with daily may be gained by a glimpse of Henry H. Rogers at one of the
meetings of the long list of giant corporations which number him among
their directors. Surrounded though he be by the élite of all financialdom, the
very flower of the business brains of America, you will surely hear his
sharp, incisive, steel-clicking: "Gentlemen, are we ready for the vote, for I
regret to say, I have another important and unavoidable meeting at ——?"
You look at your watch. The time he mentions is twelve, or, at the most,
fifteen minutes away. There is no chance for further discussion. Cut-and-
dried resolutions are promptly put to the vote, and off goes the master to his

other engagement which will be disposed of in the same peremptory
fashion.
At a meeting of the directors of "financed" Steel, during the brief reign of
its late "vacuumized" president, Charlie Schwab, an episode occurred which
exhibited the danger of interfering with Mr. Rogers' iron-bound plans. The
fact that the steel throne was many sizes too large for Schwab had, about
this time, become publicly notorious, but Carnegie and Morgan on the
surface, and "Standard Oil" beneath, were so busy preparing their alibis
against the crash which even then was overdue that they had neither time
nor desire to adjust themselves on the seat.
In advance Mr. Rogers made his invariable plea for quick action on a matter
before the board when Schwab, with a tact generated by the wabbling of a
misfit Wall Street crown chafing a generous pair of ears, blurted out: "Mr.
Rogers will vote on this question after we have talked on it."
In a voice that those who heard it say sounded like a rattlesnake's hiss in a
refrigerator, Rogers replied: "All meetings where I sit as director vote first
and talk after I am gone."
It is said, and from my knowledge of these and after-events I believe with
truth, that this occurrence was the spark that started the terrific explosion in
United States Steel, for not long afterward some unknown and mysterious
power began that formidable attack on Steel stock which left Wall Street
full of the unattached ears, eyes, noses, breastbones, and scalps of hordes of
financial potentates and their flambeau carriers. Whether or not Mr. Rogers
was the instigator of this movement no man, of course, can positively state,
but I can vouch for the fact that about this time he displayed, when talking
"Steel" affairs with intimates, a most contemptuous bitterness against "King
Charlie" and certain of his associates.
At sixty-five Henry H. Rogers is probably one of the most distinguished-
looking men of the time; tall and straight, and as well-proportioned and
supple as one of the beautiful American elms which line the streets of his
native town. He was born in Fairhaven, a fishing village just over the bridge
from the great whaling port, New Bedford. He comes of stalwart New
England stock; his father was a sea-captain, and his lot, like that of most of
the sons of old New England seaport towns, was cast along those hard,

brain-and-body-developing lines which, beginning in the red village school-
house, the white meeting-house, and the yellowish-grayish country store,
end in unexpected places, often, as in this instance, upon the golden throne
of business royalty.
Mr. Rogers' part in the very early days of Standard Oil was that of clerk and
bookkeeper. He makes no secret that when he had risen to the height of $8 a
week wages he felt as proud and confident as ever in after-life when for the
same number of days' labor it was no uncommon occurrence to find himself
credited with a hundred thousand times that amount.
All able men have some of God's indelible imprints of greatness. This man's
every feature bespeaks strength and distinction. When he walks, the active
swing of his figure expresses power—realized, confident power. When at
rest or in action his square jaw tells of fighting power, bull-dog, hold-on,
never-let-go fighting power, and his high, full forehead of intellectual,
mightily intellectual power; and they are re-enforced with cheek-bones and
nose which suggest that this fighting power has in it something of the grim
ruthlessness of the North American Indian. The eyes, however, are the
crowning characteristic of the man's physical make-up.
One must see Mr. Rogers' eyes in action and in repose to half appreciate
their wonders. I can only say they are red, blue, and black, brown, gray, and
green; nor do I want my readers to think I put in colors that are not there,
for there must be many others than those I have mentioned. I have seen
them when they were so restfully blue that I would think they never could
be anything but a part of those skies that come with the August and
September afternoons when the bees' hum and the locusts' drone blend with
the smell of the new-mown hay to help spell the word "Rest."
I have seen them so green that within their depths I was almost sure the fish
were lazily resting in the shadows of those sea-plants which grow only on
the ocean's bottom; and I have seen them as black as that thunder-cloud
which makes us wonder: "Is He angry?" And then again I have watched
them when they were of that fiery red and that glinting yellow which one
sees only when at night the doors of a great, roaring furnace are opened.
There is such a kindly good-will in these eyes when they are at rest that the
man does not live who would not consider himself favored to be allowed to

turn over to Henry H. Rogers his pocket-book without receiving a receipt.
They are the eyes of the man you would name in your will to care for your
wife's and children's welfare. When their animation is friendly one would
rather watch their merry twinkle as they keep time to their owner's
inimitable stories and non-duplicatable anecdotes, trying to interpret the
rapid and incessant telegraphy of their glances, than sit in a theatre or read
an interesting book; but it is when they are active in war that the one
privileged to observe them gets his real treat, always provided he can dodge
the rain of blazing sparks and the withering hail of wrath that pours out on
the offender. To watch them then requires real nerve, for it is only a nimble,
stout-hearted, mail-covered individual that can sustain the encounter.
I have seen many forms of human wrath, many men transformed to terrible
things by anger, but I have never seen any that were other than jumping-
jack imitations of a jungle tiger compared with Henry H. Rogers when he
"lets 'er go"—when the instant comes that he realizes some one is balking
the accomplishment of his will.
Above all things Henry H. Rogers is a great actor. Had his lot been cast
upon the stage, he might easily have eclipsed the fame of Booth or Salvini.
He knows the human animal from the soles of his feet to the part in his hair
and from his shoulder-blade to his breastbone, and like all great actors is not
above getting down to every part he plays. He is likely also so to lose
himself in a rôle that he gives it his own force and identity, and then things
happen quite at variance with the lines. The original Booth would come
upon the stage the cool, calculating, polished actor, but when well into his
part was so lost in it that it was often with difficulty he could be brought
back to himself when the curtain fell. Once while playing Richard III. at the
old Boston Museum, Richmond, by whom he was to be slain, made, at the
ordained moment, the thrust which should have laid him low, but instead,
Booth in high frenzy parried it, and with the fiendishness of the original
Richard, step by step drove Richmond off the stage and through the wings,
and it was not until the police seized the great tragedian, two blocks away,
that the terrified duke, who had dropped his sword and was running for dear
life, was sure he would ever act again.
When in the midst of his important plays, it is doubtful whether Henry H.
Rogers realizes until the guardians of the peace appear where the acting

begins and the reality should end. His intimate associates can recall many
times when his determination to make a hit in his part has caused other
actors cast with him to throw aside their dummy swords and run for their
lives.
The entire history of "Standard Oil" is strewn with court-scenes, civil and
criminal, and in all the important ones Henry H. Rogers, the actor, will be
found doing marvellous "stunts." Standard Oil historians are fond of
dwelling on the extraordinary testifying abilities of John D. Rockefeller and
other members of the band, but the acrobatic feats of ground and lofty
tumbling in the way of truth which they have given when before the
blinking footlights of the temples of justice are as Punch-and-Judy shows to
a Barnum three-ring circus compared to Henry H. Rogers' exhibitions.
His "I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help
me God," sounds absolutely sincere and honest, but as it rings out in the
tone of the third solemnest bell in the chime, this is how it is taken down in
the unerring short-hand notes of the recording angel and sent by special
wireless to the typewriter for His Majesty of the Sulphur Trust: "What I tell
shall be the truth and the whole truth, and there shall be no truth but that I
tell, and God help the man or woman who tells truth different from my
truth." The recording angel never missed catching Henry H. Rogers' court-
oaths in this way, and never missed sending them along to the typewriter at
Sulphurville, with this postscript: "Keep your wire open, for there'll be
things doing now!"
At the recent but now famous sensational Boston "Gas Trial," Henry H.
Rogers in the rôle of defendant was the principal witness. I was in court five
hours and a half each sitting as day after day he testified. I watched, as the
brightest lawyers in the land laid their traps for him in direct and cross-
examination, to detect a single sign of fiction replacing truth, or going joint-
account with her, or where truth parted company with fiction; and I was
compelled, when he stepped from the witness-stand, to admit I had not
found what I had watched for. This, too, when I was equipped with actual
knowledge and black-and-white proofs of the facts. Weeks before the trial
began Attorney Sherman L. Whipple, one of the great cross-examiners of
the time, had made his boast that he would break through the "Standard Oil"
magnate's heretofore impenetrable bulwarks, and when H. H. Rogers

entered the court-room for the first time and let his eagle eye sweep the
lawyers, the laymen, and the judge until it finally rested on Whipple, the
glance was as absolute a challenge and a defiance as ever knights of old
exchanged.
I followed Mr. Rogers on the witness-stand and was compelled to give
testimony directly opposite to that which he had given, and at one time, as I
glanced at the row of lawyers who were in "Standard Oil's" hire, I felt a
cold perspiration start at every pore at the thought of what would happen if
I even in a slight detail got mixed in my facts. Then I fully realized the
magnificence of Mr. Rogers' acting, for not once in all the hours I had sat
and watched him had I detected a single evidence of cold, hot, or lukewarm
perspiration coming from his pores.
Yet away from the intoxicating spell of dollar-making this remarkable man
is one of the most charming and lovable beings I have ever encountered, a
man whom any man or woman would be proud to have for a brother; a man
whom any mother or father would give thanks for as a son; a man whom
any woman would be happy to know as her husband, and a man whom any
boy or girl would rejoice to call father. Once he passes under the baleful
influence of "The Machine," however, he becomes a relentless, ravenous
creature, pitiless as a shark, knowing no law of God or man in the execution
of his purpose. Between him and coveted dollars may come no kindly,
humane influences—all are thrust aside, their claims disregarded, in
ministering to this strange, cannibalistic money-hunger, which, in truth,
grows by what it feeds on.
In describing one head of "Standard Oil," I have necessarily used many
words because nature cast him in a most uncommon and chameleon-like
mould. The other two require less of my space, for neither is unusual nor
remarkable.
John D. Rockefeller, however great his ability or worldly success, can be
fully described as a man made in the image of an ideal money-maker and an
ideal money-maker made in the image of a man. A foot-note should call
attention to the fact that an ideal money-maker is a machine the details of
which are diagrammed in the asbestos blue-prints which paper the walls of
Hell.

With William Rockefeller it is different. When I read in my Bible that God
made man in His own image and likeness, I find myself picturing a certain
type of individual—a solid, substantial, sturdy gentleman with the broad
shoulders and strong frame of an Englishman, and a cautious, kindly
expression of face. And that is the most fitting description I can give of
William Rockefeller. A man of few, very few words and most excellent
judgment—rather brotherly than friendly, clean of mind and body; and if I
have not given you the impression of a good, wholesome man made in the
image of his God, I have done William Rockefeller a greater wrong than an
honest man can afford to do another.

CHAPTER IV
MY OWN RESPONSIBILITY

As to my personal responsibility for the crime of Amalgamated, right here,
before proceeding further, I shall briefly explain the transaction, state my
share in the deal, and point out how completely I was hoodwinked by the
"System."
The great Anaconda mine and affiliated properties, previous to the creation
of the Amalgamated, were owned by J. B. Haggin, Lloyd Tevis, and Marcus
Daly. The control of the properties and their operations were absolutely
vested in Marcus Daly, and he alone knew where the lean veins ended and
the fat ones began. For many years he had kept a close guard over the very
fat ones, never letting his right eye know what the left one saw when he was
examining them. For deep down in his mind Marcus Daly cherished a
dream—a dream of immense riches, and it was to be realized in a simple
enough way. He would get together the millions to buy out his partners on
the basis of a valuation of the "ore in sight," then in supreme ownership
himself reap untold profits out of the milling of the plethoric veins he had
been so careful to leave unworked. The immense natural endowments of the
Anaconda rendered this easy enough, for even the lean veins "in sight"
contained a vast store of copper and gold and silver.
Just about the time the world awaited the first section of "Coppers" which I
had advertised should consist of the rich Boston & Montana, and Butte &
Boston properties, it "happened" that Mr. Rogers "met" Marcus Daly. The
result of the conjunction of the two personalities—the whole-souled,
trusting miner and the fascinating and persuasive master of Standard Oil—
was decisive; the miner confided his dreams and his aspirations to the
magnate, who at once magnificently undertook to realize them. The trade
was almost instantly made. Mr. Rogers would buy the properties of Daly,
Haggin, and Tevis, at "in-sight" prices, and Daly would be his partner, but
the partnership must remain secret until the purchase was consummated.

The ownership of the Anaconda Company at the time consisted of
1,200,000 shares, and the purchase of a few shares over the majority at the
"in-sight" lean-vein valuation of $24,000,000 would carry the turnover of
the management and the control. It took but a very brief time to get together
the other properties which were finally included in the first section of
Amalgamated. They consisted of the Colorado, Washoe, and Parrott Mining
companies and timber, coal, and other lands, and mercantile and like
properties situated in the State of Montana, for which Mr. Rogers paid in
round figures $15,000,000, a total of $39,000,000 for what within a few
days after purchase was capitalized at $75,000,000 in the Amalgamated
Company.
No one but Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, myself, and one lawyer
knew the actual figures of the cost, although a number of the members of
the different groups, including Marcus Daly, the silent partner, were sure
they were in the secret.
As soon as the properties were secured, they were capitalized for
$75,000,000 as the Amalgamated Copper Company and were immediately
offered for sale to the public. It will thus be seen that the profit on this
section alone was $36,000,000, probably the largest actual profit ever made
by one body of men in a single corporation deal, yet so nicely does
"Standard Oil" discriminate in dispensing its generosity that in this case
those who received the $36,000,000 profit refused to deduct from it
$77,000 of expenses connected with the formation of the company, thereby
compelling it to start $77,000 in debt. This was something Marcus Daly
never forgave and to the day of his death he repeatedly referred to the act as
the personification of corporation meanness.
In the organization of the Amalgamated Corporation certain individuals and
institutions, for various considerations, were entitled to some share in the
profits of the deal. First there was Marcus Daly who knew what the major
portion of the property had cost and was a silent partner in the winnings as
he knew them. The Amalgamated Company was organized in and floated
on the public from the National City Bank, and so James Stillman, its
president and head, who is also one of the inner circle of "Standard Oil"
chiefs, should participate. Something was due also to J. Pierpont Morgan &
Co., and to Frederick Olcott, president of the Central Trust Company of

New York, who were on the board of directors. On the board of directors,
too, was Governor Flower, of the banking and brokerage house of Flower &
Co., who had acted as fiscal agents for the corporation at its formation. Nor
must I forget the Lewisohn Brothers, who had been compelled to turn in all
their copper business at a fraction of its worth—or at just the aggregate of
its cost and raw material—to be incorporated in the United Metals Selling
Company, a part of the Amalgamated scheme, but not included in the
corporation. Every one of these men had elaborate assurances that he was in
on the cellar floor.
This is what actually occurred. Before Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller
let any one at all in, they built a superbly designed water-, air-, and light-
proof structure (particularly light-proof), consisting of five floors, each one
being the exact duplicate of the $39,000,000 one upon which they, and they
only, stood. Marcus Daly alone was ushered in on the first floor, elevated
just a few million dollars above their own. James Stillman and Leonard
Lewisohn, of Lewisohn Brothers, were admitted to the next one, the
$50,000,000 floor. In other words, Mr. Stillman and Mr. Lewisohn were
given an unnamed percentage, the percentage to be arranged later by Mr.
Rogers, in all profits above actual cost, and such actual cost was called
$50,000,000 and was arrived at by adding the $11,000,000 of secret profits
to the actual $39,000,000 cost. Then J. P. Morgan & Co., Frederick Olcott,
Governor Flower, and one or two of the dearest friends and closest
associates, were let in on the $60,000,000 floor—were given an unnamed
percentage, the percentage to be arranged by Mr. Rogers, in all profits
above actual cost, and such actual cost was called $60,000,000, and was
arrived at by adding $21,000,000 of secret profits to the actual $39,000,000
cost. Then selected ones from the eight different groups of "Standard Oil"
were allowed to move in to the fifth, or underwriters' floor, which was
affirmed to be $70,000,000 cost; and then, as a solid phalanx, all the
different floor-dwellers marched upon the dear public to the tune of
$75,000,000, in the front ranks of which were those of the eight groups of
the Standard Oil army who had not already been admitted to any of the
secret floors.
Right here the crime of Amalgamated was born, not so much the legal
crime but the great moral crime. In the ethics of Wall Street the heinousness
of the transaction lies not in the fact that the public was compelled to pay

$36,000,000 profit to a few men who had invested but $39,000,000—and,
as I shall show when I approach this part of my story, the $39,000,000 did
not even belong to them—but in the fact that Mr. Rogers and Mr.
Rockefeller had given to their associates what, in the vernacular of "the
Street," is termed "the double cross."
The every-day people, the millions who do not know Wall Street, realm of
the royal American dollar; Wall Street, its sidewalks inlaid with gold coin
and paved from curb to curb with solid gold bricks; Wall Street, lined with
huge money-mills where hearts and souls are ground into gold-dust, whose
gutters run full to overflowing with strangled, mangled, sand-bagged
wrecks of human hopes, to be poured, in a never-ending stream, into the
brimming waters of the river at its foot, for deposit at the poor-houses,
insane asylums, States' prisons, and suicides' graves, washed daily by that
grim flood's ebb and flow—the every-day people, I am sure, will not take in
the blackness of this transaction at this stage of my story, but before it is
ended I will lay this and many more of an equally hellish nature before
them in such A B C simplicity that all can read the portent as clearly as the
Prophet Daniel read the writing on the wall in the banquet-hall of
Belshazzar.
When I consented to allow property which had cost only $39,000,000 to be
sold to the public for $75,000,000, it was under a pressure which it was
practically impossible for me to withstand. I do not think I use too strong a
word when I say "pressure." For three years I had been advertising to the
world the great merits of "Coppers," and for over a year I had announced
that when the public was given an opportunity to participate in the
consolidated "Coppers" it would be upon a basis most carefully worked out:
that the properties included in the first section would surely be worth more
than the price at which they would be offered to the public, and that all the
power, capital, and ability of "Standard Oil" were behind the promises I
made. I did this advertising openly and in the frankest possible way, and in
all of my announcements, whether printed, oral, or otherwise, used the
names of Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, James Stillman, the
National City Bank of New York, and "Standard Oil" as freely as I did my
own, and in many ways led the public to believe that the very rich Boston &
Montana and Butte & Boston companies were to be included in this section
of "Coppers."

At that time my alliance with "Standard Oil" was close. A business
connection had developed into a strong personal relation between Mr.
Rogers and myself. We were engaged, together with William Rockefeller,
on a great financial deal which was based on certain conclusions I had
worked out in regard to the copper industry. These men were to me the
embodiment of success, success won in the fiercest commercial conflict of
the age. Their position at the helm of the greatest financial institution in the
world gave weight and importance to their judgment and opinions. Nor had
aught occurred between us to suggest they would dare perpetrate the crimes
they did. Besides all this, indeed an integral part of it, my personal
resources were completely involved in the transaction, for the most part
pledged with Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller in stocks of the Butte &
Boston and Boston & Montana corporations.
This was, then, the nature of our connection when Mr. Rogers, suddenly
and without previous intimation of his schemes, notified me of his purchase
of the Daly-Haggin-Tevis properties, and practically ordered me to put them
upon the tray which I was preparing and take them to the eagerly waiting
public, who by this time were fairly howling for the good things we had
been promising them.
In support of this extraordinary change of plan Mr. Rogers urged the secret
wealth of the Anaconda and the great value of the other properties which I
myself had helped purchase, but I bitterly opposed the new proposition until
there was nothing before me but these alternatives—to accept the change
Mr. Rogers insisted on or break with "Standard Oil." The latter would mean
that I must announce to the public that it was in danger of being tricked, and
it was by no means certain that my warning would carry weight against the
denials and assurances of "Standard Oil." However much influence I had
obtained through my long years of dealings with the public, independent of
"Standard Oil," I realized that "Standard Oil's" influence and prestige were
much greater, for it must be remembered that at this time the public had not
had the evidence since acquired of the "System's" cold-blooded trickery. If I
took this course it would mean not only my own ruin financially, for Mr.
Rogers and William Rockefeller could call my loans and wipe me out
completely, but also the ruin of my friends and allies, who, under my
direction, had invested their own millions in the properties concerned. On
the other hand, I had the most earnest assurances from Mr. Rogers and

William Rockefeller that the new properties were worth much more than the
$75,000,000 at which it was proposed to capitalize them. They took me to
task for my distrust of them, and went far to demonstrate to me the accuracy
of their estimates. They not only gave me Marcus Daly's minute estimates
of the values and legitimate possibilities of Anaconda, but consented to
have these verified by outside experts in whom I had implicit confidence,
and whose personal examination more than bore out Daly's appraisal. I have
never yet had reason to doubt the correctness of the figures then shown me,
although since I began this story "Standard Oil," in an endeavor to get me to
abandon my efforts to secure justice for the thousands I assisted in duping,
have stated for the first time that Marcus Daly deceived them and really, to
use the words of their chief counsel, sold them a "gold brick."
After this examination I felt convinced that the properties "Standard Oil"
insisted on substituting for those originally intended for the first section of
Amalgamated were such that the public, if honestly dealt with, could not
possibly meet with loss in purchasing. But even then I only consented to go
ahead with the flotation under a definite agreement which seemed to me
completely to guard against all contingencies of jugglery or deception. This
agreement stipulated that all the profits from the transaction should be taken
by those to whom they were due in the stock of the Amalgamated
Company, and no part of them in cash—that the public should be sold, at
the flotation, only $5,000,000 of the $75,000,000, and that "Standard Oil"
and all associated with "Standard Oil" in the profits should retain the
remaining $70,000,000 until such time as it had been absolutely
demonstrated to the public that the property behind the $75,000,000 of
stock was worth more than the amount it had been capitalized for.
Furthermore, I was also promised that the $5,000,000 cash to be taken from
the public should be kept intact, and in my handling of the market it should
always be available for the repurchase from the investors of what had been
sold to them, at the price which they had paid for it.
This was the basis on which I went on with Amalgamated. I would not have
my readers understand me as asserting it would have been possible for me
to have stopped the flotation had I attempted it. But, on the other hand, I
would not have them think that I desire to be absolved from the disastrous
results of the great mistake I made at this time in not at any cost doing that
which after-happenings have shown would have been the most honest

course for me to have pursued. Nor would I have them think I desire to be
absolved from the consequences of many other mistakes which this one led
me into—mistakes in temporizing with the situation and postponing action
which I should have boldly and fearlessly forced, regardless of all
consequences to the public, my friends, and myself.
The subsequent proceedings, the manner in which Amalgamated was
actually sold to the public, the flagrant disregard of the conditions of my
agreement with Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller, will, when fully told
in their proper place in my story, show that the "System," by whose
methods the public is as ruthlessly plundered as though the fruits of its
labors were taken away from it by highwaymen, admits also of its own
votaries being tricked and despoiled by their associates. The men who
participated in the transaction I have just described are among the most
astute financiers in the country and presumably possessed of invincible
capacity to protect their own interests. But with all their knowledge of the
"System's" tricks they were, in this instance, as shrewdly duped as the
veriest tyro in the Wall Street game.
My own experience with the "System" in this deal was different in degree
but not in principle from that of these others, and it must be remembered
that I was better equipped to protect my interests than any of them. I knew
that the actual cost of the properties comprising the first Amalgamated was
$39,000,000, and that when sold to the public at $75,000,000 there must be
a profit of $36,000,000. I had every right to think I knew all the other
details connected with the transaction, for as organizer and executant of the
deal my share in the profits was to be equal to that of Henry H. Rogers and
William Rockefeller respectively. We were each to have twenty-five per
cent., the remaining twenty-five per cent. going to others. This was no
gentleman's "leave-it-to-me-and-I'll-see-you-get-what's-coming-to-you"
arrangement either, but a hard, cold, mutually satisfactory and settled-in-
advance agreement. But when it came to the final accounting, the "System"
had so regulated things that the participants on the various floors, except, of
course, Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller, must each accept without
question the share finally handed over to him. Having no means of knowing
how large the other interests were, or what the "extraordinary expenses" had
been, they were in no position to question the payments made them, which
represented sums below what they would have had if the business had been

conducted as they thought it had been. When my final account was
presented to me I was startled. Notwithstanding the "cleverness" of the
"System," the deception was so obvious, so audacious, that the instant Mr.
Rogers submitted it to me I exploded and denounced the transaction with
such vehemence and conviction that within a few minutes there was
forthcoming a second statement, revising the account, by which I was given
just double the amount first tendered, and the figures in both accounts ran
into millions; yet the amount in the second account upon which I settled
was only one-half the share received by my equal partners, Henry H.
Rogers and William Rockefeller, as I afterward learned.[1]
This is a fair statement of my own share in the first Amalgamated
transaction. I have no desire to evade the issues suggested and raised by
these revelations. My frankness should be absolute proof of that. As I
promised, I shall hew to the exact line of fact, letting the chips of
responsibility, legal and moral, fall where they may, though many of them
stick to my own clothes. My own burden of error I am ready and willing to
shoulder, but I decline any longer to take and carry responsibilities which
belong absolutely to others. There should be a time-limit on martyrdom,
and mine anyhow is up.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] I know no better spot in my story than right here to set the public right on
two vital points concerning Amalgamated, upon which they are and always have
been greatly at sea:
John D. Rockefeller did not have before the Amalgamated Company was
organized and floated, nor at its organization and flotation, directly or indirectly,
a dollar's interest in its stock nor its affairs, and I have what I consider excellent
reasons for believing he has not had any interest up to the time of this writing.
The disasters which have come to the Amalgamated stockholders did not occur,
as has been so industriously and ingeniously advertised throughout the world,
because of the inability of the "Standard Oil"-Amalgamated-City Bank fraternity
to prevent the collapse of the price of copper, the metal, from the high price of
seventeen cents to the low one of eleven cents per pound. "Cornering" the metal
market, forcing the price to an abnormally high figure and maintaining it there
had, notwithstanding the many emphatic statements to the contrary, absolutely
no part in any of our original plans, and the success or failure of our project was
in no way dependent upon any price for copper, the metal, other than the fair and
legitimate price caused by legitimate supply and demand. In fact, as I shall

demonstrate before my story is ended, forcing the price to extremely high points
and the resulting collapse were all a part of the trickery by which the public was
plundered.

CHAPTER V
THE POWER OF DOLLARS

At no time in the history of the United States has the power of dollars been
as great as now. Freedom and equity are controlled by dollars. The laws
which should preserve and enforce all rights are made and enforced by
dollars. It is possible to-day, with dollars, to "steer" the selection of the
candidates of both the great parties for the highest office in our republic,
that of President of the United States. It is possible to repeat the operation in
the selection of candidates for the executive and legislative conduct and
control of every State and municipality in the United States, and with a
sufficient number of dollars to "steer" the doings of the law-makers and
law-enforcers of the national, State, and municipal governments of the
people, and to "steer" a sufficient proportion of the court decisions to make
absolute any power created by such direction. It is all, broadly speaking, a
matter of dollars practically to accomplish these things. I must not be
misunderstood as even insinuating that there are not absolutely honest law-
makers and law-enforcers, nor that there are not as many of them in
proportion to the whole body as there were at the creation of our republic. I
believe there is at the present time as large a percentage of honesty among
Americans as ever there has been, but it is plainly evident to any student of
the times that at no other period in the history of the United States has
honesty been so completely "steered" by dishonesty as at this, the beginning
of the twentieth century.
I shall go further and say that there to-day exists uncontrolled in the hands
of a set of men a power to make dollars from nothing. That function of
dollar-making which the people believe is vested in their Government alone
and only exercised under the law for their benefit, is actually being secretly
exercised on an enormous scale by a few private individuals for their own
personal benefit. This, I am well aware, is a startling statement, but not
more so than the facts which support it. Throughout the country we have all
grown accustomed to the spectacle of men who, poor yesterday, to-day
display more dollars than the kings and queens of olden times controlled. In

flaunting this money these men proudly boast: "We made all this
yesternight, and are going to multiply it five-or fifty-fold to-morrow night."
The fact that there must be in this country some secret method of gaining
vast fortunes gradually dawned on the minds of the people. This method,
they argued, must be outside the laws of the land which they themselves
had made, and they were confronted with the fact that the possessors of
these fabulous fortunes were creating a power not recognized by their
Government and which practically placed the Government in the hands of
the fortune-owners. They realized that in some way the magic of this
fortune-making was connected with, or seemed to be compounded in,
institutions called corporations and trusts, and that among these the head
and centre was a great affair called "Standard Oil." Wherever this "Standard
Oil" was, all knew that strange wonders were worked. Within the sphere of
its influence dirt changed to gold, liquids to solids, and what was, was not,
and what was not, was. Whoever became a part of this mysterious
"Standard Oil," at the same time was rendered "powerful"; as though
touched by a fairy's wand, he changed from pauper to millionaire. But what
was "Standard Oil"? The people knew that at the beginning it was only an
aggregation of men, private individuals, who had accumulated much money
by securing a monopoly of selling oil, and that these men were
"Rockefellers," and that Standard Oil and "Rockefellers" had been cute and
cunning in the conduct of their oil-selling to a degree greater than had been
rival sellers of oil or of other necessities. And as time wore on much more
was heard of the cleverness of Standard Oil and "Rockefellers," as the
victims of the cuteness and the cunning "hollered" in public places, and the
newspapers and writers of books exclaimed against their practices and
exactions. But many other things were happening simultaneously, and to the
great bulk of the people it was interesting rather than portentous that there
existed in the country a giant oil-thing whose owners were reputed the
richest men in the world.
It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the monster
"Standard Oil" loomed up before the people as the giant of all corporate
things and that its ominous shadow seemed to dwarf all other institutions,
public or private. In multitudinous forms it was before the people.

In awed whispers men talked of its mysterious doings and canvassed its
extraordinary powers as though "Standard Oil" were a living, breathing
entity rather than a mere business institution created by men and existing
only by virtue of the laws of the land.
About the time that the world had begun mistily to take in the tremendous
forces which radiated from "Standard Oil," there occurred a financial crash,
and the people saw their savings, invested in what they supposed were the
legal and absolute titles of ownership in the material things of their country,
suddenly decline in value and contract to prices representing a loss to them
of billions of dollars. Throughout the misery and suffering this terrible
collapse occasioned, "Standard Oil" remained undisturbed as before and
amid all the confusion kept sternly on its dollar-"making" way. Indeed, it
seemed to gain in bulk as other institutions diminished or disappeared. Then
it was that the people first began to demand, what they are still to-day
fiercely demanding, "What is this 'Standard Oil'?" "What is its secret?"
"Whence came it?" and, "Can our republic endure if it, too, endures?"
To-day "Standard Oil," the "Private Thing," is the greatest power in the land
—more powerful than the people individually or as a whole, and its secret
is the knowledge of the trick of finance by which dollars are "made" from
nothing in unlimited quantities subject to no laws of man nor nature. The
dollars that "Standard Oil" makes are of the same value as the dollars of the
people as made by the Government, which dollars we know can be coined
and put into circulation only in accordance with law and for the benefit of
all the people.
For the better understanding of those readers not versed in the technical
phrases of finance and economics I shall in my narrative make use of
certain terms of my own which will convey meanings readily grasped when
the sense in which they are used is once comprehended. In speaking of
"Standard Oil," for instance, I will speak of it as a "Private Thing." By that
term I desire to typify the active, private identity of a corporation which
comprehends, but exists independently of, its legalized functions. Some
corporations have a real personality in addition to that which their name and
the corporation laws prescribe for them, an inherent power, or individuality,
which exists above and apart from their physical functions as sellers of oil,
of coal, or of ice. This may be an incarnation of the power developed in the

transaction of their legalized occupations, but the "Private Thing" is
uncontrolled by any of the restrictions by which the law defines and curbs
the corporation whose name it bears. Already I have distinguished between
"Standard Oil" which wields all the powers of its subsidiary companies, and
Standard Oil, the seller of oil. In the same way we have "American Sugar
Refineries" and "United States Steel," the "Private Things" which are not
one whit better than nor different from "Standard Oil," the "Private Thing."
Though this narrative will deal only with the "Private Things," Bay State
Gas and Amalgamated Copper, I have no hesitancy in saying that the
methods employed and the results, good or bad, which accrued in the case
of any of the other "Private Things" with which the public have had to do,
differ only in details from those with which I shall deal in my story.
In speaking of dollars brought into existence by the trick of finance I have
referred to I shall call them henceforth "made dollars," to distinguish them
from dollars coined by the Government and legitimately acquired by the
individual or corporation. These "made dollars," it must be remembered, are
really "made" for all purposes of use as surely as if they had the
Government's stamp, yet they are not made in the sense of the known
volume of the people's money being added to. So, however many of these
"made dollars" are brought into existence by this trick of finance, only the
men who "made" them can know and profit by their existence. The people
are no wiser nor can they adjust themselves to the change of conditions
brought about by the creation of all this new money; yet if "unmade" or
lost, the entire volume of the nation's wealth would be contracted.
I can set before my readers better by an illustration than by any process of
definition, the trick of finance by which "made dollars" are brought into
existence. Let us suppose that the United States Government at Washington,
the only power legally entitled to issue money for circulation among the
people, puts forth a particular $10,000. All the conditions prescribed by law
have been followed, and all the people in the country are benefited by the
issue and circulation of this particular $10,000, each in the proportion the
laws prescribe.
"B," a Western farmer, tills his soil and receives, by the sale of his wheat,
the particular $10,000, which he then deposits in The Bank. The Bank,
being a part of the Government machinery, only receives, holds, and uses

the $10,000 under safeguards provided for by the laws of the land, so
hereafter "B's" material life is conducted on the basis that he is the full and
actual possessor of $10,000. He knows, further, that his $10,000 cannot be
expanded nor contracted, nor its relation to any of the other money of the
people which is in circulation altered without his knowledge, because he
knows such changes cannot come about except through the Government. I
say he knows this—he has every right to believe he knows it—but, in fact,
it is not so, because of the working of the secret financial device of the
Private Thing. At this stage enters "C," the Private Thing.
"C" purchases with $3,300 ("B's" money) which he borrows from The
Bank, a copper-mine, depositing the title which he receives from the seller
with The Bank as collateral for the $3,300. After purchasing he arbitrarily
calls the copper-mine worth $10,000—arbitrarily because his act is not
controlled nor regulated by any of the laws of the land—arbitrarily because
the actual cost, $3,300, is his secret and his alone. Then, arbitrarily, "C"
organizes his $3,300 of copper property into the Arbitrary Copper
Company, and issues to himself a piece of paper, which he arbitrarily
stamps "10,000 stock dollars." This he takes to The Bank, and by loan or
other device exchanges it for the remaining $6,700 belonging to "B," and
thereafter "C" conducts his affairs on the basis that he is the possessor of
$6,700, his "made dollars" in the transaction. At this stage there is actually
in use among the people $16,700 where "B," the legitimate factor, and his
kind, the people, suppose there is but $10,000—$10,000 which is recorded,
known and legal, being used by the legitimate factors, "B" and The Bank,
and $6,700 which is unrecorded and unknown to any but "C" and The Bank,
being used by the illegitimate Private Thing "C."
Right here is the secret device, the financial trick, by which the greatest
power in the land has been created, and by which the people can be
absolutely plundered of their savings for the benefit of the few.
At this stage the two-thirds of "B's" $10,000, of which he later is to be
plundered, has not been actually taken away, so he cannot possibly have
any evidence yet of the process of pillage which has been begun, or that the
volume of money which he supposes is all that exists has been
tremendously expanded. The next step is where "C" sells his $3,300,
stamped "10,000 stock dollars" (which, as already shown, he has exchanged

with The Bank for the $10,000 deposited by "B"), to "B" for $10,000, which
$10,000 "B" withdraws from The Bank by simply making out a check in
favor of "C." ("B's" inducement to exchange his dollars for the stock dollars
of "C" is the high rate of interest that they will return in the form of
dividends, which rate is much larger than The Bank can afford to pay.) "C"
deposits "B's" check with The Bank and hereby liquidates his $10,000
indebtedness to The Bank.
At this stage "B" is still the possessor of $10,000, but it is "10,000 stock
dollars." "C" is the possessor of $6,700, and "D," from whom the copper-
mine was purchased, is the possessor of $3,300; but the two latter amounts
make up the 10,000 real dollars, and The Bank remains where it was at the
beginning of the transaction. The people, however, are no wiser; but they
know, because they have been most carefully educated to such knowledge
by "C's" agents, Wall Street, and the press, that their country is
tremendously prosperous—that its great prosperity is evidenced by the
$6,700 added wealth in the form of 6,700 new stock dollars. At the next
stage the financial trick accomplished by the secret device is complete. "B,"
the farmer, who has contracted for new machinery and other necessities and
luxuries to be paid for "next season," attempts next season to turn his
10,000 stock dollars into real dollars, and "C," the Private Thing, knowing
their real value to be but $3,300, refuses to make the exchange, but instead,
by proclaiming their real value, compels "B," who must have real dollars to
meet his debts, to sell them for what "C," the Private Thing, is willing to
pay. "C," the Private Thing, is willing to pay their worth, which he alone
knows is $3,300; he repurchases them at that price from "B," that he may
repeat the operation at the return of the next "wave of the country's
prosperity."
By this operation "B," the farmer, has lost, as absolutely as though they had
been taken away from him by a Government decree, $6,700 of his own
making, and "C," the Private Thing, has "made," as absolutely as though the
Government had allowed him to coin them for his own benefit, 6,700 real
dollars, and The Bank, created, regulated, and controlled by law, and
existing because of the people's deposits of money, has been the instrument
by which "C," the Private Thing, has deprived "B," the farmer, of his
savings, because "C," the Private Thing, is at one and the same time during
the operation I have outlined, himself and The Bank.

A careful study of this illustration, by even laymen unacquainted with
financial or corporation affairs, will clearly show that the foundation of this
transaction was The Bank's putting in jeopardy $3,300 of "B's" deposited
$10,000, and that if the $3,300, after being put in jeopardy, had been lost,
"B" would have been the loser,[2] which, in turn, means that the
compensation for the jeopardy in which the $3,300 was placed was the
possibility of $6,700 profit; and that, therefore, the $6,700 profit when
made should have gone to the owner of the $3,300, "B," instead of to "C,"
the user of it.
It is therefore in this sense that I shall use the term "made dollars"—
wherever they are "made" or "unmade" through one set of men using the
dollars of another set of men without that other set knowing that their
dollars are being so used; and wherever the result of such use is that when
dollars are "made," they are "made" by the ones who use others' money, and
where dollars are "unmade," they are lost by the ones who own the dollars
which they don't know are being used.

FOOTNOTES:
[2] I say "B" would have been the loser because all money lost by a bank must
eventually be lost by the depositors, the people, or the surplus or capital of the
bank which belongs to the people, through their ownership of the stock in the
bank. Of course the loss of individual amounts such as $3,300 would not come
directly on the people. But when the aggregate of the money put in jeopardy by
the four classes of institutions I name—national banks, savings-banks, trusts,
and insurance companies—runs into billions and is lost, the loss must fall on the
people, because the only other ones involved are the managers and controllers of
these institutions, who always see to it that when the losses which would wreck
the bank are actually made, they, the managers and controllers, have no deposits
and none of the stock.

CHAPTER VI
CONSTRUCTION OF "STANDARD OIL'S" "DOLLAR-
MAKING" MILL

I believe "Standard Oil" was the first to utilize this secret device for
circumventing the safeguards which the law has erected to protect the
savings of the people. It was the first practically to apprehend that, a large
proportion of all the moneys in circulation, which belong to the people or
the Government, being in the custody of the national and savings-banks and
trust and insurance companies, it would only be necessary for a set of men
to obtain control of sufficient of the principal national and savings-banks
and trust and insurance companies to control practically unlimited amounts
of such funds. Once in control of these funds dollars could be absolutely
"made" at will by the three following steps: 1st. Using the money in these
institutions to acquire properties. 2d. Consolidating such properties on an
inflated basis, and selling them to the people (who, in fact, already owned
them; because they owned the funds with which they had been purchased);
and, 3d, by stock-market trickery scaring their owners into re-selling them
at an enormous shrinkage from the price they had paid. To understand a
situation with "Standard Oil" is to act, and twenty years ago it began to
weave a net to secure control of the four classes of institutions I have
named.
Its first move was to establish a great corporation, the Standard Oil
Company, and make its stock, 1,000,000 shares, sell at from $650 to $800
per share, or $650,000,000 to $800,000,000. It kept its affairs mysteriously
secret, it paid enormous dividends, and from time to time it caused to be
published broadcast throughout the world the statement that it was held in
such value by its creators, the Rockefellers, Rogers, etc, that they continued
to own all but a few shares of the entire capital. To prove that there could be
no doubt of such continued ownership, the public's attention was repeatedly
called to the fact that the Standard Oil Company was the only great
corporation which did not allow its shares to be traded in upon any of the

stock-exchanges. As a matter of fact, though they are not traded in on the
regular stock-exchanges, they are actively bought and sold daily on the
New York "Curb."
At the height of the recent financial storm word went round that the crafts
of three over-night-made multimillionaires, men foremost in the seventh
group of "Standard Oil" votaries, were in the trough of the financial sea and
headed for the breakers, which were already strewn with the wrecks of the
people's savings. Following closely on the heels of these stories came the
astounding one that each of these enormously rich men had, in his
endeavors to raise large amounts of cash, disclosed among his assets blocks
of "Standard Oil" stock ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 shares each. Hardly
had the public heard this before all financialdom knew that the storm-tossed
crafts had received succor, and that the crisis had passed. For one brief day
the financial press of the country printed the item: "Standard Oil came to
the rescue by buying for cash large blocks of Standard Oil stock which had
long been held by this or that interest for investment," and no more was
thought of the incident. Even the most alert financiers never suspected that
the most important stock secret of the age had been on the verge of
becoming public property.
Planted deep in the minds of the public that watches the comings and
goings of the Street is the conviction that Standard Oil is the holy of holies
among stocks. The world has been taught to believe that the owners of
Standard Oil regard the shares of the great oil corporation as their most
precious, most sacred possessions. Yet while "Standard Oil" has been so
scientifically spreading abroad the impression that the public would never
be permitted to own Standard Oil stock, secretly it has been engaged in
exchanging that stock for the securities of the people in the form of banks
and trust companies, railroads, and other assets of definite value. So
completely has "Standard Oil" pulled the wool over the eyes of the votaries
of finance that there cannot be found in or out of Wall Street a single great
financier who would not laugh to scorn the suggestion that "Standard Oil" is
engaged in a campaign for the distribution of its Standard Oil stock to the
public. Yet pin your great financier down to the facts, and he'll admit that he
himself has quite a block of the stock, and that institutions of which he is a
director include among their assets in one form or another good-sized
parcels of the inestimable security. But so completely are these very wise

men held by the spells woven over them when for this or that special reason
they were allowed as a favor to acquire their holdings, and so impressively
have they been shown that their ownership in Standard Oil stock must be
kept secret, that no suspicion has ever entered their minds that they were
playing the part of lambs in its purchase.
Nor was the episode I have described above allowed to disturb their
serenity. It soon became known to the innermost circle of Wall Street that
the stock the three men had resold to "Standard Oil" represented the share
of each in some of the gigantic deals to which he had been a party during
the last ten years, and that with its acquirement had gone a pledge that it
would always be kept in the purchaser's "tin box," and whenever inspected
by "Standard Oil" would be free from "pinholes." And so, adroitly,
dangerous deductions were prevented.
For the uninstructed I may say that a capitalist's "tin box" is the receptacle
for the stocks and bonds that largely represent his fortune, and pinholes in a
stock certificate are in Wall Street conclusive evidence that such certificate
has, at some period, temporarily passed into other's hands as collateral for
loans, for there has been pinned to it a memorandum or note stating the
details of the transaction in which its owner parted with it. Pinholed
securities are looked upon by the upper crust of big financiers with much
the same horror as that with which members of the American social upper
crust look upon their No. 10 boots and gloves—reminders of their peasant
ancestry.
But to return to "Standard Oil's" financial weavings: Their next move was
to use Standard Oil stock as the basis for loans, that is, as collateral for
money borrowed from the banks, trust and insurance companies, and
treasuries of other great corporations and estates. The money thus acquired
was paid out to purchase the control of banks and trust and insurance
companies in all parts of the United States, the Standard Oil ownership
being represented by dummy directors and officers.
The next move represents another of the dazzling devices of finance in
which "Standard Oil" is adept, and brings the process of artificial expansion
still further along. Control of a certain number of these savings and national
banks and trust and insurance companies having been acquired, the funds of

each were so manipulated by depositing those of one institution with
another, and the latter's in turn with the first, as to swell the deposits of all
and create in all of them an apparently legitimate basis for increases of
capitalization. At the same time there was shown an apparently legitimate
necessity for the establishment of additional banking and trust companies,
which were duly organized and their assets juggled around by the same
process. The result of all this manipulation defies description. Throughout
the series of correlated institutions loans and deposits are multiplied in such
an intricacy of duplication that only a few able experts, employed by the
"System" because of their mathematical genius, are able to unravel the
tangle to the extent of approximating the proportion the legitimate funds
bear to those which have been created by the financial jugglery I have
indicated.
When "Standard Oil" had gathered into its net sufficient of the important
private institutions of finance there still remained the federal Government,
the largest handler of money in the country. It was not hard for "Standard
Oil" to introduce its expert votaries into the United States Treasury and thus
to steer the millions of the nation into the banks subject to the "System's"
control. This accomplished, the structure was complete and the process of
"making" dollars proceeded on a magnificent scale.
That there may be no possible doubt in the minds of those of my readers
who are unacquainted with such matters that I am citing every-day, actual
happenings, I will tell just how the Daly-Haggin-Tevis-Anaconda-
Amalgamated transaction was worked out, showing that but for the
existence of the National City Bank of New York, or a like institution of the
people, it could not have been brought about.
When Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller "traded" with Messrs. Daly,
Haggin, and Tevis for the Anaconda stock, and with others for like stock or
other properties which I have already named, the price agreed upon was
$24,000,000 to Daly, Haggin, and Tevis, and $15,000,000 to the others, or
$39,000,000 in all. This was to be paid by "Standard Oil" and received by
Daly, Haggin, and Tevis, and the others, but one of the stipulations in the
"trade" was that instead of the money's being paid to Daly, Haggin, and
Tevis, and others direct, it was to be credited to them on the books of the
National City Bank of New York and was to be, by agreement, not

withdrawn from the bank before a given time, the bank agreeing that the
new owners of this money should receive interest at a low rate upon it while
it so remained deposited. At the same time the bank agreed to loan Mr.
Rogers and William Rockefeller the $39,000,000 at the same rate of interest
upon the collateral which the $39,000,000 was used in purchasing.
Therefore the first part of the transaction was as follows:
The bank, having $39,000,000 on hand belonging to the public in the form
of savings deposited, or having a fictitious $39,000,000 in the form of
book-keeping accounts made possible by the deposits of the public and the
manipulation of the funds in other banks and trust and insurance companies
belonging to the public or the Government, caused an entry to be made in
its books showing that this $39,000,000 had been loaned to Mr. Rogers and
William Rockefeller, and that they, having transferred it to Daly, Haggin,
Tevis, and others, were, upon the books of the bank, the real owners.
The second part was the summoning into the City Bank of certain "Standard
Oil" lawyers, office-boys, and clerks, and the organization by them of the
Amalgamated Copper Company. The lawyers drew up the papers and the
office-boys and clerks signed them. First, the papers certified that "whereas
we (the office-boys and clerks) are desirous of taking advantage of the
corporation laws of the State of New Jersey, we (the said office-boys and
clerks) do so take advantage of the said laws and form ourselves into the
Amalgamated Copper Company, which will have a capital of $75,000,000,
and which will be allowed by said laws to own copper-mines and other
things, to mine copper and other things, to manufacture, buy, sell, and trade
in copper and other things, and to do numerous and variegated other things;
and that whereas we (the said office-boys and clerks) have now become the
Amalgamated Copper Company, one of our number will purchase the entire
capital stock of the said Amalgamated Copper Company for $75,000,000
cash, which $75,000,000 cash we herewith certify to have been paid in the
form of a check for $75,000,000, herewith delivered to the treasurer, one of
our number, by the clerk who drew it; and the treasurer, herewith certifying
that he has received the $75,000,000, herewith delivers unto said clerk the
$75,000,000 capital stock of the Amalgamated Copper Company, and we
(the said office-boys and clerks) herewith certify that there is within the
treasury of the Amalgamated Copper Company $75,000,000, and we (the
said office-boys and clerks) vote that it, the said $75,000,000, shall be used

in the purchase of certain stocks and properties, and said certain stocks and
properties shall be the same stocks and properties previously purchased by
Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller, and now owned by them, and we (the
said office-boys and clerks) herewith certify that we have paid from the
treasury $75,000,000, that said $75,000,000 is in the form of a check, and
said check is the one previously received, or its equivalent, by our treasurer,
from one of our number, to wit, the clerk referred to earlier in these papers,
and said $75,000,000 has been paid to Henry H. Rogers for his and William
Rockefeller's use." Henry H. Rogers, now having $75,000,000, where
formerly he had stocks and properties which had cost him $39,000,000, and
being desirous of investing it, purchased from the clerk the $75,000,000 of
Amalgamated stock which he, the clerk, had previously purchased from the
treasury of the Amalgamated Company, Mr. Rogers promptly paying for
said purchase with the $75,000,000 check or its equivalent, which has
already done such yeoman service.
The organization of the Amalgamated Copper Company of New Jersey now
being complete, and the company being in possession of all the property
which had formerly belonged to Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller, and
which had cost them $39,000,000, and the clerk having again come into
possession of his $75,000,000 check, and Mr. Rogers and William
Rockefeller being the sole owners of the $75,000,000 of Amalgamated
stock, the second part of this transaction was completed. The third began by
the office-boys and clerks resigning from their positions as directors and
officers of the Amalgamated Copper Company of New Jersey in favor of
the more responsible and better known "Standard Oil" votaries. Mr. Rogers
and William Rockefeller then had the National City Bank of New York
offer for sale to the public the $75,000,000 of stock in such a way that,
although it was then the private property of Mr. Rogers and William
Rockefeller, the public were led to believe it was the property of the
Amalgamated Copper Company. Simultaneously, the National City Bank of
New York offered to loan the public its deposits at the rate of ninety cents
on the dollar, on any amount of the Amalgamated stock it, the public,
purchased; whereupon the public, taking advantage of this offer, agreed to
purchase from the National City Bank of New York the $75,000,000 of
stock for $75,000,000, thereby enabling it to certify upon its books that the
$39,000,000 it had loaned to Messrs. Rogers and Rockefeller had been

repaid, and enabling Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller, after paying said
debts to the National City Bank of New York, to become the absolute
owners of $36,000,000 of money, none of which they had owned before,
and which they had "made" as absolutely as though they had coined it by
permit from the Government of the people who had parted with it.[3]
The fourth part of the transaction began when months afterward the public,
who had borrowed their money from the National City Bank of New York
and other banks and trust and insurance companies to buy Amalgamated
stock at 100 cents on the dollar, were compelled to repay it, and to do so
were obliged to sell the Amalgamated stock which they had purchased at
$100 per share for the best price they could get, which was $33 per share;
and if we suppose for a moment that the "Standard Oil," after repurchasing
it at $33 per share, at a later day repeated the operation of selling it for $100
per share, it will be seen that "Standard Oil," the "Private Thing," would
thereby "make" an additional $50,000,000, as absolutely as though they had
been allowed by the Government to coin it.[4]
This explanation is not the creation of an extravagant fancy. It is not
romance, but reality. The thing described was a supreme manifestation of
the "System," of the perfect working of that tremendous financial machine
which reaps, grinds, and harvests for its own benefit, the earned savings of
the American people.
In showing how these thirty-six millions were made in the brief space of
this creature's (Amalgamated Copper's) life, I deal with reality and not
romance; but let my readers for a moment give their imaginations play and
picture to themselves one scene in this stupendous drama. A great room in
the greatest banking house in America, if not in the world—silent, solemn
—an atmosphere of impregnable rectitude—the solid furniture, the heavy
carpets, the chill high walls, the massive desks, the impressive chairs, the
great majestic table portentously suggestive of power. Presto! the dim calm
is broken; the air vibrates as when an ancient church is invaded by a swarm
of vampire-bats. Into the great room enter a group of men and a flock of
youths, who settle in the impressive chairs round the majestic table. You
wonder what is the motive of the assemblage. These grave lawyers, whose
names are weighty in the nation's councils, and these gray-haired, dignified
financiers might well be gathered to arbitrate a dispute involving empires;

but why these office-boys and clerks, with their restless, surprised eyes and
uneasy gestures? The flourishing of papers, the murmuring of voices in a
confusion of "seventy-five million," "we buy," "we sell," "we are," "we
will"—words, nothing but words; then silence as one reads from a stiff
parchment certain resolutions which the suave gentleman with incisive
steel-clicking manners, at the head of the table, puts to a vote. Then these
youths, whose souls are afire with the hope of a director's $5 gold fee,
timidly sign the record, trembling the while lest a blot call down on them a
scolding; a head clerk, whose fondest dream is a raise of salary as the result
of coming under the Master's eye in a seventy-five-million-dollar deal,
affixes a seal, and there is an exchanging of thin slips of paper—checks—
dollars—magically "made dollars." Exit office-boys and lawyers.
The door closes—silence again. Then the air vibrates with the sound of a
hearty hand-slap and the genial, whole-souled greeting of the "Master" to
his partner. "William, I feel as though I had done an honest day's labor!
Thirty-six million dollars 'made' and no hitch, no delay!" Then follows the
partner's mild answer: "Yes, Harry, but don't forget James' and the others'
shares will shrink it up quite a bit."
Thirty-six million dollars for one honest day's labor! Thirty-six million
dollars—and Alaska cost us but seven millions and Spain relinquished to us
her claims on the Philippines for only twenty millions. Thirty-six million
dollars!—more than a hundred times as much as George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and "Abe" Lincoln together secured for the patriotic
labors of their lifetimes. And this vast sum was taken from the people to
enrich men whose coffers were already, as the results of similar operations,
so full of dollars that neither they nor their children, nor their children's
children could count them—as the people count their savings, a dollar at a
time—as thoughtlessly taken as are the apples that the school-boy steals
after he has eaten so many that he can eat no more.
A thousand times have I tried to figure out in my mind what worlds of
misery such a sum of millions might allay if issued by a government and
intelligently distributed among a people—and do my readers know that
never in the world's recorded history has any nation felt itself rich enough to
devote thirty-six millions to the cause of charity—even in the midst of the
most awful calamities of fire, flood, war, or pestilence? On the other hand, I

have had to know about the horrors, the misfortunes, the earthly hell, which
were the awful consequences of the appropriation of this vast amount. I
have had to know about the convicts, the suicides, the broken hearts, the
starvation and wretchedness, the ruined bodies and lost souls which strewed
the fields of the "System's" harvest.
Pondering all these things, I have ceased to wonder at the deep murmurs of
discontent that are rising, rising to my ears from all parts of the continent.
Can it be that a just God suffers the sons and daughters of some of us to eke
out a bare existence as the best reward of earnest effort and sterling worth,
and at the same time rewards these other men with $36,000,000 for one
day's labor? Is this the freedom which our fathers and our sons died on
many a bloody, hard-fought field to preserve? I am conscious of a haunting
fear that these men and women may not always be patient, may not always
be put off with skilled evasion or slippery subterfuge, and for one brief
moment I see visions of a marching people, bearing aloft grisly heads on
gory poles, and hear above the low, bestial murmur of the mob the cry for
bread and for revenge.
And then I remember that this is America, not France; that our laws are
strong—if but the people are aroused to see them obeyed; that our prisons
are ample, even though they be for the present filled with petty rascals who
can do but little harm though turned loose to make room for the real
scoundrels who are undermining the foundations of our Republic.

FOOTNOTES:
[3] It must be remembered that the Amalgamated Company never owned all the
capital stock of the Anaconda, but, on the contrary, only a few shares over
600,000, which represented the ownership of the Haggin-Tevis-Daly people, and
which they had turned in for a lump sum before the market price had advanced.
The control of the Parrott, owned by the Amalgamated Company, was purchased
for a lump amount from Franklin Farrell and his associates for the sum of
$4,000,000-odd, not $12,190,000. The Colorado Smelting and Mining Company
was also purchased in a lumped batch of Senator Wolcott, not at $7,000,000, but
for $2,000,000-odd, while the tremendous advance in the price of Anaconda in
the market from 30 to 70 was due to the operations of Messrs. Rogers and
Rockefeller for their private account, out of which they made a large additional
profit.
There can be no possibility of mistake or successful misrepresentation of these
figures: first, because the Anaconda figures are known not only to Mr. Rogers,
William Rockefeller, and myself, but to J. B. Haggin, and to the estates of Tevis
and Marcus Daly; the Colorado figures, to associates of Senator Wolcott and to
his estate; and the Parrott figures, to Mr. Farrell who received the money, and to
a large number of those to whom he had to account; and, further, these figures
will all be demonstrated in open court in suits outside of any with which I have
to do, which are now being brought or are pending.
[4] As a matter of fact, the people lost even more than thirty-six millions of
dollars on this part of the Amalgamated transaction, because "Standard Oil" did
not sell all the 750,000 shares at $100 per share ($75,000,000) at that time. They
retained two-thirds of them, which at a later date they fed out to the public at
$115 per share, and at a still later date they took them back at $33 per share.

CHAPTER VII
JUGGLING WITH MILLIONS OF THE PEOPLE'S MONEY

For the purposes of the transaction I have just described the machinery of a
great bank or trust company was essential. The vast profit gained here was
absolutely "made" through the instrumentality of the National City Bank of
New York, but some other tractable institution would have been equally
efficient. In order that my readers may focus such great financial concerns
as this National City Bank, I give right here brief résumés of its career and
resources and of those of two of its affiliated institutions:
NATIONAL CITY BANK New York City
James Stillman, President.
The "City Bank" was chartered by the New York Legislature in
1812, and reorganized as a National Bank July 17, 1865. The
capital paid in was $1,000,000. Moses Taylor held the office of
president for thirty-four years, and died in 1892, when Percy R.
Pyne, son-in-law of Moses Taylor, was elected president and
held office until the election of James Stillman, of Woodward &
Stillman, cotton merchants, when the capital stock of the bank
was increased to $10,000,000, and again increased to
$25,000,000. The sworn report of the officers and directors filed
with the Controller of the Currency shows that the condition of
the bank, January, 1904, was:

Resources
Loans and discounts $114,507,919.20
Overdrafts secured and 162.90
unsecured
United States bonds to secure 3,220,000.00
circulation

United States bonds to secure 12,937,000.00
United States deposits
United States bonds on hand 60,120.00
United States bond account 4,450,000.00
Premiums on United States 1,354,013.00
bonds
Stocks, securities, etc. 16,709,241.62
Banking-house furniture and 200,000.00
fixtures
Due from national banks (not 4,727,461.12
reserve agents)
Due from State banks and 644,288.80
bankers
Exchange for clearing-house 31,000,935.34
Checks and other cash items 798,843.22
Notes of other national banks 209,015.00
Fractional paper currency, 684.63
nickels, and cents
Lawful money reserve in bank, viz.:
Specie $36,928,350.00
Legal tender notes 7,100,000.00 44,028,350.00
Redemption fund with U. S. 161,000.00
Treasurer (5% of circulation)
Due from U. S. Treasurer 204,105.95
other than 5% redemption
fund
Total $235,213,140.78
Liabilities
Capital stock paid in $25,000,000.00
Surplus fund 8,900,000.00
Undivided profits, less 8,503,038.26
expenses and taxes paid
National bank notes 3,180,000.00
outstanding
Due to other national banks $36,469,683.95

Due to State banks and 5,903,473.87
bankers
Due to trust companies and 29,210,461.00
savings-banks
Provident reserve fund 30,000.00
Dividends unpaid 519.00
Individual deposits subject to 82,576,884.06
check
Demand certificates of 43,790.00
deposit
Certified checks 10,752,671.01
Cashier's checks outstanding 7,631,619.78
United States deposits 12,937,000.00 185,556,102.67
—
United States bonds 4,155,000.00
Total $235,213,140.78

THE NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY
The company was incorporated by special act of the New York
Legislature in 1841. It is the third largest insurance company in
the United States. The assets of the company January 1, 1892,
were $125,947,290, and income $31,854,194. In 1904 the assets
were $352,652,048; income, $88,269,531.
THE NATIONAL SHAWMUT BANK, OF BOSTON
This institution was incorporated in 1898 with a paid-in capital
of $3,000,000. In 1904 its total resources, also liabilities, were
$63,471,639, of the same general character as those of the
National City Bank of New York.
A calm examination of these figures, illuminated by the explanation of the
"System's" methods I have previously given, will awaken the American
people to a comprehension of what use "high finance" makes of the savings
of the public intrusted to it for legitimate investment.

Nor must it be supposed for one minute that the insurance company and the
Boston bank which I have used for illustrations differ in any way from
scores and scores of their kind which are as absolutely "steered" in their
operations by the National City Bank of New York as the National City
Bank of New York is absolutely "steered" by its president, James Stillman,
or as James Stillman is absolutely "steered" by "Standard Oil," the Private
Thing, or as "Standard Oil," the Private Thing, is absolutely "steered" by its
supreme heads, Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, and John D.
Rockefeller. And if any doubt remains in the minds of my readers of the
absolute power of "Standard Oil," the Private Thing, to "make" dollars at
will, or of the dead-sure working of their "heads-I-win-and-tails-you-lose"
gambling game, I ask them carefully to analyze the above statements in
connection with the facts in the Amalgamated transaction which just
precede them.
Fourteen years ago the National City Bank passed out of the legitimate
management of old-fashioned business men of the Moses Taylor stamp and
into the hands of the "System," the Private Thing. Then its capital was
$1,000,000; it is to-day $25,000,000, and after having paid out millions in
dividends and other profits it has, in addition, a surplus of $16,000,000, and
it has the absolute power to juggle with a total of $235,000,000,
$36,000,000 of which belong to other national banks, $6,000,000 to State
banks and bankers, $29,000,000 to trust companies and savings-banks,
$82,000,000 to individual depositors, $10,000,000 to the holders of
certified checks, $7,000,000 to the holders of cashiers' checks, $13,000,000
to the Government directly, and $4,000,000 in Government bonds, to say
nothing of scores of hundreds of millions more through its affiliated
institutions. And all this juggling is done in such a fearless manner that we
find it in the Amalgamated deal loaning in one transaction an amount so
great that if it had been lost, the bank's entire capital would have been more
than completely wiped out. That my readers may not base their conclusions
upon this one transaction of this mighty engine of the "System," vicious as
it shows on the surface and destructive as it really was to the thousands who
were parties to it, I will later in this story show the National City Bank in
another section of the Amalgamated deal, doing things which in intention
and in result were so much bolder and grosser that this transaction will by
comparison appear pure and legitimate.

During the past thirty years the American people have become so used to
enormous figures in connection with corporations and trusts that they have
not stopped to discriminate between different classes of fortunes nor to
figure out that fortunes of certain kinds are absolute self-evidence that they
were acquired by illegal methods, and that if allowed to multiply the people
will surely be enslaved and the republic destroyed. For instance, there are in
New York City alone dozens of national and savings-banks and insurance
and trust companies which control money enough to make them practically
omnipotent in whatever direction their controllers exert their power. I will
name but seven, showing what enormous amounts their managers control;
and let it be borne in mind that all such institutions are linked together by
the "System" as firmly and surely as any human things can be linked. The
Equitable, Mutual, and New York Life Insurance companies have a
combined capital of $1,200,000,000 of assets, a yearly income of
$230,000,000, and $4,500,000,000 of insurance in force; the National City
Bank, United States Trust, Mercantile Trust, and Union Trust companies
$30,000,000 capital, and $45,000,000 surplus, and they have the vast sum
of $450,000,000 of the people's money to juggle with.

CHAPTER VIII
"STANDARD OIL" INVESTS "MADE DOLLARS" IN GAS

And now I shall have to go back a bit in my story. After "Standard Oil" had
firmly established, through the agency of the curb,[5] the value of the
1,000,000 shares of Standard Oil, the corporation seller of oil, at between
$600,000,000 and $800,000,000, and had used it as collateral in securing
control of the four classes of money institutions I have named—the national
and savings-banks and trust and insurance companies—it proceeded to use
the funds thus controlled to manipulate the stocks of great public
corporations for its own profit, forming them into trusts with capitals far
beyond their values, represented by new stocks and bonds, which it sold to
the public at prices aggregating a hundred to five hundred per cent. over the
old capitalization. It then engaged in a wonderfully clever campaign to
work off on the people—directly, the very rich people, but indirectly, the
people as a whole—through institutions which exist because of the people's
savings—the $600,000,000 to $800,000,000 of Standard Oil stock which
had at this stage served the principal use for which it had been created. It
must be borne in mind that while "Standard Oil" is grinding out "made
dollars," its owners never for an instant lose sight of that dim, distant day of
reckoning when the people will awaken to their losses. The "Rogerses" and
the "Rockefellers" know well that the public cannot always be kept in
ignorance of the methods of the "System" by which it has been plundered,
and that once it is in possession of the secret of how the savings of the
many have become the property of the few, there may be reprisals of such a
nature as will compel the "System" to yield up its gains. They know that
when that day comes it will not be best for them to have their enormous
fortunes in such get-at-able property as real estate, in which so many of the
legitimately acquired American fortunes are invested. In a quiet way,
therefore, they have put the bulk of their "made dollars" into unrecorded
forms, such as Government bonds; bonds and preferred stocks of what they
consider non-duplicatable franchise corporations such as railroads, which
require rights of way; into municipal public service enterprises, such as gas

companies, the existence of which depends upon rights of way for pipes;
and into the stocks of banks and trust and insurance companies, which they
believe the people will never dare attack because their savings are largely
deposited in them.
I would not have my readers think that the principal motive actuating
"Standard Oil" in parting with its Standard Oil stock is doubt of its present
intrinsic worth, for such is not the case. The masters of "Standard Oil" are
very able, far-seeing men, and they know that so thoroughly have the
American people been educated to the crimes which created Standard Oil,
the crimes by which it has existed and does exist, that no passage of time or
"pious-ing" of latter-day methods, will ever blind them to its iniquities, and
that when reprisal day comes, as come it surely will, the first thing the
people in their frenzy will look for will be Standard Oil. This is the reason
which, more than any other, influences them in selling to others an
enterprise which has up to the present time not only enjoyed tremendous
prosperity, but which has as yet met with no obstacle or hindrance.
Of all forms of tangible investment "Standard Oil" has looked most
favorably upon gas stocks, and its secret devices have been worked
overtime in consolidating gas companies throughout the United States. In a
general way, as manufacturers of illuminating oil, "Standard Oil" had early
become familiar with the problems of supplying large communities—cities
—with gas light; and with the advent of water-gas, as sellers of petroleum
they controlled an important factor in the production of that volatile
commodity. All the talent of the "System," trained in "handling" municipal
authorities, came into play in this big new business of lighting cities—a
business which perforce became a monopoly as soon as the powerful
tentacles grasping it were recognized as "Standard Oil."
At the time my story opens (1894) "Standard Oil" had already captured the
gas-lighting corporations of certain of the great cities of the United States,
including the immensely rich ones of New York (directly), Philadelphia and
Chicago (indirectly); and for two years previously had been besieging the
several independent Brooklyn companies for the purpose of consolidating
them into a single gigantic corporation. This project it has since
accomplished. Its intention is to weld this corporation with the great one
that already holds the monopoly of Manhattan.

The task of diagramming a territory for invasion is one after Henry H.
Rogers' own heart. His campaigns are planned with Napoleonic power and
foresight. When the capture of Brooklyn was decided on, the several
corporations to be subdued were "sized up" as to their revenues and
liabilities; the resources of their stockholders were studied out, and a plan of
action organized to separate each one from his shares at "hard-pan" prices.
In the "Standard Oil" armory there are many instruments of "persuasion,"
and he is indeed a hardy fellow who can resist the various "trying-out"
processes to which mutineers are subjected. This obstinate capitalist will be
summarily knocked on the head; that other inveigled into a dark corner by a
strong-arm man; another group owe money to one of the "System's" banks
and a brief spell on the financial rack will weaken their grip. Sooner or later
all succumb. While such details as these were being attended to, lines were
being strung here and there to bring about the passage by the city of
Brooklyn and the Legislature of New York State of ordinances and laws
which should allow this and compel that to be done, and so rivet the various
links of the great venture.
While in the midst of this campaign, to which Henry H. Rogers' genius,
matured in many a hard-fought business battle, foresaw an early and easy
triumphal termination, there came athwart his victorious path a financial
guerilla, "balloony," mysterious, yet as sticky as a jelly-fish, who was
destined to exert a most maleficent influence on his after-life. Fate hangs no
red lights at the cross-roads of a man's career. No "pricking of his thumbs,"
no strange portents warned the Master of "Standard Oil" that the impudent
Philadelphia swashbuckler who dared interfere with the execution of his
plan to fetter the "System's" yoke to the necks of the citizens of Brooklyn
was the factor that destiny had chosen to shape the ends that he had rough-
hewn.
The financial guerilla was J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of rotten
finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale
debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J.
Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done
more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and
American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other
man of this or any previous age.

FOOTNOTES:
[5] The New York "curb" is the latest invention in finance, coming closely upon
the heels of the invention of trusts, and it holds the same relation to the New
York Stock Exchange that Private Things hold to corporations. Before a stock
can be bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange, there must be
submitted to the governors a description of what the stock is, which must be of
such tangibility that any one who cares to investigate may find there every detail
and particular of the property represented, set forth with the utmost exactitude.
But on the "curb" stocks can be traded in without responsible sponsors or
descriptions that mean anything. In other words, a stock may be bought and sold
there, which is so vague and indefinite as to be little more than a name, and it is
through the "curb" that the value of "Standard Oil" stock is established, for it is
daily bought and sold there at the steadily held prices of 650 to 800, and the
press of the world makes daily record of these prices.

CHAPTER IX
A VOTARY OF THE "SYSTEM"

The "System" has all sorts of votaries. About J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks
there is nothing that remotely suggests coworkers of the types of Mr.
Rogers and William Rockefeller. A description that left him in any part a
duplicate of either would do him and them a grievous wrong. Henry H.
Rogers and William Rockefeller have two sides, their social side and their
business side. Socially, they are good men; in business they work evil. J.
Edward O'Sullivan Addicks is a bad man, socially, in business, in every
way. The term "bad man" is used advisedly. My idea of a "bad man" is that
like a bad dollar he is a counterfeit. A counterfeit has all the appearances of
reality, and is yet devoid of its properties and virtues. So with Addicks. It is
easy to find men who will declare by all that is sacred that Henry H. Rogers
is one of the best fellows in the world, though as many more will as
earnestly proclaim him the fiend incarnate. About Addicks, among those
who know the man, there is but one opinion. I have yet to meet the man,
woman, or child who would say aught of Addicks, after a month's
acquaintance, other than, "Don't mention him! He is the limit." And it will
be said with the calm of dispassionate conviction, as one might speak of a
stuffed tiger in a dime-museum jungle.
Here we have a man without a heart, without a soul, and, I believe,
absolutely without conscience—the type of man who even his associates
feel is likely to bring in after their deaths queer bills against their estates as
an offset for what he owes them; the type of man whose promise is just as
good as his bond, and whose bond is so near his promise as to make it
absolutely immaterial to him which you take.
Exhibited in the side show of one of the great circuses some years ago was
a strange creature which, for lack of a better name, its owner and the public
dubbed, "A What Is It?" This freak had the semblance of humanity, and yet
was not human. All its functions and feelings reversed the normal. Tickle it
and it would cry bitterly; pinch or torture it and it would grin rapturously;

when starved it repelled food, and when overfed it was ravenous for more.
It had heart-beats but no heart. The public gave it up. The public would long
ago have given up J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks if he would have let them.
Illustration is better than explanation, and perhaps I can more graphically
set J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks before my readers by a few incidents
which show his contradictory characteristics in action than by verbal
diagrams, however laborious.
Once upon a time Addicks, entering Delmonico's for dinner, stumbled on a
couple of newsboys at the entrance. One, broken-hearted, was being
consoled by the other. Addicks, observing the deep sobs, asked: "What's the
matter with you, bub?" The consoler explained that his chum had lost $2,
his day's earnings and capital, and "His mudder—his fadder's dead—an' de
baby'll git trun outter de tenement." Addicks, without more ado, slipped the
suffering young news-merchant a bill which his friends supposed was $2 to
replace the lost funds. As they were taking off their coats in the hall,
however, the little newsboy pushed his way in with: "Say, boss, did yer
mean ter guv me de twenty?" Addicks nodded a good-natured assent, and
his friends registered silently a white mark to his score, and felt that, after
all, somewhere beneath the surface he was more of the right sort than they
had given him credit for being. After dinner, as they left, the newsboy again
approached. "'Scuse me, boss, but me chum 'd like ter t'ank yer too. I'm
goin' ter give him a V outter it." Addicks looked at the boy in his mildly
cold way and said: "Let me have that bill. I will change it for you." The boy
gave it up, and Addicks, after methodically placing it in his purse, handed
him back a $2 bill with: "That's what you lost, isn't it? And you" (to the
second little fellow, who by this time had mapped out visions of new duds
for the kids and a warm seat in the gallery of a Bowery theatre), "you didn't
lose anything, did you? Well, both of you run along now!"
His friends looked at each other, and from their slates wiped away the white
mark and replaced it with a deep, broad, black one. And yet Addicks had
made good the loss—done a good deed, but in an—Addicks way. I should
perhaps remark that J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks has never smoked, nor
used a swear-word, nor taken liquor in any form.

During the Addicks gas campaign in Boston one of his lieutenants
demanded as his share of the deal a large amount of money, which he
claimed Addicks was withholding from him. Addicks refused to pay.
Friends and associates urged him to settle. While yet refusing, he agreed to
meet this man at one of the leading hotels in the presence of counsel and
lieutenants. The interview was a hot one. Addicks surprised all by his
absolute fearlessness in the face of a savage attack, which culminated in the
production of a document signed by certain Massachusetts legislators,
wherein they receipted for the bribe money Addicks had paid for their
votes. The man who claimed he was being cheated threatened this would be
laid before the Grand Jury the following day. All the witnesses were
dumfounded at the situation and in concert begged Addicks to hush the
matter up by paying what was claimed. "Gentlemen," said this great
financier, "my honor, my business and my personal honor, has been
assailed, and rather than submit to this outrage I would die! I now ask you
all to bear witness that under no circumstances will I pay to this man a
single dollar!" And he indignantly left the meeting.
While his counsel and associates were appalled at what might be the
outcome, they admired Addicks' manly pluck, and asked themselves if they
had not, after all, been mistaken in their estimates of his courage and
principle. In the middle of the same night, the man with the document was
surprised by a telegram reading: "Meet me in Jersey City to-morrow sure
with paper; keep absolutely secret." Next day in Jersey they met, and
Addicks simply said: "There is the full amount. Give me the paper. You
don't suppose I would compound a felony in the State in which it was
committed, and before witnesses, do you?"
In the national election of 1896 J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was a
candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware, and for a variety of
reasons was anxious to secure a Republican victory. Within the State,
however, the real contest was not over national issues, but to obtain control
of the Legislature which in the following January had to elect a United
States Senator. There were three factions, the Democrats and two wings of
the Republicans, the Addicks and anti-Addicks parties, the latter calling
themselves "regulars." On Election Day Addicks used an even $100,000
buying votes, and that evening Delaware was safe for McKinley—both the
"regulars" and the men whom Addicks' money bought having voted for a

Republican President. But it was early bruited around that if the vote of
Sussex County (there are three counties in Delaware—Newcastle, Kent, and
Sussex) were allowed to stand as received, all Addicks' efforts to control the
Legislature would have been fruitless and his "made dollars" expended for
nothing. The ex-flour dealer of Philadelphia was not satisfied to accept the
people's sacred verdict. He quickly called his lieutenants together, mapped
out a campaign of almost reckless audacity and daring, and assigned his
best men to its execution.
The ballot-boxes with their contents were in the sheriff's charge and stored
under lock and key in the court-house. The sheriff was an Addicks tool. At
midnight he turned over his charge to one of the would-be statesman's
trustiest lieutenants, who, with the aid of a lantern and a slip of paper
containing the directions, sorted over the legal ballots, threw some out, and
put in new ones. When another sun arose the dastardly outrage upon the
American elective franchise had been completed, and Addicks was busily
scheming to carry out the remainder of the plot. On the declaration which
he or one of his associates would make, that there had been fraud in Sussex
County, the Government at Washington must send on an investigating
committee to whom it would be asserted that the voting lists had been
doctored by the Democrats. To prove it the boxes would be opened, the
ballots counted, and lo! the villany of the Democrats would be, beyond
contradiction, demonstrated.
But the scheme was an Addicks scheme. Had it been the plot of any other
man with the brains, the nerve, and the lack of principle to concoct it and
set it in motion, inevitably it would have been carried through to the
designed conclusion. As it was, this is what happened: The lieutenant who
had charge of the actual commission of the crime thoughtlessly chuckled
over the details of it with another, and this other "in the presence of
witnesses" laughingly congratulated Addicks on his plan's success. What
was the astonishment of the group to hear the candidate for the Senate say:
"Gentlemen, I could not countenance such a transaction. This is the first I
have heard of it, and it is so outrageously criminal that I refuse to allow it to
proceed further. There will be no investigation, and if it is a fact that those
ballots have been changed in the box, the ones who changed them shall
receive no benefit from their nefarious work. I have spoken."

Mind you, every member of the group was a party to the scheme and had
been carefully rehearsed in the part assigned him by Addicks himself, but
alone, that is, without witnesses; nevertheless so earnest and apparently
honest was the man in his protest that for an instant they doubted their
senses—until they remembered it was Addicks.
The investigation was never held, and to this day Addicks' lieutenants,
especially he who did the midnight work and who still lives in the peaceful
State of Delaware, turn with disgust when Addicks' daring is mentioned.
It should be explained here that, whenever Addicks plans an illegal
transaction—one for which he might be made civilly or criminally liable—
he invariably coaches each of his accomplices alone, "without witnesses."
And when it becomes necessary in developing the plot to have a confab, at
which the several parties to the proceeding must meet, Addicks is most
careful to preserve a legal semblance of ignorance of incriminating details.
At intervals, when a danger-place in the discussion is approaching, he will
get up from his seat and, moving to the door, will say: "Gentlemen, halt
right there, until I step out of the room; tap at the door when you are over
that bad spot, and I will return."
Addicks' "Wait until I step out of the room" is as familiar among his
coworkers as the "I am going upstairs" is among the "Standard Oil" family.
Try to conjure before your mind's eye a picture of the anomalous character
these instances suggest. I'll warrant your mental image as little resembles
the original Addicks as Mr. Hyde did Dr. Jekyll in the story. He does not
look the part assigned him here, nor any other part for that matter. I saw him
coming toward me on State Street one summer day some years ago, a tall,
wiry man, in a white-flannel suit, perfect in fit and spotless as snow,
wearing a fine Panama hat. This was in the period before Panamas were
commonly worn. He was to the life the elegant and luxurious Southern
planter of ante-bellum days. Six months afterward in about the same place I
saw approaching me a splendid person in rich sable outer garments who
looked for all the world like an exiled Russian grand duke. It was Addicks
in winter. You will not surprise his secret from that pleasant, rather
ambiguous, but square-jawed face, nor from the mouth hidden under a long,
drooping, gray, military mustache. His is a good-sized, well-shaped head,

you might say, and the gray, shallow eyes that look out at you are almost
merry in their glances. But they are inscrutable eyes which seem to have a
challenge in their gaze, a sort of "look-me-over-as-long-as-you-like-and-
you'll-never-guess-what's-under-the-surface" expression that is baffling and
provocative. Yet this sybarite, this daring coward, this stingy prodigal, this
sincere hypocrite, this extraordinary blending of contradictory qualities, is
the man who from 1887 to 1892 made Boston look like the proverbial
country gawk at circus-time.
Power the man certainly has, and of a distinct quality, yet his intimates
cannot explain the reason of their obedience to him. After a brief
acquaintance he is revealed as the very soul of insincerity—he "works" his
friends, he pays toll to his enemies, he frankly shows himself without the
sense of moral obligation. I believe his talent resides in his capacity to
select the proper type of man to "make rich" in the illicit schemes his
abnormal mind conceives. These coworkers of his are of different grades;
some have a super-abundance of cash; others a desire to get it—in common
are their lack of principle and dearth of brains. Addicks cannot do business
long with men of real ability, nor does he understand them, whereas he can
read the minds of his ordained victims as if they were an open book. The
big men who have encountered or been associated with Addicks are prone
to characterize him as a mountebank, a joker, or a chump.

CHAPTER X
ADDICKS COMES TO BOSTON

J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was born in Philadelphia in 1841, and was in
the eighties plodding along the ordinary, uneventful path of a seller of flour
to the people of that city which since the death of William Penn holds the
record for the highest and densest percentage of sleep per capita of any
English-speaking community.
In the eighties two things happened that changed the whole course of J.
Edward O'Sullivan Addicks' life. Some one invented water-gas and "let in"
Addicks on the invention; and the Philadelphia branch of the "Standard
Oil," represented by Widener, Elkins, and Dolan, "trustified" the gas
companies of the city of Chicago, which enabled Addicks to "hold up" the
"trustification" until Dolan and Dolan's associates paid him the sum of
$300,000 for the instrument with which he had done the holding up,
$10,000 worth of the stock of one of the necessary Chicago companies.
The law of compensation, which gets in its deadly work on all the prettiest
plans of man, but decreed that what goes up must come down when it
ceases going up. It has a shrewd trick of grafting sorrows on our joys, and
of handicapping success with discomfiting conditions. The favorite of
fortune whose feet have fallen in pleasant places sooner or later stubs his
toe.
Addicks' first "made dollars" certainly came easy—so easy, indeed, that
those who watched his early career marvelled at his success; but nowhere
on God's footstool is there to-day a more terrible illustration of the
inevitable workings of the law of compensation than the present standing of
J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks affords.
The thief whose first excursion into a wayfarer's pocket is rewarded with
the equivalent of days and nights of honest labor will surely be convinced
thereafter of the superiority of theft over toil as a means of money-getting.
Invariably the manufacturer of "made dollars," after his first coup, forsakes

forever after the cold arithmetic of commerce for the rule of guess, dream,
hope, and "I will," which constitutes the mathematics of high finance.
Addicks' first "made dollars" came with such magical ease that there awoke
in his slumbering substitute for a soul a disgust for those prosaic pursuits at
which one could never, try how one might, make more than four by the
addition of two and two. He probably argued to himself: "Why should I
work in the flour business when I know a way of getting overnight more
than I can make out of flour in a lifetime? If people are so simple in
guarding their savings that I can by a trick take away from them enormous
wealth without the slightest danger to my own safety or my profit, even if
detected, why should I not devote my life to such healthful and profitable
occupation?" The logic of the proposition was convincing. Accepting its
conclusions, J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, of Philadelphia, embarked on
his career. Soon afterward he discovered gas in Boston.
This was in 1887. Equipped with his "made dollars" for capital, his
impressive name, sublime effrontery, and a pedigree free from anything
suggestive of his new purpose in life, the ex-flour merchant "lit" into our
everything-figured-out-ahead-and-every-promise-made-taken-at-par town
of Boston. To appreciate the lights and shadows of this event, one should
know Boston and, at the same time, Addicks. Every country boy will
remember Tom Hood's poem beginning:

I remember, I remember the house where I was born,
With the little lattice window where the sun came peeping in
at morn,

and can recall milking-time in July or August when, sitting on the rail-fence
surrounding the barn-yard, he watched the pigeons snipping up grain, the
old hen scratching up worms for the chicks, the ducks and the drakes and
the geese and the ganders proudly waddling back and forth, among and
around the fluffy ducklings and goslings, and the bull-pup sound asleep by
the side of the tortoise-shell cat. Probably he will think of some particular
milking-time when the calm, contented serenity of the barn-yard was
suddenly disturbed by the unexpected descent in its midst of a neighboring
peacock, who, apparently unconscious of the consternation produced by his
entry, proceeded proudly to spread his dazzling plumage to convince every

one, from Uncle Cy, on the milking-stool, and mild-eyed Bess, down to the
white fan-tailed dove, that he was—It.
Conjure up the picture—the peacock at milking-time in the farm-yard; thus
Addicks came to Boston—though it is far from my intention to identify the
bucolic background I have drawn with the Hub of the Universe.
Boston, up to this time, had been singularly free from the mushroom variety
of millionaire which had sprung up overnight in such numbers in New York
and Philadelphia. Proudly defiant of a product so alien to all her traditions,
her citizens would have sworn that no votary of modern high finance could
exist over one curfew-toll within her gates. For Boston had her own
financial eminence, of a character in keeping with the chill conditions of
conservatism and rectitude appropriate to the metropolis of the New
England conscience. She had her Stock Exchange, her numerous great
corporations, her scores of single and multimillionaires, and it was her boast
that her capital had played the greatest legitimate part in the country's
growth. She had furnished a large percentage of the money which had
created our vast Western railway system; she had found and made the
superb copper-mines of Michigan and Montana, and in all parts of the land
branches of her sturdy institutions were vitally assisting the miracle of
America's development. Notwithstanding what these wide-flung enterprises
imply of commercial push and audacity, Boston, at the time Addicks
discovered gas there, was one of the most trusting wealth-investing
communities in the world. She had her simple rules of business conduct
which years of usage had consecrated into all-powerful precedent, but her
brokers and capitalists, however fearful of all things quick or tricky, had
never previously figured as candidates for what in Western parlance are
described as "come-ons."

CHAPTER XI
HOW ADDICKS CAPTURED BOSTON GAS

At the time Addicks "lit" in Boston that city numbered among her proudest
possessions several extremely rich gas companies, and they were owned by
her "best people." To do business with Boston's "best people" is no easy
task, and up to the advent of Addicks, to do business with her "best people"
without doing it through others of her "best people" who could absolutely
vouch for you was an unheard-of thing. The manner in which the ex-flour
merchant of Philadelphia managed to slip by the barriers and into the heart
of our blue-blooded citadel affords the most unparalleled example of
audacity of which I know.
In many ways Boston is unlike other great American cities. Some of her
institutions through antiquity or association have acquired a positive
sanctity. Pedigree is important. The average inhabitant spends much of his
time watching the grandson of his neighbor's father, to see the old man's
characteristics crop out in him. The boy's failures will be remembered
against his own offspring fifty years hence. It is a city of long memories and
of traditions. In 1887 Boston, as now, consisted largely of her traditions, her
blue-glass window-panes and her Somerset Club.
Now the distinction, sanctity, and antiquity of the Somerset Club are quite
beyond peradventure. Since Boston has been Boston she has had her
Somerset Club, a club distinctively of grandfathers, fathers, and sons. The
right to membership in the Somerset Club is as much the inheritance of a
Somerset man's son as his name or as the proud title which always will be
found affixed to his signature when he reaches man's estate, "of Boston."
For a man to get into the Somerset without long years of waiting and
intense scrutiny, not only of his own record but of his parents' before him, is
a rare event. Yet the name of J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was up for full
membership, with Boston's picked best for his sponsors, a few days after he
"lit." How Addicks got upon the Somerset list Boston will never tell, and

the mention of the fact nowadays within the club-house will empty its
sideboard instanter.
The campaign of arrangement for the advent of Addicks in Boston was
more elaborate, more astute and expensive than was ever organized for
exploitation of prima donna or great pianist. For months an advance agent
had been preparing the way for his chief's arrival in a blaze of glory. There
was talk in the papers and among the financiers about the wonderful water-
gas process which enormously enhanced the profits of gas-making, and
such rumor was always linked with the name of the brilliant Philadelphia
Gas King, for so the press had already dubbed him. A wonder and magic
immensely provocative of curiosity were woven about the identity of this J.
Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, who it was said might be persuaded to visit
Boston to work marvels with the stocks that had been "in the family" long
before the present generation could remember. When it was sure that the
great man was really coming the agent sought the advice of Boston's best in
selecting quarters for him. In the Tudor, a beautiful family hotel adjoining
the Somerset Club on Beacon Hill, a magnificent suite of apartments was
taken, and though the great man could remain in Boston but a brief space,
the furniture, the hangings, and even the carpets were all changed for him.
Eminent financial tricksters have various ways of handling their victims.
Some believe that the most skilful mode of attack is the slow, confident,
dignified approach which allays the subject's fears by its solemn display of
deliberation. Others (and Addicks is of this creed) are persuaded of the
superior efficacy of the "rush-in-and-drag-out" method. The subject, they
say, "gives up" more and quicker when the hurry call is sounded. It was a
winter's day when Addicks "lit" in Boston, and circumstances had arisen,
the suave advance agent told various Boston's best, with whom he was in
consultation, that would make his chief's stay much briefer than either had
anticipated. So when the great man arrived at the club just before dinner,
quite an array of important people were congregated there.
Addicks ran the gantlet of the critical glances of as critical a group as you'll
find on earth, and the word went round—no one could remember afterward
who started it—"Typical Southern gentleman! Breeding sticking out
everywhere!" So well had the astute advance agent done his work that a
little dinner was arranged on the spot, and Addicks made such rapid

progress with these reserved and conservative Bostonians that, by the time
coffee was served, conversation had reached the stage where it was natural
for him to send the waiter to the coat-room for his bunch of gas papers. The
emissary returned bringing the fur overcoat with which Addicks always
envelops himself in chilly weather. Addicks searched the pockets, and,
apparently to his surprise, discovered that they did not contain the required
documents, but where they should have been he found a small bale of
1,000-dollar government bonds, containing, one of the party said afterward,
at least one hundred certificates. "How careless of my secretary!" said
Addicks, nonchalantly replacing the packet in the pocket and motioning the
waiter to take the overcoat away again.
It was, of course, due to the admirable work of his advance agent that these
Monte Cristo effects impressed the cultured little set who would have
laughed to scorn such a display on the part of one of their own kind. In
Addicks it was the dazzling eccentricity of the wonder-worker, and so
excusable; and the free, flash, careless exhibit of wealth made the man's
conversation and subsequent demands seem natural. Next morning, in
discussing the work of the previous evening with his lieutenant, Addicks
delivered himself of the wise remark: "Finance, my boy, like theatricals, is
dependent for success on the staging, more even than on the actor. My
experience has shown me that men the world over are alike—if you
properly surround them, they will hiss at hissing time and clap at
applauding time; yes, upon the way you stage your finance plays depends
their success." The fact is that by no other method could this scenic artist of
finance have set his plans moving so rapidly. The man had calculated to a
nicety on the romantic cupidity he aroused.
After dinner, Addicks at once "got down to business": "Gentlemen, my
project is as simple as it is feasible and conservative, for I will touch
nothing but conservative enterprises. Gentlemen, you have three great gas
companies supplying this great city with light, the Boston, Roxbury, and
South Boston. They are worth at the present time about five million dollars.
I am going to buy them and spend three or four millions more on a new
company; then I shall consolidate the four and turn them from coal into
water-gas companies, which will sell gas to your people at less than they
now pay, and at the same time make a lot of money for you and for myself.
What do you say?"

This was certainly quick action. Boston's best was breathless for a minute.
Then some one suggested that in so weighty a matter it would be necessary
for solicitors to investigate, for the families owning the stock to be
consulted and agree before a proper basis could be arrived at on which to
dispose of their holdings.
Addicks' genius was equal to the occasion. "I regret, gentlemen, any
seeming haste, but this is the situation: I am going to invest fifteen or
twenty millions, or perhaps thirty or forty, in city gas properties, and as the
project will require quite a bit of financiering, I have got to round it up at
once, in time to slip over to London to lay it before my associates, ——,
——, and ——" (naming some of the great English lords of finance), "with
whom you, gentlemen, are probably well acquainted. I think you will, after
you have given the matter a little thought, agree with me that it would be a
mistake to postpone the conversion of these magnificent Boston plants to
the water-gas system until after other cities I have in mind are
reconstructed. You see we can turn over but one city at a time, the system
being new and competent engineers and builders few."
The painful thought took shape in the minds of the distinguished little
gathering that if they were not careful, Monte Cristo might actually slip out
of their town without working any of the promised golden marvels.
"Just what is your idea, Mr. Addicks, of how this gigantic piece of business
could be done?" one asked.
"Simple, simple"—the great Colonel Sellers of eye-water fame never
looked more cool and unconcerned when calling attention to the facts,
"100,000,000 of people, two eyes each, a bottle of my patent eye-wash for
each at a dollar a bottle, and eye-wash made at a net cost of a dime a
barrel"—"simple, simple; you name your price, I pay it, and the thing is
done."
Some one pointed out that the gas properties were valued very high. That in
the Boston, for instance, the par value of each share was $500—and that it
was improbable Mr. Addicks could buy it for less than—than eight hundred.
"Of course, of course; I am not buying gas companies that are not well
thought of by their present owners," returned Addicks. "I think you

underestimate the value of the Boston Company's stock when you say $800.
Naturally, as a conservative business man I wish to buy as reasonably as
possible, but as I know what the future of your company will be under the
water-gas change, I consider $1,000 a share cheap; and if you say so, will
take it now—majority, minority and all—at that price."
This was strong talk. In spite of their proverbial frigidness under all
conditions, Boston's best began to get fidgety.
"Indeed," went on the Monte Cristo from Philadelphia, "I'll do better than
that. On second thought I will give you $1,200 a share. Think it over and
we'll have another sit-down to-morrow."
It took Addicks but a few days to trade, for at each sitting the staging was
more enticing and the call from his associates in London more insistent.
Minor difficulties were magnificently waved away. A number of scions of
Boston's best families had good paying positions in the different companies;
what would Mr. Addicks do with them?
"Simple, simple," he replied; "double the time of contract and the salary; no
favor to them or you; good men are very hard to get, you know."
One episode that occurred about this time was allowed to get into print
when the stocks and bonds were being floated, by way of showing what a
tremendous fellow Addicks was. In a hired hack he had driven up to the
club from State Street. A snow-storm was raging. After Addicks had been in
the club a few moments word was brought in to him that the driver had
found his sable overcoat inside the carriage. Addicks stepped into the
vestibule to speak to the driver, and next day it was all over the club-house
and through the "Street" that the prodigal Philadelphian, overcome at the
thought of the unfortunate driver in his scanty clothing exposed to the cruel
storm, had said: "My good man, take that coat as a present from me."
For the truth of the story I do not vouch, nor for that other which explains
that the door-boy who spread this tale of generosity said afterward, when
discharged, that Addicks himself had told him what he had done, and at the
same time had given him a five-dollar bill. He would have sworn the
moment before that he heard Addicks tell the driver to take the coat to his
apartments.

Addicks got what he came to Boston for—the Boston, Roxbury, and South
Boston Gas companies. He did what he said he would, built a new one, the
Bay State of Massachusetts, and turned them all into the Bay State of
Delaware, and the Bay State of Delaware turned them out on the public in
exchange for their savings to the extent of $19,000,000 in the form of bonds
and stock. Addicks, to use his own language, "cleaned up around
$7,000,000," and turned to new fields, fields suited to his peculiar genius.
As he looked over the United States he found but one great city which had
not already been captured by "Standard Oil" or some of its disciples—
Brooklyn, N. Y. To the present day Rogers swears Addicks' only reason for
coming to Brooklyn was to hold up the "Standard Oil" "trustification."
Addicks retorts with: "I saw it first." Whatever the facts, in 1892 Rogers in
the midst of tagging the different companies was surprised and angered to
find that Addicks had slipped in ahead and had secured one of those
necessary to the success of his plan. He quickly served notice on the man
from Delaware to "git," and Addicks, flushed with an unbroken chain of
victories, as promptly returned the notice with, scrawled across its face, a
variation of Rogers' pet phrase—for it must be remembered Addicks never
"cusses"—"I'll see you in heaven first."
If there is any one time when Henry H. Rogers is quicker of action than any
other, it is when his notice to "git" in a stock deal has been returned with
"sass."
The ink was hardly dry on Addicks' answer before the Master of "Standard
Oil" and his hosts were upon him, but not where the Philadelphian looked
for them. While he awaited their attack in Brooklyn, N. Y., he received a
series of hurry-up calls from his lieutenants in Boston. Rogers had bought
the insignificant Brookline Gas Company, which supplied gas to one of the
suburbs of Boston. It was only a $300,000 affair, but it possessed charter
rights to come into any and all of the streets of Boston. This was a
characteristic "Standard Oil" attack. It came out of a clear sky, and before
the public had even a warning of it they were witnessing a war which
looked as though it had been years in maturing. Rogers let it become public
knowledge that the entire "Standard Oil" forces were to be brought to bear
to crush Addicks and that untold millions would, if necessary, be spent in
the effort. In reality he had most carefully mapped out a cyclonic campaign

which he believed would not call for an expenditure of over $500,000, and
which he was sure would in a few months drive Addicks out of Brooklyn,
N. Y., and bring him to his knees in Boston. His fight began in earnest in
1894. Gas in Boston was $1.25 per thousand cubic feet, and the rate yielded
a good profit to the Addicks companies. Rogers served notice that he would
parallel with the Brookline Company every pipe of the different Boston
companies and would reduce the price of gas to $1. Simultaneously he
attacked the Addicks stocks and bonds in the market, his charters in the
Legislature, and took away from him the contracts to supply the
municipality of Boston with gas. For a time Addicks struck back savagely.
Then, as the fight became hotter, he gave it up in Brooklyn, and
concentrated all his resources on repelling the savage inroads Rogers was
making in Boston. By this time the contest had grown to such proportions
and so much bad blood had been engendered that Rogers declined to be
mollified by Addicks' surrender in Brooklyn and refused to retire from
Boston unless Addicks repaid "Standard Oil's" entire outlay and got down
on his knees in public—a demand that called forth one of Addicks' sardonic
smiles.
Addicks had at this time additional difficulties to face. He had spread out
his financial commitments, and now he found his stocks and bonds all
declining. It was obvious to State and Wall streets that Rogers was in a fair
way to drive the buccaneer from Philadelphia to the wall.
It is at this stage that I come into the story.

CHAPTER XII
STOCK-BROKERS NOT ALL BAD

Right here, before plunging deeper into the current of events which led to
the organization of Amalgamated—for what has gone before is only that
which I deem necessary setting for the story, necessary in order that my
readers may clearly take in its meaning—it is only fair to them and to
myself for me to say that my life has been spent in the stock-market for the
purpose of gain. I have never in my stock operations set myself up for a
philanthropist nor in any way posed as a reformer, nor pretended to be a bit
better than the business I had chosen for a livelihood. From the first day
until now I have endeavored to keep strictly to the principle that I would
never knowingly deceive any man, woman, or child who, out of confidence
in me, risked their money in speculation or investment. At the same time it
should be remembered that the stock-brokerage business often makes queer
bedfellows. Moreover, the true stock-operator is sometimes tempted to
buckle on his armor and get into an exciting fight solely for the combat's
sake, and then he may not be over-concerned about the rights and wrongs of
the contention, if upon both sides are lined up professional captains of
finance. The minister, the college professor, the dry-goods merchant, may
exclaim against this, but they have never known the delicious tingle which,
since the abolition of the tournaments of old, can be felt only on the great
financial battlefields. If the critics of the stock-gambler could be put
through a single minute of a thousand I have known they would be less
brash in their denunciations. And let it be remembered that in these terrific
dollar-wars there is as much opportunity for heroism, for generosity, for
kindly deeds, as ever physical fighting affords. I read here in the papers of
the noble act of a captain in the navy who has taken his life in his hands; in
another place of a rich man who has given a million to create a charity. On
the same page that these men are eulogized I will find references to "Jim
Keene, the stock-gambler," etc., "heartless, soulless stock-sharp," etc. "Jim
Keene, Stock-gambler," keeps no press agent to flaunt his kindly acts, but
from the noble things I know he has done, and the things others with whom

I am personally acquainted know he has done—men, women, and children
saved from misery, pain, and death, at the risk of ruin to himself—I'll
warrant the celestial scroll shows to his record as many deeds of mercy and
noble daring as are credited to any soldier or philanthropist who has
achieved worldly fame in recent years.
The desire for sudden wealth is strong in all parts of our American
community. Men want money, and women too, for a score of reasons—
some good, some bad—and the stock-market is the magical place where
miracles occur and dollars multiply themselves overnight. The agent for all
the cupidity of the world is the stock-broker, and he sees life from a strange
angle.
Hundreds of letters come to me daily from all kinds of people, who have no
other call upon me than their belief that, having at some previous time
profitably followed my advice or advice credited to me, they have a right,
when "the papers say" I am doing or going to do this, that, or the other thing
in stocks, to come to me with their troubles. In 1899 there reached me from
a woman a picture of her husband, herself, her three children, and the aged
father and mother of her husband. I wish I might print it, but I dare not
through fear that they would be recognized. The letter accompanying it was
one of the most touchingly pathetic I have ever read. I investigated the case.
The statements made were absolutely true. The woman's husband was the
cashier of one of the small national banks in one of the old towns in a New
England State. His father's brother had been cashier before him. The
family's past was thickly strewn with all those simple honors and good
things which are so often the heritage of families of the old, self-respecting,
God-fearing, middle-class communities of New England and like long-
settled sections of the country. On his death-bed the uncle confessed that for
years he had carried upon the books of the bank a shortage which had arisen
from mistakes. Her husband, to keep the family's name from stain, had
continued to keep this buried, which was an easy thing to do, as when he
was moved up from teller to cashier at his uncle's death the two positions
were combined into one. The wife explained that her husband had let her
into the fearful secret, and together they had carried it until it had eaten its
way into their hearts. At last the man could no longer stand the strain. He
had followed my printed sayings about the market, and now had made the
fatal plunge. He had bought upon margin 2,000 shares of Sugar stock to see

if it were not possible to make up quickly a shortage of over $20,000,
because I had said Sugar was going right up; and then horror of worse than
death had seized the wife and she had given me the awful secret, and a
description, a word picture of what would happen if I had made a mistake.
She could go no further. She did not need to. I read the letter. I saw the
picture, and even I, who believed myself from long years of experience
with such affairs immune—I, too, became horror-stricken. It was no affair
of mine. I had not said Sugar was going up; as is often the case, some
newspaper had printed what another operator had said and credited it to me.
I was not even operating in Sugar, nor at the time particularly interested in
it. I could not return the letter nor have any communication with these
persons without in a way becoming their accomplice. The woman had said
that with the purchase her husband had given orders to sell the stocks at
twelve points' rise.
Try as I might to look at the matter in a cold-blooded business way the
picture haunted me—the old gentleman proud of his family's long record of
sturdy honesty, the old mother's faith in her boy, the wife seeing on each of
her children the brand of a felon father, and the husband watching each
day's market prices to see whether they had brought him a verdict which
meant State's prison or permanent relief from the haunting fear which had
become his never-absent shadow; and I read and reread the closing lines of
the faithful wife: "Mr. Lawson, you will put Sugar up?—you surely will,
just this once—and we will teach the children to pray for you and yours,
and God answers this kind of prayers, you know He does."
The picture haunted me; I saw it in the market prices; I heard the story in
each tick of the ticker and each rustle of the tape; and every time my eye
caught "SUG," the stock-exchange abbreviation for Sugar, I winced, as one
does at the dentist's probe—well, I could not stand it. I determined to put up
Sugar—that is, I determined to try. Little the woman knew what she asked
when she wrote: "You will put up Sugar?" She had read that a stock
operator works magic, but it had never entered her head that his wand was a
stick of dynamite a thousand times concentrated—a stick of dynamite that
the law of stock-market averages shows goes off in his hand nine out of
every ten times it is handled, and that when it goes off there is nothing more
for the handler but the minister, the flowers, and the head-stone; indeed,

often the explosion leaves nothing with which to buy even a head-stone!
Little she thought that it might strain the wealth of the Bank of England to
move Sugar up twelve points. I moved it up, and it went so easy—oh, so
easy! that—well, I will let the first description I pick from my scrap-book
from among a hundred from the daily press tell the story:
[From the Boston Journal, March 17, 1899]
LAWSON'S LUMP
his coffee sweetened with quarter of a million—made it in
sugar thursday in two hours' trading

A quarter of a million in a day!
That was Thomas W. Lawson's record for March 16, 1899.
The celebrated "Unthroned King of State Street" was on top of
the Sugar market; that is the reason of it all.
Sugar was the big card of stock speculation yesterday.
Indeed, the stock had one of the wildest days in its history, and
its high price—$170—reached amid great excitement—is the
highest on record. The speculation was something tremendous,
and it has been through the speculation that the people who have
been under the impression that the markets were drifting into a
dull and uninteresting condition have had a sudden awakening.
From the opening it quickly advanced to 149, receded a point or
more, and shortly after noon started sharply upward. The
demand for it came so rapidly that the tape could not keep up
with it, and the excitement grew as the demand increased. The
scenes on the floors of both the New York and local boards were
most exciting. Blocks of 500 and 1,000 shares changed hands
frequently, and at one time the quotation in the Boston market
was fully four points behind that of the New York list. The small
army of shorts scrambled to get covered up, and everybody was
in a fever of wild excitement over the marvellous movement.
Before it had culminated the price reached 170, or a gain of

twenty-nine points over the opening—the most remarkable
display of strength in so short a period of time that this
remarkable stock has ever shown.
Broker Lawson did the buying, and while the excitement was
running high he bought freely. He had taken 20,000 shares all
told before the advance had fairly gotten under way at from 143-
1/2 to 144. At 170 he gave an order to sell 20,000 shares at a
limit of 155, and obtained an average of over 160, thereby
netting an estimated snug profit of $250,000 or more within two
hours. Asked as to whether the strength in Sugar meant a
settlement of the Sugar war, Mr. Lawson smiled and said:
"There has never been any Sugar war."
The conservative people on the Street are disposed to regard the
whole movement as a piece of clever manipulation.

[From the Boston Herald, March 16, 1899]
Mr. Thomas W. Lawson was the mover in the deal, and his
orders for 20,000 shares early in the day excited other buying,
which encompassed the astonishing rise. What point Mr.
Lawson had to trade upon is his own asset, if he had any point,
and it would not matter so far as the event was concerned
whether he had a point. The market was in a position to respond
to orders of these dimensions, and it did respond.

[From the New York Journal, March 17, 1899]
The frenzied brokers fought like madmen around the Sugar post.
The wildest sort of excitement prevailed throughout the day. The
rest of the floor was practically abandoned, and brokers
crowded, pushed, elbowed, and yelled frantically in their efforts
to fill orders. There was no warning. The sudden jump of the
stock almost threw the brokers into a panic. Men became

ferocious in their efforts to fill orders. Those on the outside
made wild rushes to get into the whirlpool. Men who are
generally calm fell over each other in their excitement. Scores of
arms whipped the air, and men yelled themselves hoarse. So
great was the din and so compact the yelling crowd that those on
one side of the post did not know the bidding on the other. At
one point Sugar was going at 159, and five feet away it was
bringing 164. While almost at arm's-length farther away it was
going at 160, and farther around the post at 162.
The excitement became general among the offices of stock-
brokers as the news flew on the ticker. Members of firms who
were not on the floor gathered about the tickers in excited
groups and watched the pyrotechnic fluctuations of Sugar to the
exclusion of all other stocks. The quotations came out at two
and three points apart. One minute the stock was away up, and
the next it seemed to fall hopelessly. Then it would as suddenly
soar upward again. It reached 170, and in five minutes it was
down to 152.

[From the Boston Post, March 22, 1899]
Late in the afternoon Mr. Lawson was induced to give the
following explanation of his movements in Sugar: "You know it
is not conducive to the health of an active operator to talk on
what he is doing, for if he expects to retain his hirsute
adornment he must either keep jumping so lively that none of
the expert scalpers who haunt the jungles of Wall Street can find
him long enough in one spot to cut the floor from under him, or
he must envelop himself in mystery so dense that all seeking for
him will grow color-blind; but on this particular commodity—
Sugar—I can depart from the standard formula.
"I have been twenty-nine years dodging the scalping-knives of
Wall Street Comanches, and, although I am still here, I have
many places on my head where the hair refuses to grow, and,

strange to tell, almost all the bare spots are labelled 'Sugar.' I
suppose that I have, during the past ten years, contributed
money enough to Sugar to endow a fair-sized asylum for tailless
bears. It has never seemed to matter whether I bought or sold,
went long or short, the dollars which I secured by the
employment of pick and shovel, brawn, muscle or gray matter,
all seemed to follow one another into the relentless maw of that
modern Saccharine Titanotherium.
"Way back in 1890 I invested the profits of my Lamson deal—
$700,000—in 10,000 Sugar at 84, and in a few days, amid
brilliant fireworks, I bade it adieu, when it gracefully dropped
below 50. Again, four years ago, I decided I could make no
better long-time investment of $700,000 or $800,000 Electric
profits than to short Sugar from 61 to 70. In eleven days it took
$1,500 more than my profits to even up my accounts.
"Thinking these things over of late, I determined to make a final
demand on astute and relentless Wall Street for my accumulated
deposits—a kind of please-give-me-back-my-losses demand. I
carefully loaded up two weeks ago to the extent of 20,000 Sugar
in the thirties, and feeling the atmosphere was redolent of
opportunities, last Friday I bought 20,000 more, the last 5,000 of
which in a rather open and frank way that seemed but fair to my
scalping New York friends. Well, you know the rest. It took fire.
I cleaned up something over $700,000, and put out a short line
of 30,000 shares, the last of which I have covered to-day at
something over $350,000 profit. Strange as it may seem, I was
quit. I have struck a balance with Sugar, and it gets no more of
my money.
"I am one of the few Bostonians who are contented to live in the
knowledge that Wall Street is too big and bright and cute a
metropolitan centre for country boys to monkey with, and you
can say I am so tickled to get back my bait that I will never
again, never, wander away from home. There is one moral that
may be drawn by Wall and State streets from the last few days in
Sugar. It is this: It is not necessary to-day, any more than it was

in old days, to work deals with false stories or fakes. In doing
what I did in Sugar I depended on no fakes nor stories. I simply
followed Charley Osborne's old admonition: 'If you want to bull
stocks, buy 'em. If you want to bear 'em, sell 'em.' I bought 'em
and I sold 'em. These are Sugar facts as far as my movements
have affected them!"
For years after, even up to to-day, this yarn turned up in the press in
different parts of the world, and every time I read it I chuckled to myself,
for I see a big manly fellow, president of a bank now and asking no odds of
any, for he can buy 2,000 shares of Sugar at any time and draw his check to
pay for it against a bank account honestly earned since the day his wife
wrote that letter.
And I see a grateful mother teaching three youths to say a certain prayer,
and then I forget the critics' scathing sermons against stock gamblers. It
does not pain me when my own children ask, "Why do they say such awful
things about the stock operator?" I answer: "Oh, they mean no harm; they
don't know the stock gambler they write about."
one of the system's shadows

That my readers may not drop this chapter with a false idea of the results of
the stock-broker's efforts to "live and let live," I will give them an
illustration of one of the counterbalances of the law of compensations.
In the same year with the Sugar transaction, in an evil moment my mail
brought me the following letter:
Dear Sir: I have read with interest your proclamations about
"Coppers." I am not a rich man, but I have about $20,000 lying
idle which I should like to add to, and will put it into anything
you advise.
The writer received the following answer from my secretary:
Mr. Lawson instructs me to say he received your letter of ——
and he knows no better investment than the stock of the
Amalgamated Copper Company, which will be offered for
public subscription next week. In the advertising which will

accompany the offer you will note that it is to pay 8 per cent., is
now earning 16, and should sell at $150 or $200 per share. It
will be offered at par. Not only does Mr. Lawson personally
believe in every word in the advertisements, but they are
vouched for by such men and institutions as the National City
Bank of New York, Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller and
others, whose names are synonymous with success in business
affairs. Mr. Lawson does not hesitate to advise you to invest
your $20,000 in this stock, provided you are not looking for an
investment that is absolutely safe, that is, one that should not, in
these times, pay you over 3-3/4 or 4 per cent.; but if you are
looking for a semi-speculative investment, that is, one that will
pay you over 6 per cent., and where the chances are good for
large profits, he recommends this stock.
Later I received the following:
Upon your advice I purchased 200 shares of the Amalgamated
stock at $100 per share. When the stock dropped to 80,
remembering your strong advice I purchased 300 shares more,
and after it had advanced to 120, thinking it was surely going to
the 150 or 200 you mentioned, I bought 1,000, putting up my
500 shares as margin. It has now dropped back to 100, and the
many stories I read in the papers are causing me much anxiety.
Do you still believe as you first wrote me?
To which he received the following answer:
Mr. Lawson instructs me to say he received yours of ——. His
faith in the Amalgamated property, the men who control and
manage it, and the stock is the same as it always has been. He,
like yourself, added to his holdings at 120, and as high as 129,
and knowing what he does about the property, and what the men
who control and manage it, and with whom he is intimately
associated, say to him, he cannot believe the yarns which are
appearing in the press are other than the vaporings of those
stock-market critics who must write their opinions of prominent

stocks even though they have no means of actually knowing
anything about them.
While Mr. Lawson regrets that you have spread yourself out, as
you say in your letter, he can only answer your question by the
above, to wit, his faith in Amalgamated is the same as from the
beginning.
Later I received the following from one of the penal institutions of the
country:
You will observe by the postmark on this letter my present place
of residence. You probably knew that before, as the press has
had much to say about me of late.
I trust you and your associates are satisfied with yourselves
when you observe the hell you have caused others. When I first
wrote you about the Amalgamated stock I was an honest,
prosperous man. I had never committed a crime nor done any
great wrong to my fellow-beings. Relying upon what you said
publicly and the well-known record of the Rockefellers and their
partners, I committed acts which I now know to my everlasting
sorrow I should not have committed. I had no intention of doing
wrong, but when I saw ruin staring me in the face I used, as I
supposed only temporarily, funds intrusted to me to protect my
stocks from being slaughtered at declining prices by the sharks
of brokers whom I dealt with. The rest is the old story. My wife
and children are disgraced and oppressed with poverty, and I am
serving a five years' sentence in this institution, buoyed up only
with the hope that I may live to face you and your kind, that you
may have the pleasure of seeing the wreck you have wrought—
in the hope that I may satisfy a desire which night and day
gnaws at my very soul, a desire to say to you, face to face:
"Look upon a man who, although a branded criminal, is as much
better than you and your associates as it is possible for one to
be," and to ask you how your wife and your children enjoy the
luxuries they have when they know at what price they were
secured, for I shall surely, if I live, insist upon your wife and

children hearing from my lips what agonies a wife and children,
who are as dear to me as yours are to you, have suffered because
of your baseness.

CHAPTER XIII
THE "SYSTEM" VERSUS WESTINGHOUSE

In 1894 I had just wound up one of the most strenuous and successful
financial campaigns I ever engaged in. This was the Westinghouse deal, of
which the papers were full at the time. George Westinghouse, to whom the
world owes the air-brake and countless improvements in electrical
machinery, having surmounted the difficulties that clog the early steps of
the inventor who would be his own master, had taken rank, some years
before, among the prominent public figures of the day. The various
corporations in America bearing his name had prospered amazingly; his
ingenious appliances had displaced home products in the European market;
and titles and decorations had been conferred on the inventor, though these
last, like the sturdy American he is, Westinghouse had put aside.
This great success was wholly the fruit of George Westinghouse's personal
endeavor. It owed nothing to extraneous influences. It had been
accomplished along those manly, independent, Yankee lines which have
made that name synonymous with hustle and success in every part of the
civilized world. Above all, the man had organized and developed his
companies without the aid of the "System" or without truckling to its
votaries. In consequence he had incurred the deadly hatred of some of its
lords paramount.
In the business world Westinghouse's great rival was the General Electric
Company. To mention "Westinghouse" and "General Electric" in the same
breath was to speak of a thing and its antithesis. Everything George
Westinghouse was or had been the General Electric was not and had never
been. The General Electric had been and was by leave of the "System"; in
fact, was one of the very foremost examples of its methods. Its high-priest
was J. Pierpont Morgan; its home, Wall Street; its owners, the principal
votaries of the "System." It had grown because of their favor and by means
of the rankest exhibitions of knock-down-and-drag-out methods of
consolidation of all competitors but—Westinghouse.

Just previous to 1894 Westinghouse had rejected a dazzling scheme of
uniting the two institutions on an immense capitalization which would have
absorbed millions and millions of the people's savings and earned millions
in commissions for its projectors. Wall Street's indignation at his hardihood
knew no bounds, and at the time of which I write the yegg-men of the
"System" were laying for him with dark-lantern and sand-bag.
To appreciate the story of what the "System" tried to do to George
Westinghouse and what he withstood, one must know the man. He
embodies in many ways the conception of what the ideal American should
be. His remarkable six feet and odd of physique and his fertile, powerful
brain are the admiration of all true men with whom he comes in contact. In
spite of his unparalleled success and the accumulation of a great fortune, he
retains the same simplicity of manner and conduct that characterized him
when working at the bench for weekly wages, and with all his shrewdness
and force of character he has preserved a simple, honest, childlike belief in
humanity. Single-handed he conducted all his great enterprises on a plain,
patriarchal basis, using their revenues for extensions, and depending on his
faithful and well-satisfied stockholders for such further accessions of capital
as the business might in his judgment need. About the time General Electric
was most anxious to bolster up its jerry-built structure with the solid
Westinghouse concern, the latter institution had begun the erection of some
big new plants which required immediately several millions additional
capital. Westinghouse prepared to apply to his stockholders for the required
funds, and the announcement was to be made at the annual election soon
due. Suddenly the financial sky became overcast. The stock-market grew
panicky and money as scare in Wall Street as rain in Arizona in May. It was
just such a situation as the "System" might have brought about to
accomplish its fell designs had it possessed the power to work miracles.
And the "System" took care of its advantage. At a tense moment in that soul
and nerve trying period, with Wall and State streets full of talk about
General Electric's probable absorption of Westinghouse, General Electric
being then at its highest price, $119 per share, the Westinghouse companies
held their annual meetings and the big inventor, confidently facing his
stockholders, quite regardless of conditions which he thought could have no
possible bearing on his concern's splendid prospects, came forward with his
demand for the millions required to complete the projects already under

way. This was the signal. From all the stock-market sub-cellars and rat-
holes of State, Broad, and Wall streets crept those wriggling, slimy snakes
of bastard rumors which, seemingly fatherless and motherless, have in
reality multi-parents who beget them with a deviltry of intention: "George
Westinghouse had mismanaged his companies"; "George Westinghouse,
because of gross extravagance, had spread himself and his companies until
they were involved beyond extrication unless by consolidation with General
Electric"; these and many more seeped through the financial haunts of
Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, and kept hot the wires into every
financial centre in America and Europe, where aid must be sought to relieve
the crisis. There came a crash in Westinghouse stocks, and their price
melted. From amidst the thunder and lowering clouds emerged the
"System." "Notwithstanding the black eye the name of everything
Westinghouse had received, it would stand by and consolidate and save the
day!" But the "System" and its everything-gauged-by-machinery votaries
had reckoned without their host. George Westinghouse was too strong a
man to be thus easily shaken down. He threw back his mighty shoulders,
shook his big head, and flung his great private fortune into the market to
stay the falling prices of his securities. The movement was too strong
against him at the moment, and his millions were but a temporary help. He
got on the firing-line himself and did a thousand and one things that only a
brave, honest, and democratic Yankee would or could do—everything but
accept the cunning aid offered him by the "System" or its votaries. He knew
too well that the friendly mask concealed a foe and that the kid-gloved hand
extended him had a dagger up its sleeve.
These were the conditions when I, as an expert in stock-market affairs, was
called in for assistance. Here was this sound, sturdy institution standing for
everything that was best and self-supporting in American finance adrift on
the Wall Street shoals, and it seemed almost a hopeless task to attempt its
rescue. But it was a task eminently worth while, and I undertook it with all
the energy I could command.
The problem was to restore the Westinghouse stocks to their former high
price, and, confidence being re-established, to sell the new treasury stock at
such a figure as would pay for the plants and other projects the company
had under way. The completion of these meant greatly increased earnings
and such an advance in facilities and economy of manufacture as would

surely seal the fate of General Electric if it competed with Westinghouse
under the new conditions. Small wonder "Standard Oil's" whole strength
was bent to force the alliance.
My fight had hardly begun when I saw it was to be opposed by all the
forces of General Electric and the "System," and I concluded defeat was
sure unless by a counter movement on their stock I could keep them so busy
that they would have no time to interfere with Westinghouse. Thereupon I
laid out that attack on everything connected with General Electric which
created so much consternation at the time. To this day, if my enemies are
asked to name the act which most conclusively justifies their hatred of me,
they will point to my terrible General Electric raid. They will tell you I
broke the stock from 118 to 56 in a day, and thereby caused one of our most
disastrous panics; that I continued to hammer it to 20, that I compelled
reorganization, and then did not let up. They will show you that the misery
and ruin I wrought were beyond calculation. I will only say that, of any of
the things I am proud of having done, I am proudest of what I did in
General Electric, and, willingly, I would give over five years of my life to
go through the experience again.
It was a most arduous campaign, and our fate trembled many times in the
balance. By dint of hard, overtime work, and what my enemies were
pleased to call rank manipulation, we drove Westinghouse stock back to its
former price, after which a strong syndicate was formed to take the new
stock, and the righted institution at once magnificently swept on its
international career which to-day is at its height.
Though I had taken up the Westinghouse cause as a business venture and its
successful termination was most profitable to me, I had entered into the
campaign with the ardor of a lawyer defending a client unjustly accused of
a heinous crime. But there was this difference—if in spite of his efforts the
lawyer fails to convince the jury of his client's innocence it means no
detriment to his fortune or his reputation, whereas all I had and was were
involved in this stock-exchange struggle. The great rewards that are the
guerdon of success in financial fights are balanced by the terrific
consequences of defeat. The broker general engaged in surrounding his
enemy requires every dollar he and his principals can pledge or beg, and
where great forces are in conflict millions are burnt up to seize any vantage,

as Kuroki sacrifices a regiment to gain a hill. I had won for myself as well
as for Westinghouse, but if the fortunes of the war had been on the other
side, I must certainly have been wiped out.

CHAPTER XIV
THE ALLIANCE WITH ADDICKS

It was part of my method of conducting my stock-brokerage business to
expose through the medium of the press or through market letters the stocks
of corporations I thought rotten. It was also my way to work up bull
campaigns in stocks that seemed to be selling for less than they were worth.
With Addicks or the "Standard Oil" I had no connection. I had watched the
Philadelphian's operations and had my eye marketwise on his bonds and
stock, particularly on his stock, which was 100,000 shares of the Bay State
Gas Company of Delaware, of a par value of fifty dollars each, and which
became very active in the market shortly after it was created, at just under
par. I thought I saw in the scheme the ordinary, cold-blooded, stock-
jobbing, unloading-on-the-public affair. I had heard recounted the man's
wonderful doings, particularly his recklessness in the purchase of the
Boston companies; I "sized up" his mighty effort to be the tremendously
rich good fellow as inspired by the idea and the purpose of giving his
"stuff" in the stock-market a good send-off; and from the start I had put his
property on my "to-be-watched memoranda" as one I might at the proper
time let daylight into.
I was tearing large strips from its values when Addicks' bankers, who
happened to be business friends of mine, sought to enlist me on their side of
the gas war. I remember expressing frankly my opinion about the
contestants and their contest at the time, stating that so far as morality,
fairness, or justice went I could see little to choose between Addicks and
"Standard Oil." I continued to "bear" the stock until one day my banker
friends brought me an earnest request from the Delaware financier that I go
to New York and talk things over with him.
On reaching New York—the two bankers and myself—we went directly to
Addicks' apartments at the Imperial Hotel. Although the fortunes of war
were rapidly crumbling this worthy's brilliant financial structure, there were
as yet no outward signs of disintegration. His beautiful estate at Claymont,

Del., his stock farm in the same State, his town-house in Philadelphia, his
$30,000 apartments in the Knickerbocker on Fifth Avenue in New York, and
the superbly furnished suite in the Imperial, close by, all seemed to testify to
the man's boundless prosperity.
Memorable though this meeting was destined to be to both of us, my chief
sensation in approaching it was a certain curiosity as to the personality of
Addicks, whom I had seen, but had never spoken to. I knew him to a "T" in
my mind, but here was my opportunity to compare my mental "sizing-up"
with the real man. The apartment into which we were ushered was of the
low-burning-red-light, Turkish pattern. Addicks rose from a great divan
disturbing a pose which his white cricket-cloth suit and the scarlet shadows
made so stagy that I guessed it was for my benefit. I looked him over, and
he returned the inspection. After the introduction he at once unlimbered his
business gun.
"Let's get right down to business, Lawson," he began. "I wanted to meet
you to see if we could get together on any satisfactory basis."
I told him that that was my understanding of our meeting. Then he wanted
assurances that I had no connections with "Standard Oil" and that I was
free, sentimentally and commercially, to enlist in his fight. I replied that I
was a stock-broker and operator, and was looking for opportunities; no one
had strings on me, and provided he made satisfactory terms I was free to
join him; further, that when it came to enlisting in a fight between two such
financiers as Addicks and Rogers, sentiment seemed to me out of place.
"That's right," he said. "That's what I like to hear. Now, Lawson, will you
take this fight of mine against 'Standard Oil'?"
"If you meet my terms, yes."
Addicks looked at me. "What do you want?" he asked. "Perhaps, though,
you'd first like to have me tell you how my affairs stand."
"I know sufficiently where you stand," I replied, "to name my terms right
now. If they are acceptable, I'll hear you tell where you stand afterward. I'll
take your fight for a cash commission of $250,000 and a cash capital of
$1,000,000, to be used in the market on joint account, we to divide the
profits of all operations."

Addicks smiled. "You are too high," he said. "I'll pay you $50,000
commission and give you $250,000 capital, and after I show you in what
good shape my fight now is and how near I am to victory, you'll agree that
the terms I offer are good pay and fair."
"Mr. Addicks," said I, "I have just time to get dinner, look in at the theatre,
and catch the midnight back to Boston. It is my business to keep posted on
such scrimmages as you are engaged in. If you and your affairs are where I
believe they are, the terms I offer are exceptionally low. If your affairs are
as you would have me believe, you need no one to captain your fight."
Addicks asked where I thought his affairs stood, and I answered: "I don't
think—I know, or, at least, I feel quite sure I do. You are at the end of your
rope and are practically bankrupt."
At once Addicks grew indignant. "You are absolutely wrong," he asserted.
"I'll admit I have had a hard fight, and that it has cost me, so far,
considerable money; but I give you my word I'm worth between six and
seven millions clear and clean right now."
I bade him good-night and left. Our interview had consumed not over
twenty to twenty-five minutes. I said to his bankers:
"Addicks is the Addicks I have sized him up to be, only worse."
We got back to Boston next morning, and at the opening of the Stock
Exchange I sailed into the Bay State stock in earnest, for I felt surer than
before that Addicks was nearing his finish. A few minutes after the
Exchange opened, Addicks' banker rushed into my office and said the
Delaware financier begged that I would return to New York at once, and
whispered to me that in a conversation just held on the telephone Addicks
had stated that he would accept my terms. I informed the banker I was not
anxious for the job, but as he urged his own interest, I jumped on the noon
train and in the evening was again in New York.
It was a warm day and I was pleased to get a wire on the train from Addicks
asking me to meet him at the pier, as we should hold our conference on his
yacht, the Now-Then, at that time one of the fastest steam-yachts afloat.

It was a night of memorable beauty. In the golden light of a dazzling sunset
we flew up the majestic Hudson. From under the awning I watched the
serried edges of the Palisades as we slipped swiftly by them to the broad
reaches of tinted waters above Yonkers. Every natural influence conspired
to make acute to me the warning whisper of my soul, which flashed the
caution as I crossed the gang-plank, "Watch out!" But, as I said before, Fate
hangs no red lights at the cross-roads of a man's career, and I plunged
recklessly into the toils my Mephistophelian companion so artfully wove
around me.
The Now-Then was hardly in mid-stream before Addicks had got down to
business. His demeanor had changed since the previous evening. All his
bravado had disappeared; he was simple, frank, direct, and, in the manner
of one who has made a mistake and regrets it, he commenced without any
delay:
"I didn't think last night I'd pay your price, Lawson. It staggered me a bit,
but I gave it considerable thought after you left, and when this morning's
prices showed me you were again on the war-path, I saw my error."
"Mr. Addicks," said I, "let's have no fooling about this matter. If we do
business together, it will only be after there is some plain—brutally plain
talk between us. It will do no good to trick, because some one will get
slaughtered when the trickery is discovered, as it surely would be, after we
hitched up together."
Then, straight from the shoulder, free from all attempt to gloss over the raw
truth, I detailed to him the things I knew he had done to his former
associates, and it was a tale of unbroken duplicity and double-dealing on his
part, loss and misery for his lieutenants, and profits and curses for him. I
ended by saying: "If we get together, Addicks, it will be upon my terms, and
I'll see to it that you never put me in the position in which you have put all
the others you've been connected with. I don't trust you and I'll watch you
all the time."
When I had finished Addicks looked at me sadly with a wounded, "how-
this-man-has misjudged-me" expression in his eyes.

"Lawson," he said, "you were never more mistaken in your life, but it's a
matter I don't want to argue about. You'll tell me you were all wrong after
you know me better. I'll do business with you—yes, and I'll allow you to
make your own terms. I'll agree to them whatever they are, and I'll live up
to the very letter of them, however hard."
I may mention that it is a peculiar characteristic of Addicks that one may
talk to him as though he were a pick-pocket, and he will not resent it, if it is
"business." Where H. H. Rogers would flash into a Vesuvius of wrath, the
Delaware statesman only smiles.
Addicks by no means convinced me of his sincerity. I decided I would test
him pretty thoroughly before I went further. So I said: "This seems the
proper time for a clean statement from you as to just where you and your
companies stand."
I did not believe this man could make an absolutely truthful statement on
any subject of importance, but I knew enough of his real position to protect
me from being fooled. What was my surprise, therefore, when in the most
open way possible he calmly spread before me a condition of affairs far
worse than the worst I knew. He was, indeed, bankrupt and his corporation
was in little better shape.
As soon as I could catch my breath I said:
"No wonder you refused my proposition last night. If your bankers had
dreamed of this state of affairs, they would have had a receiver to-day. You
cannot meet my terms. You cannot even carry out the ones you yourself
offered."
Addicks leaned back on the cushions of his chair in the easiest, most
insouciant way imaginable. He grinned. "That's true," he replied, "but I
never give up a ship till I feel her bump the bottom, and I am sure that, bad
as things are, you and I can pull them out and whip Rogers to a standstill."
It was a remarkable situation. Here was one of the most ruthless financial
schemers of the age cornered for slaughter, and he had put himself
absolutely at the mercy of the man who had bitterly fought him and whom
he knew hated his kind. Yet he was as cool and collected as a bunch of
orange blossoms at a winter's wedding.

The man's supreme nerve astounded me, yet I could not help admiring him.
I saw through his game, yet his assurance fascinated me. I thought a minute.
I said to him: "Addicks, I'm really sorry for you, and I'll promise you here
now to keep what you've told me sacred. What's more, I'll stop fighting you.
I'll cover my shares and without doing any one any harm I'll help make
prices a bit better for your securities."
He smiled, said "Thank you!" and continued looking at me as though he
awaited something further, a quizzical, expectant smile on his face.
There was an interval of silence. Finally I said to him—and there were
neither red lights nor warning intuitions to signal my peril: "Just what do
you expect me to do, Mr. Addicks?"
"Whatever you think best," he replied in a mild tone. Then, rousing himself
a bit, he went on: "They say in the market that you like a fight and the
harder it is the better. Well, I certainly have an uphill fight. Do as you would
have the other fellow do to you."
After that I had no further doubts of Addicks' slickness. I said to him: "You
are certainly the shrewd man they describe you as. Now continue to be
frank long enough to answer this one question: Did you figure this out as
the last card to throw at me, knowing that the very desperation of the case
might warm me up and tempt me to tackle it for the sake of the fight there's
in it?"
Instantly Addicks knew his game was won. He straightened up and was the
able, shrewd, and cunning financier who had tricked conservative Boston.
His facts chased his figures in marvellously rapid succession, and he
showed a knowledge of conditions, relations, and corporation tricks that
dazzled me. For an hour he rushed on, and when at last he came to a stop I
said to him:
"It's unnecessary to say any more. I see the situation as you would have me
see it, and it comes to this: If I refuse to link up with you it means another
'Standard Oil' victory and another wreck for Boston. Rogers' success means
that New England speculators and investors will again, for the three
hundred and thirty-third time, be robbed of their savings. If I get in, we may

either avert all this or I may be ground up at the same time you are.
However, it's too good a fight to miss, and so here goes. I'll link up."
At some particularly hazardous halting-place in after-years Addicks and
myself have often laughed as we have talked over that August evening on
the Now-Then. I was easy, he asserts, and I must admit that he is right—I
was easy. Yet no one knew Addicks better than I did then. Looking back
along his extraordinary career, one is obliged to allow a certain magic as a
factor in his men-and-dollar tussles. We had absolutely nothing in common,
Addicks and I. We thought and felt differently about every relationship of
life. A dozen other ventures, sure, easy, and promising infinitely greater
profits, were ready at my hand—but he appealed to my sense of adventure,
he promised me abundant and glorious fighting, and I forgot everything else
and went with him.
When the Now-Then touched her pier and I stepped ashore, it was as
captain of Addicks' corporation and stock-market forces, with absolute
power to wage war, make peace, and use in whatever way I thought best
such resources of his as I could lay hands on. I lost no time. Within forty-
eight hours of my return to Boston I had mapped out my campaign,
reconstructed Addicks' broken lines, and gayly set forth on about as forlorn
a hope as ever operator or fighter tackled.
Nothing more desperate could be imagined than the condition of the
Delaware financier's affairs when I assumed control. All the resources of his
companies were pledged for loans, and the constantly falling prices of his
securities, coupled with the discrediting stories Rogers' agents kept in
circulation, made it difficult to keep these going. To pay would mean ruin,
for Addicks had no further thing of value to pledge. At the same time,
Rogers' company, which had now paralleled many of the Bay State
Company's pipes, had secured a large slice of that corporation's business,
and had a corps of up-to-date solicitors working overtime to secure the
balance. Boston, in the meantime, having decided that Addicts' star was of
the shooting variety, and on its return trip, was throwing up its hat in the
wake of the "Standard Oil" band-wagon. The city government and the
Massachusetts Legislature had awakened to the enormity of Addicksism
and were boiling over with that brand of virtue which the "System" and
"Standard Oil" know so well how to rouse in American breasts by way of

American pockets. By this time Rogers' investment in Boston had grown
from the half-million he had in the beginning estimated as sufficient to
annihilate Addicks to three and a half millions, a million and a half of which
represented real property, and the balance, all kinds of expenditures made in
the fight to crush the Delaware financier, a large part of it being invested in
the votes and favor of State and municipal authorities.
Chief among the enemies of Addicks at this period was the young and
brilliant boss of Boston, its reform mayor, the Hon. Nathan Matthews, and
thereby hangs a swinging tale. When the Addicks-Rogers gas-fight broke
out in Boston this Nathan Matthews was at the zenith of his political career,
and was rather a greater man than even reform mayors generally fancy
themselves. He was at that state of development in the lives of aspiring
persons which compels the average spectator to debate whether the swelling
of the cranium should be met by a larger hat-band or by a sweeping haircut.
En passant, Addicks' Panama had had its fifth enlargement to accommodate
the successive bulges of his brow.
Now, the city of Boston's contract with the Bay State Company for gas at a
dollar and twenty-five cents, which had run a long term of years, was just
expiring. One bright June morning the mayor's secretary telephoned the
secretary of the Mogul from Delaware that His Honor of Boston, desired
converse with the Gas King. If those who overheard the dialogue can be
credited, the parley was of this character:
"This is the mayor of Boston, the Hon. Nathan Matthews."
"This is J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, Gas King and United States
Senator-to-be. What would you with me?"
"I would hold converse with you in regard to a contract of much moment
which will expire in a few days."
"Well and good. My office is in West Street. Give your card to my first,
second, or third secretary and I will not keep you waiting long."
"The office of the mayor of Boston is at the City Hall and my first or under-
secretary will make things agreeable while you wait. When will you call?"

"I would have you understand, Mr. Mayor, that any one to talk gas with J.
Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, Gas King and United State Senator-to-be,
comes to his office."
"Good-day to you, Mr. Gas King and United States Senator-to-be."
"Good-day to you, Mr. Mayor."
I do not, of course, guarantee that the conversation took exactly the form
here given it, but no injustice has been done its substance, nor would it be
possible to estimate in miles the breach it created. From that telephonic
encounter date the earnest efforts of Matthews and Addicks to do up each
other, in which both were successful to a degree that filled their hearts with
Indian pleasure.
A few days later public announcement was made that the Brookline Gas
Company, Rogers' corporation, had been awarded the contract for lighting
Boston, and that henceforth the legal price of gas to the consumer was to be
$1 per thousand feet. This was due notice to all concerned that "Standard
Oil" had captured City Hall, and Addicks realized his error. He sought the
mayor's office, but the mayor had no time to see him. His companies met
the new rate. There was nothing else for them to do.

CHAPTER XV
THE GREAT BAY STATE GAS FIGHT

It was to this condition that I had to adapt my campaigning plans. I
determined first to raise the market price of Addicks' securities; to turn the
tide against the "Standard Oil" by that most potent of stock-market
weapons, publicity; and then to attack Rogers from the rear through the City
Hall. For Addicks to attempt to match pocket-books with Rogers and
"Standard Oil" in corrupting city or State officials I knew would be useless;
and besides a fundamental stipulation in the agreement with the Delaware
financier on the Now-Then had been that under no circumstances should
bribery or corruption be allowed to enter into any of our plans while I was
connected with the enterprise. I had always held, do now, and always shall
hold, that the meanest crime in the calendar of vice is bribery of the
servants of the people. I felt pretty sure, moreover, that I could play a card
that would more than offset the dollars of "Standard Oil." Nathan Matthews
was on the high-road to the governor's chair, but I happened to know that,
however ambitious he might be for political preferment, his temperament
rendered him more avid for distinction in business. Addicks had within his
gift the richest plum in all the Boston commercial world. As controller of
the affairs of the Bay State Company of Delaware, which controlled the
nomination and consequent election of the officers of the old Boston gas
companies, he could award to any one he pleased the presidency of these
corporations, together with the large salary that went with the office.[6]
My plans in shape, I rushed to the firing-line. I began with a statement to
the investors of New England and the gas consumers of Boston brimming
over with facts and figures. Then I fired a volley of candid details as to the
manner in which city and State officials had recently betrayed the public's
interests. Lastly, I discharged at "Standard Oil" a broadside which my
attorneys and friends assured me meant jail on a libel charge. I put my
banking-house and my personal guarantee behind the old and new loans,
and proceeded to roll up my sleeves in the stock-market. I got results at

once. A change became apparent in public sentiment—the rottenness of
Addicksism was overcome by the stench of "Standard Oil." The prices of
Bay State stocks and bonds shot up; loan funds were offered freely and at
lower rates of interest.
There were, however, reprisals. Rogers met my onslaught by a manœuvre
new in "Standard Oil" tactics. He came into the open, issuing a
proclamation over his own signature which gave me the lie, at the same
time tearing off a yard or two of my skin and throwing on a bucket of brine
to remind me I had lost it. This attack was just off the press when I was out
with a rejoinder which he, in after-years, referred to as quite the hottest
thing of its kind he had ever read. In it I calmly, but in that "chunk English"
which those who really wish to convey the truth naked can always find
handy, told him plainly who he was, explicitly what "Standard Oil" was,
and exactly who and what I was. I opine that about either assault there was
nothing dignified, generous, or refined, but in stock-exchange battles one
has not time to scent shrapnel. The immediate result of this interchange of
deckle-edged[7] insults was to daze the public. "Standard Oil" attacked and
actually replying; Rogers assaulting Lawson and Lawson sending back
worse than he got—almost anything might happen next. It was right here I
got to Rogers' solar plexus. I came out with another plain public talk, and
gave him the choice of haling me into court—in which event I pledged him
my word I would send him and his associates to jail for bribery and other
crimes—or of acknowledging to the world he was licked and on the run. He
was silent and I loudly claimed victory. The price of Addicks stocks quickly
emphasized our success by a further advance.
Thus far the campaign appeared to be working smoothly, and I turned my
attention next to my rear attack. I began negotiations with Mayor Matthews
for the withdrawal of his support from Rogers. It was a difficult task, but
after much manœuvring I landed my big fish. I promised him the
presidency of the Boston, South Boston, Roxbury, and Bay State gas
companies for the term of three years, at a salary of $25,000 per annum,
with the explicit understanding that he was to allow me, as his vice-
president, to see that the bargain between us was lived up to. When the
trade was made it was understood that the fact of Matthews' change of base
should be kept secret, and that he should not assume the office until the end

of his term as mayor of Boston. With that agreement the deal was clinched,
signed, sealed, and delivered.
In order that my readers may comprehend the events that follow, it is
necessary that they understand something of the complications in which
Addicks' manipulations had involved that corporation.
When Addicks purchased the several Boston gas properties he organized a
company, the Bay State of Delaware, in which this ownership was vested.
In order to facilitate the financing of the new corporation and for other
manipulative purposes of his own, Addicks created an inner corporation, the
Bay State of New Jersey, owned by the treasury of the Bay State of
Delaware, to which he turned over the stocks of the Boston gas companies.
These the Bay State of New Jersey transferred to the Mercantile Trust
Company of New York as collateral for the twelve million Boston Gas
bonds which had been sold to the investing public. While to all intents and
purposes the Bay State of Delaware was owner of the subsidiary properties,
the contract with the Mercantile Trust Company was made with the Bay
State of New Jersey, and it was to the president of the latter corporation
(Addicks) that the Trust Company was bound to deliver the proxies for the
gas stocks in its possession, three days before an annual election.
Knowledge of this subcutaneous corporation was confined to Addicks and
his immediate associates, and the Delaware financier alone quite grasped its
potentialities.
Hitherto Addicks had used the proxies to elect himself president of each of
the subordinate corporations, drawing the several salaries which went with
the offices. To prevail on him to give up these places and their emoluments
to a man he hated as bitterly as he did Matthews was a difficult task, but his
situation was desperate. Finally, he agreed. I did not know till long
afterward that this reluctant compliance was yielded only after Addicks had
had a secret session with his Bay State directors, at which they voted him,
by way of salve for his resignation, a sum equal to three years' salary,
$75,000.
The mayor, who was a lawyer, prided himself on his shrewdness, and was
fully alive to the serpent strategy of Addicks. He determined that the prize
he had secured should not slip through his fingers for lack of precaution.

We had many legal pow-wows in which the most astute lawyers at the
Boston bar were called in, and finally the directors of the Bay State made an
iron-clad contract with Nathan Matthews, agreeing to deliver over to him
whatever proxies it, the Bay State Gas of Delaware, received from the
Mercantile Trust Company of New York, on a given day before the annual
election, with which he, of course, could elect himself president. This
contract was signed by Addicks and his directors and by all the officers of
the Bay State of Delaware corporation, and was passed on and approved by
the eminent law sharps both sides had retained.
A few days after the document that made Nathan Matthews supreme boss of
Boston Gas was conveyed to him, there came an explosion. Like the
premature bursting of a bombshell at a Fourth of July celebration, the
transaction "leaked," and the press announced in sable head-lines that
Mayor Matthews had sold out, that Addicks was on top, and that Rogers
and "Standard Oil" would surely be found beneath the débris. Matthews has
always claimed that this "leakage" was a piece of Addicks' double dealing;
Addicks declares it was a part of Matthews' and Rogers' deep-laid plan to
give him the double cross. Anyway, as a hurrier-up of coming events the
news was most successful, although its effect was somewhat of the nature
of that produced by the throwing in of an overdose of soda at a candy pull
—the pot boiled over, and the air for a time was permeated with the odor of
burned sweets. In spite of all public and private criticism Matthews budged
not a jot, and confirmed the reports. I made the most of our triumph over
"Standard Oil," and for a few days the public took to it, too. Then came one
of those return waves of sentiment which may always be counted on in any
contest in which "Standard Oil" is engaged. From mysterious places and in
untraceable ways the report became current that victory was really with
Rogers instead of with our side; that the deal was a smooth piece of
Machiavelian work; that Matthews when he took the helm was to steer our
ship alongside one of Rogers' forts and perhaps drop anchor under a row of
his concealed guns.
This rumor alarmed me. I lost no time in running it to earth, and discovered
to my consternation that Matthews had spent the night before he made the
agreement to come over to us in New York, at the home of H. H. Rogers.
Exactly what had occurred there, or what their programme was, I don't
know. Long after this episode had slipped into gas history, at the time when

Rogers and myself were doing business together, I asked him to enlighten
me on this one point, and he did to the extent of saying, "Matthews only did
what I approved of." This certainly redeemed Matthews in my eyes from
the reproach of having sold out his friends. There is nothing more
despicable than a man who, after having consented to be "put" will not
"stay put"—even though the first "put" be of a questionable character.
This new complication demanded immediate action. I called on Matthews
to make public announcement that I was to be his vice-president, and thus
set at rest the reports that were fast destroying the beneficial effects of our
coup. I argued that such an announcement would convince the public that
victory was with us and not with Rogers. My surprise may be grasped when
the Mayor placed this icicle in my hot palm:
"Mr. Lawson, it has long been my ambition to show the public of Boston
and gas consumers what I could do with this situation, and now that I am
absolutely assured of gas supremacy, I would have you and all others
distinctly understand I will run it as I deem best, regardless of the wishes of
any one."
Nathan Matthews was destined later to learn that in an Addicks edifice there
are secret trap-doors and concealed passageways available for quick escape
in emergency, and that the term "absolutely assured" is of relative value
when used in high finance, with Addicks to interpret the relativeness. A few
days after the mayor had shown his colors the annual election was "pulled
off" in an unexpected manner. The Mercantile Trust Company delivered its
proxies to the president of the Bay State of New Jersey, who promptly re-
elected himself and his friends to their old offices.
Next morning the public, the press, and the ex-mayor were alike surprised
to learn that J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was still president of all the
Boston gas companies; that General Sam Thomas, of New York, and
Thomas W. Lawson, of Boston, were vice-presidents; and that the expected
and widely heralded Matthews turnover to Matthews had been indefinitely
postponed. There was a tremendous "towse" for a few days during which
time I tried my hand at public-opinion moulding, and so successfully that
all interested saw that the tide had really turned, and was running swiftly
against the heretofore invincible "Standard Oil." Rogers tried to stem it by

causing it to be known that Matthews was to carry the new complication to
the courts, but we quickly disposed of this possibility by reaching a
settlement with our man. This was brought about by the payment to
Matthews of a number of thousands of dollars, which Addicks afterward
informed me he had entered in the gas-books as "balm salary." From this
event until August, 1895, it was one continuous running fire with Rogers
and his crowd, with a constant gain to our side in public opinion, though
final victory was still far off because of the unlimited money resources of
"Standard Oil." In fact, it gradually became evident that, though we might
hold out, it was impossible to whip "Standard Oil" to an open
acknowledgment of defeat.
The phase of the problem that gave me keenest cause for uneasiness was the
possibility I recognized of treachery in my own camp. I had become
painfully aware that Addicks was getting impatient and was ready at any
favorable moment to make one of his quick Judas turns, which would land
him safe with Rogers as the price of the slaughter of the rest of us. True, I
had taken all possible precautions to safeguard my own and my friends'
interests against his craft by securing from him and from the subsidiary
companies iron-clad power to act for them without consultation. To get this
I had had to use great pressure, for he had balked long and hard against
giving it. This was the condition of affairs when I decided to stake
everything on one move.
* Certain of my critics have seized upon the transaction with
Mayor Matthews, narrated in this chapter, to say: "He bribed the
Mayor and is no better than other bribers."
The fact is, that the only thing the Mayor of Boston could do in
the gas war—take sides with Rogers, grant a permit to the
Brookline company to open the streets and come in competition
with our companies, thus compelling, in the interests of the
people, a reduction in the selling price of gas from $1.25 to
$1.00—the Mayor had already done. There was nothing more in
his power, and the only object we had in securing his services
was to put him between our companies and Rogers, in the belief
that Rogers, owing to his former relations, would not dare fire
through him.

I never, directly or indirectly, bribed Mayor Matthews; but, on
the contrary, only induced him to do what he had a moral right
to do and I a moral right to ask him to do.

FOOTNOTES:
[6] See page 109.
[7] Mr. Lawson's proclamations and market communications are invariably
printed on the finest grade of deckle-edged paper.—The Publisher.

CHAPTER XVI
PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WITH ROGERS

Having made up my mind that the time had come for a final engagement, I
decided myself to try legitimately to settle with Mr. Rogers, and prepared
two letters which, if he were willing for us to get together, would pave the
way for a meeting. These letters I sent by my secretary, Mr. Vinal, to Mr.
Rogers at Fairhaven. My readers, in weighing this odd correspondence,
must bear in mind what the relations between Mr. Rogers and myself had
been. We had vilified each other in every imaginable way, and I knew, or at
least I thought I did, that the "Standard Oil" magnate would not hesitate to
use any written communication of mine that he could lay hold of to bring
about a split between Addicks and myself. I had good evidence that he
believed that in such a rupture lay his only chance of bringing home the
quieting blow he had been trying to inflict on us. Letter I. read as follows:
Henry H. Rogers, Fairhaven, Mass.
Dear Sir: My secretary, Mr. Vinal, will hand you this letter. If
after reading it you are desirous of further communication with
me, he has instructions, after you have returned this one to him,
sealed in the enclosed envelope, to hand you another, which if
after reading you return to him in another enclosed envelope, he
will bring to me with whatever verbal answer you may care to
send.
My secretary knows nothing more of his errand or the contents
of either letter. He can, therefore, give you no further
information. If you do not call for the second letter, I will
consider you do not care to pursue the subject further, which
will lead me to notify you that the Boston gas war will end in a
most sensational way next Wednesday.
Believe me, sir,

Yours respectfully,
(Signed) Thomas W. Lawson.
Upon his return from Fairhaven Mr. Vinal informed me that Mr. Rogers,
after reading this letter twice, folded and placed it in the envelope I had sent
and handed it without comment to him, whereupon my secretary delivered
to him letter II., which was a type-written communication on a plain bit of
paper, addressed to no one, signed by no one, and bearing no marks to
identify the sender:
There is a gas war now existing. Upon one side is the "Standard
Oil." Upon the other the Addicks Bay State companies.
After a fight has been begun there are but four things possible:
"Standard Oil" can sell out to the Bay State.
The Bay State can sell out to the "Standard Oil."
They can come together by consolidation; or
They can continue fighting until one or the other has been
annihilated.
Nothing else is possible. Therefore, one of these four things is to
be the outcome of the present war.
If you can be shown now that if one of the first three is not
settled upon before next Wednesday the fourth will be
impossible beyond that date, and that it is absolutely in the
power of one man, without consultation with any one, to bring
about the accomplishment of any one of the first three, you will
meet that man before next Wednesday and make your selection.
I can absolutely prove to you that this war will not continue after
next Wednesday, and that it is absolutely in my power, without
consulting any one, to do any one of the three things you signify
you desire done.

Mr. Vinal reported that Mr. Rogers also read this letter a second time, but
slowly and carefully, as though he were weighing each word, and then,
sealing it in the envelope, passed it back to him with: "Say to your
employer I return to New York to-morrow, Sunday night, and shall be at my
office, 26 Broadway, from 9.30 on Monday morning till five in the
afternoon; that I shall dine at my house, 26 East 57th Street; that I shall be
through dinner at eight o'clock, and that I go to bed at 10.30. Tell him that
any man who has an important communication to make to me affecting a
matter in which I have large interests will be welcome to call on me
between the hours I have named, provided he notifies me a little while in
advance."
When my secretary, whose practice it was to give me the minutest details of
such affairs as this errand, had reported all that had happened, I at once sent
a message to 26 Broadway stating that I would be at Rogers' house at eight
o'clock on Monday night, and on the stroke I pushed his electric latchstring.
His man had hardly taken my hat when Mr. Rogers himself came down the
hall with outstretched hand.

CHAPTER XVII
A MEMORABLE CONFERENCE

If the years of my life are protracted beyond the Psalmist's threescore and
ten, even though the events that chance in the comparatively long future
seethe and struggle as strenuously as those that befell in the eager, vivid
procession of yesterdays which makes up my past, my memory's picture of
this meeting will always hang where the lights cast their kindest reflections.
I had left Boston on the noon train, and got down to my hotel, the
Brunswick, on Fifth Avenue, by six o'clock. In those kind days of good
memory when New Yorkers really lived instead of looping-the-loop through
life, the Brunswick was head-quarters for Southerners and Bostonians of the
old school. To-day its bricks and mortar and the picturesque iron balconies,
from which two generations of America's celebrities reviewed the marching
armies of peace and war, are heaps of refuse; for the old Brunswick has had
to give place to yet one more of the twenty-storied, emblazoned hostelries,
whose alabaster halls, frescoed walls, mosaic floors, and onyx and silver
bathtubs are designed to minister to the comfort of our great and free people
when they needs must wander from the luxury of their homes. When I had
dressed I crossed over to the old Delmonico's opposite, and, in a secluded
corner beside an open window which gave full view of the passing show on
Gotham's great boulevard, I sat and listened to old "Philip," who, time out
of mind, had been high-priest of the famous Frenchman's temple of
appetite, as he posted me on the latest doings of the town where no one
remembers further back than yesterday, and to-morrow doesn't count.
Ordinarily I should have lingered for hours with "Philip" and his tidbits, but
that night my mind was a mad steeplechase of memories and hopes, all
starting and finishing at 26 East 57th Street, and I fear he must have thought
he had failed in the plump little duck which I left unpicked, and in the bottle
of Chianti which I hardly sipped.
At 7.30 I lit my cigar and started for what I felt was to be the tomb or the
forcing-house of all the air-castles I had cherished from boyhood. At last I

was to meet the real champion; I was to tussle hand-to-hand with the head
of the financial clan, the man of all men best fitted to test to the utmost the
skill and quickness which I had picked up in the rough and tumble of a
hundred fights on State and Wall streets—Rogers, wary, intrepid,
implacable, the survivor of bloody battles in comparison with which mine
were but pink skirmishes.
I had carefully put aside that half-hour between dinner and the moment for
my appointment to run up and down my mental keyboard under what to me
are the most favorable conditions possible—an evening walk through the
streets of a great city. Some men can invite their souls only in sylvan
solitudes, but the flare of light, the clash of traffic, the kaleidoscopic
procession of humanity, with its challenging contrasts shifting and seething
on great metropolitan highways, breed in my mind a sense of calm, cool
remoteness in which all the glitter and excitement of the spectacle suggests
only its appalling transiency.
From the gay carnival of Broadway I cut across through the brownstone
gloom of 27th Street into Sixth Avenue, where the tired men and women of
the toiling millions sat in their doorways or at their windows over the shops
resting after the heat and travail of the day. Some watched the sidewalk
antics of their children—perhaps speculating on the possibility that this or
the other among that merry throng of urchins might rise to be an alderman
or even a city boss—perhaps President of the greatest republic on earth—or
—transcendent bliss—a Rogers or a Rockefeller.
From 42d Street I turned up Fifth Avenue, lifting my hat and exchanging a
word with Mr. and Mrs. Russell Sage, and for an instant, as I left them, my
wandering thoughts took a new twist, for Mrs. Sage had informed me that
"Father and I are on the way to prayer-meeting"—early evening prayer-
meeting in New York! For an instant I was in one of those tiny New
Hampshire villages, a forgotten haven of rest and simplicity, innocent as yet
of steam, machinery, or trolleys, for the sweet lady and the angular man
with the pained gait which spoke in loud tones of the unbroken store-shoe
could belong in no other than a rural place. But the image of the New
Hampshire village only flitted across my mind's film, for my truant senses
seized on a message over memory's telephone: "Russell Sage has
$100,000,000." One hundred millions, and I was back on earth again, but as

I walked the thought was buzzing in my brain: "Is it possible that that
countryman has made one hundred million dollars, when the expert
carpenter who started at the birth of Christ to trudge the world until from
his honest labors he had accumulated $1,000,000 by laying aside each day
all the wage he was entitled to, one dollar, had at the end of 1,900 years
only a little more than half that sum?"
At last I turned the corner of 57th Street, and when I looked down Mr.
Rogers' home-like hall and grasped his outstretched hand and heard his
"Lawson, I'm glad to see you!" I would have sworn it was hours and hours
since I left the little table in the corner of Delmonico's.

The chief impression I recall of my experience that night is gratitude for
Henry H. Rogers' unexpected kindness, and admiration for his manliness,
ability, and firmness. When this memory rises in my mind I regret
"Frenzied Finance" and all the consequences with which it is fraught for
him and his connections. When the American people are aroused, as they
surely will be, to demand restitution and are in the act of brushing, with a
mighty sweep of indignation, back into the laps of the plundered the billions
of which they have been robbed, and "Standard Oil" and the "System"
break and fall like trees before the gale, I doubt, even if Henry H. Rogers be
brought face to face with ruin, that he will feel half the pain I shall, for I
know that the picture of that memorable night will surely come back to me
with all the vividness of reality.
But as my mind harks back, there clashes with this another, a hellish
picture, which the same Henry H. Rogers painted with the brush of
Amalgamated, and a procession of convicts and suicides trail slowly toward
me out of the canvas. Then I realize that my pen is but the instrument of a
righteous retribution and that no personal feelings, however tender, must be
allowed to interfere.
"Come this way," said my host, striding ahead of me along the hall. "In here
we can have our talk and our smoke undisturbed." He led me into the big,
empty dining-room and closed the door.

"Mr. Rogers," I began, "it is kind of you to be so friendly after the mean
things we have said of each other. Am I to understand you don't lay any of
all that has passed up against me?"
"Lay it up against you, my boy? Drop that all out of your mind. You
probably know I talk to the point and mean what I say. If you had hit below
the belt as that—Addicks has, I would lay it up against you and a hundred
years would not make me forget it. I know what you've done and why
you've done it, and it was as much your right to do it as mine to do what I
have done. I have nothing against you, and if events place me in a position
where I can do anything to make your job easier without hurting my own
interests—mind that, without hurting my own interests—I will do it. You
have my word for it."
We sat within a few feet of each other, and I looked squarely into his eyes
as he said, "You have my word for it," and they were honest eyes—honest
as the ten-year-old boy's who with legs apart and hands in pockets throws
his head back and says: "Wait until I am a man, and I will do it if I die for
it!" I looked into them and I knew "My word for it" was all gold and a
hundred cents to the dollar. For a minute we gazed steadily into—through
each other, and I knew he was reading away into the back of my head.
Inwardly I said: "If I do business with this man for a day or for a lifetime, I
will never face him and give him my word for one thing and mean another,"
and in the years after when we did millions upon millions of business, with
only each other's word for a bond of fair treatment, not once did I depart
from the letter of my resolution. Up to the recent famous "Gas Trial," where
our roads suddenly shot off at right angles, owing to a foul act of perjury,
Henry H. Rogers never tired of meeting all his associates' attacks upon me
with: "Lawson's word is gospel truth for me."
When we dropped our eyes, both evidently satisfied, he said: "Now, what
have you to say to me?"
I spoke my piece rapidly and without interruption: "There are four things
possible, as I wrote you—only four. I will take up the fourth first. I have
absolute power to speak for all our local companies. If we, you and I, come
to no settlement by to-morrow night, I will, without warning to any one,
confess a default to the notes of our different companies and have a receiver

appointed. As our stocks and bonds are held by our best investors all over
New England, and as no such move is suspected, there will be a terrific
rumpus. In the crash I shall go down with Addicks and the rest, for we have
all put our personal resources behind the enterprise. I will see that the howl
following the crash shall be such as all must hear, and I will call attention to
the illegal acts of every one—your companies, Addicks' companies, and the
city and State officials that have made such conditions possible. I don't
think you will be able to stand against the cyclone this crash will raise; but
even if you do, the receiver, having no interest to pay on bonds, will be in a
position to smash the price of gas to seventy or seventy-five cents, and
make it impossible for you to get possession of our companies for so long a
time that the consumers will never allow you to get the price back to a
profitable one. Have I made it clear that you cannot, as you were counting
on doing, continue this fight till you have us tired out and crushed?"
His answer came as clear, quick, and sharp as the click of a revolver:
"Perfectly, provided you can do the thing you say."
"I will prove to you I can."
"It is not necessary," he clicked back. "Do you give me your word that you
can?"
"Absolutely."
"I am satisfied. Go on."
"That leaves only three possibilities," I continued. "You buy us; we buy
you; or, we consolidate. I will take the third first. Under any circumstances
or conditions will you join forces and do business with us?"
"Under no circumstances nor conditions will I do any business with
Addicks. He has played me false, broken his word, and lied to me when
there was no necessity for doing so, and no man who has done this once can
ever do business with me a second time."
I once stood by a mechanism through which passed a strip of metal. Click!
'Twas cut. Whir! 'Twas a cylinder. Click! Whir! Click! A corner, an edge, an
end, and b-r-r-rr! It was dropped, a metallic cartridge, to do its part in peace

or war. Even more fascinating was it to see this human machine eject the
product of its whirring brain.
"Then we have but two possibilities. Will you buy us out at the price we
must have?"
"What is the price?"
"Sufficient to make good the promises that I have made to Addicks, my
friends, and the public since I have been in command," I replied.
"Pass that by as an impossibility."
"Then, Mr. Rogers, we are down to this: You must sell and we must buy
you out."
"Right. Now, how do you propose to buy?"
For months the ablest financiers and business men of Wall Street and
Boston had striven to start up negotiations with Mr. Rogers with a view to
settlement, and all had dropped them without even getting in an opening
wedge, and here was I at the end of fifteen minutes of my first meeting,
with my task half accomplished. I went on:
"There is something more you must do, Mr. Rogers. You must assist us in
buying, which means you must sell at the terms you and I agree are the only
ones we can meet. Therefore I will run over our situation. You have certain
property, consisting of the Brookline Company and miscellaneous
investments in connection with it. What cost does it stand you?"
Frankly, he went over what his Boston gas-war equipment consisted of and
what it had cost, which, boiled down, amounted to $3,500,000. He then
said:
"Let us figure what it will be worth to you when, it being known you have
won out, you will have additional prestige and no competition."
We agreed upon $2,000,000 as representing the probable appreciation in
what we were to acquire from him over and above any increase to our own
securities.

"I'll take cost, $3,500,000, if it is cash or the equivalent, or I will take
$4,500,000 if it is to be credit of a nature that assures me my money
eventually, and I will divide my profit of a million equally with you. This
sum will of course be in addition to anything you may be paid by Addicks."
Instantly, as if we had agreed upon it in advance, our eyes met—his cold,
clear, and steely business—mine, I hoped, the same. For a second neither of
us said a word. Then I said: "Thank you for the offer of the $500,000 profit,
but we will cut all such offers out. My pay comes from my side. I never yet
have known the man who could take pay from both sides and do his work
properly." I slowly drew out the word "properly," and he in the same tone of
voice said:
"'Properly' is better than 'honestly.' You know, Lawson, there is much cant
in these times of which 'honesty' is the refrain."
"You and I will make no headway discussing moral ethics, Mr. Rogers,
although we may in discussing business practices," I said, and I chalked up
on my mental black-board: "Test One." Then I went on:
"I agree that $4,500,000, in anything we can pay in, is as fair a price as
$3,500,000 cash, provided we find a credit guarantee satisfactory to you;
unless indeed you are willing to allow us the $500,000 you just offered me."
"What I offered you was part of my profit. I will not allow any of it. My
price is the same whether I pay you anything or not."
"Very well, Mr. Rogers, then the situation is this: In any trade that is made it
will first be necessary for you to turn your property over to us to manage in
conjunction with our own. When the public see it in our hands, our
securities will advance and we can, by issuing additional Bay State stock,
sell it and secure whatever sum it will be necessary for us to have beyond
what we can borrow on your securities. Do you agree with me?"
He saw it as I did.
"I imagine you will never consent to turn your property over to us on our
say-so that we will later pay you for it?"

"You are right there. I would not take J. Edward Addicks' guarantee in any
form he could possibly put it. Once he got his hands on my company, for
even thirty days, he would so far misuse it that he would deliberately
default for the purpose of returning it to me in a damaged condition, and, in
addition, would play some of those tricks which are second nature to him."
"It will be necessary for us then," I went on, "to give you some forfeit bond
so large that, even if we misuse your property while it is in our hands, you
will be repaid for the damage done, and it must be at the same time
something of such value to us that even Addicks will be compelled to play
fair."
"Well, what can you put up?" Mr. Rogers asked.
"Addicks has a right, through the Bay State Company of Delaware, to issue,
through the Bay State Company of New Jersey, a million and a half new
bonds for the purpose of acquiring new property. He and I have discussed
the scheme as a last resort should any settlement seem possible."
"Do you mean to tell me there is anything Addicks can get his hands on
which he has not yet used for his companies nor stolen for himself?" replied
Mr. Rogers incredulously.
"Yes, he has time and again assured me of this, and he would not dare to lie
to me under existing conditions."
He arose from his chair and stood directly in front of me and straightened
up for what I could see was to be an unusual effort. Then with the force and
the fire which in all his supreme moments make Henry H. Rogers wellnigh
irresistible he said:
"Lawson, I have listened to you. Now listen to me. I have taken you at your
word, and have talked frankly and shown you my hand as I have seldom
shown it to a stranger. To do the business I want to do, I see I must talk even
more frankly than I already have, and I want you to weigh carefully what I
shall say to you, for it may have a great bearing on your after-life. How old
are you?"
"Thirty-seven," I replied.

"I thought you were about thirty-seven," he said. "Well, I am fifty-six and in
experience am old enough to be your grandfather, so you can afford to give
weight to what I am about to say, especially as I give you my word that I
speak for your benefit first and my own afterward. I watched you before
you hitched up with Addicks, and always thought that if the opportunity
arose, we might do business together. We, or as you and others like to call
us, 'Standard Oil,' have money enough to carry through whatever business
we embark on and we know where there is all the business to be had that
we care to engage in. We have everything, in fact, but men. We are always
short of men to carry out our projects—young men, who are honest,
therefore loyal; men to whom work is a pleasure; above all, men who have
no price but our price. To such men we can afford to give the only things
they have not got, or, if they have already got them, to give them in greater
quantities—I mean power and money. You made a great mistake when you
joined forces with Addicks, because no man can afford to be associated
with the kind of a rascal Addicks is, the lowest I have yet come across. He
is the type of man who cuts his best friend's throat with as much ease and
satisfaction as he does his worst enemy's, if not with more. I fully expected
that by this time he would have sold you out. If he had, where would you
have been? Now, here you are from sheer desperation driven to me to avoid
utter failure. Suppose you can do all you hope to—get the bonds, put them
up and secure my property—do you not suppose that by that time Addicks
will have some mine dug under you which will blow you to destruction?
But grant even that he plays fair, and you bring the Boston situation up to a
paying place, what good will it do you? You surely have more sense than to
believe a man of Addicks' make-up can be permanently successful?"
Mr. Rogers halted. I had risen, and we stood facing each other. I felt that I
was right here playing for that greatest of all stakes, my self-respect, the
loss of which to any man, I had long before discovered, means ebon failure.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"Say you'll come with us, and we'll fix up the Boston situation in some way
that will forever eliminate Addicks from our affairs—your and my affairs. I
would not insult you by asking you to sell Addicks out. It is unnecessary.
He has no real rights in Boston. You and I can figure out a scheme that will
take care of every other interest, and we'll give Addicks a lot more money

than he can secure in any other way and show him the door. As for you and
me, we'll make a lot of money and make it fairly and above board. But I am
not thinking so much of the immediate situation as I am of the possibility of
you joining us and working on some of the deals we have on hand. I shall
put you in a position to make more money and secure more real power than
you could possibly obtain in a like time under any other conditions. You
know corporations and the stock-market, and you can readily see what the
combination of our money and prestige and your knowledge of the market
and investors will mean."
Heaven knows I could see what it all meant. I had even at that time in a
chrysalis state those plans for destroying the "System" which now in a
rounded out and matured form I intend to be the superstructure of my story
of "Frenzied Finance." I had, a year before in Paris, outlined those plans to
some of the brightest financial minds of Europe, and while they had
marvelled at their radicalness, they had pronounced them sound, and had
offered to furnish the hundred million of dollars required for their
execution. Then I realized that to take this money from bankers would
hamper me in the execution of my plans, and I postponed putting the
project in force until I could furnish the necessary money through my own
connections. Again, I had big ideas as to the copper situation—ideas that
only awaited unlimited capital to be brought before the people, and which,
if carried out, would do for them what had as yet never been done—give
them tremendous profits upon their savings. And here were the unlimited
capital and unlimited business prestige right at hand, but——
"Mr. Rogers," I said, "don't! Please don't! I appreciate your proposition, and
I thank you, but I can't accept. I agree with you about Addicks, the position
I am in, and the mistake or foolish recklessness I was guilty of when I
linked up with this Boston mess, but that doesn't alter the case an iota. I am
enlisted with this man. I knew what he was when I consented to take charge
of his affairs, and I should hate myself if I sold him out, even though I knew
he would without hesitation sell me out. I must be true to myself."
Mr. Rogers remained silent. I went on:
"This, if I accepted your proposal, I could no longer be, even were Addicks
and Boston Gas out of it. The man who is 'Standard Oil' wears a collar, and

if I did what you ask I should expect to wear a collar and—and—I can't do
it." I stopped; I was not excited; it was impossible to be so with that calm
figure, apparently cut from crystal ice, so near me, but I was very much in
earnest. I wondered what would come next. Mr. Rogers raised his hand and
held it out to me, mine grasped it, and without a word thus we stood long
enough to put that seal on our friendship which none of the many financial
hells we jointly passed through in the after-nine years was hot enough to
melt.
But that friendship is ended now. Henry H. Rogers' evidence in the Boston
"Gas Trial" was the spark that kindled the dead leaves of the past into the
conflagration which, now spread beyond the control of man, has brought to
light the hidden skeletons of forgotten misdeeds and exposed them for all
the world to see.
He at last broke the spell. "Lawson, you're a queer chap; but we are all
queer, for that matter, and we must work along those lines we each think
best. I once stood, just as you do now, in front of a man whom I looked up
to as all that was wisest and best. He made an earnest effort to induce me to
choose the ministry for my life-work, but I chose dollars instead, and I
sometimes wonder if I chose wisely; but, as I said, we all must select our
pack and, as we are the ones who must carry it, I suppose no one else
should complain."
After a moment's pause I shot ahead into business again as though we had
never left it. It took me but a short time to arrange the details of our trade.
The Bay State of Delaware was to buy all of Mr. Rogers' Boston
investments and to pay for the same $4,500,000—$1,500,000 in six months,
$1,000,000 in a year, the balance in a year and a half, with interest at five
per cent.; the Bay State was to put up, as a pledge of good faith, $1,500,000
new Boston bonds; and as soon as such deposit was made, Mr. Rogers was
to transfer his securities and corporation to us. I was to go to Philadelphia
that night and arrange all details with Addicks and report the following day.
It was 10.30 o'clock when I left 26 East 57th Street. I hurried down to the
Brunswick, where I had time only to shift my clothes and catch the
"midnight" for Philadelphia. After breakfast next morning I tackled
Addicks. It goes without saying that I was a cyclone of enthusiasm as I

minutely ran through what I had done, beginning with my letter to Rogers
and finishing up with my visit of the night before. I omitted not the slightest
detail, and when I wound up with my request that Addicks get the lawyers
together and prepare the necessary documents for the turnover of the bonds
and acceptance of Rogers' properties, I felt that my share in the Boston gas
war was almost ended.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE DUPLICITY OF ADDICKS

Addicks looked at me in a cool, aggravating way, as though my enthusiasm
was a joke.
"Lawson, you have done a big thing, a big thing, but you put up too many
bonds, altogether too many. It looks to me as though that old trickster had
got the best of us at last."
By this time I had learned all the moods of this man and knew that when he
assumed that air of cold, saturnine jocularity it was safe to look for the
uncovering of some vaporized trickery. My enthusiasm oozed. I hastened to
ask:
"What do you mean by 'too many bonds,' Addicks? I gave him all we had.
Sorry it was not more. We are to pay him four and a half million dollars,
and the sooner we do it the better. Now out with what you've got in your
mind; I won't stand any trifling."
Addicks continued to look at me with the same insolent, critical air. He said
slowly:
"The reason I say you've given too many bonds is that we haven't a million
and a half to put up. Where in the world did you get the idea we had?"
In an instant I realized that this sharper had tricked me into apparently
tricking Rogers. I was boiling with rage.
"You have told me over and over again that you retained the right to issue a
million and a half bonds, that you had never parted with it, and relying on
your assurances, I have done business with Rogers. Let's have the truth now
at once."
Addicks is a master in the management of just such tangles as had
developed here. I had expected him to give way before my indignation. He

looked me square in the eye and turned the tables on me. He got mad first.
"You have taken too much on yourself," he began vehemently. "You had no
right to go ahead without consulting me. Because I've given you full swing
you think you are the whole thing, but you're not. And as for your rushing
in on me without warning and expecting me to let you turn all the assets of
this corporation over to your new 'Standard Oil' friend, I won't stand for it.
You can't do this corporation's business that way."
He poured on for five minutes without giving me a chance to interpose a
word. He seemed to be consumed with anger and paced up and down the
office. Then suddenly he stopped:
"We cannot afford to have any trouble, you and I, Lawson. I'm sure you did
only what you thought best, but the fact is, I pledged some of those bonds
for our war supplies a few months ago, and though I'm not going to dispute
it with you, I'd swear I told you at the time."
As Addicks talked I had been mentally reviewing the situation in which I
found myself. I saw myself dropped out of Rogers' consideration as the
same kind of a financial trickster that Addicks was. For the moment, I had
no fight left; I was knocked out.
"Don't feel bad, Lawson. You got as far with Rogers as it is possible to get,
and you are dead right when you say that once we get hold of his
corporation so that every one knows we've licked him, we can easily sell
stock enough to pay him in a few weeks." As he talked he was again the
master financial trickster, full of device and strategy. Finally I answered:
"Don't say any more, Addicks. Words won't help us. I've got to face Rogers
as soon as a train can take me back to New York, and after that—then I'll
have something to say to you." I started to go.
"What are you going to say to him?" he asked.
"Say to him? What can I say to him? At my solicitation he gave me a
hearing—at his own home—treated me best in the world. I told him certain
things, and pledged my word they were truths, and I've got to go back and
tell——"

"Tell what?"
"That I'm either as big a liar as he says you are or a fool—a doddering
fool."
"You are going to do nothing of the kind," Addicks declared peremptorily.
"You're going to tell him that you were not posted up to date, and that I,
being pressed for money, had pledged some of the million and a half I had
told you we had. That's all. He'll see it all right, and he'll trade for—for—
what we have left."
I suddenly remembered that he had not told me how many bonds he had on
hand. Just a ray of hope in the fog.
"How many free bonds have we to offer, Addicks, suppose he is willing to
overlook this ugly piece of trickery?" I asked anxiously.
"I'm not quite sure," he answered, "but I can find out from the books." He
rang for Miller, his right-hand man, the dummy treasurer of the Bay State
Company, and said to him: "Harry, Mr. Lawson has got mixed up about the
bonds. He thought we had a million and a half. You remember we've
pledged some in the loans. Just how many have we now on hand?"
"Harry" looked it up and said: "Just $904,000 worth."
"There you are, Lawson," cried Addicks. "There's plenty to assure Rogers
we'll do what we agree to."
Fool that I was, I did not see his game. No one ever does see Addicks' game
till it is too late, for no one but a moral idiot would play the game Addicks
plays, and, thank heaven, moral idiots are so rare in life that it is not worth
while figuring out the formula from which they work.
By one o'clock I was at Mr. Rogers' office at 26 Broadway.
He greeted me warmly. "Well, Lawson, did you get things finished up all
right?"
"Mr. Rogers, I have a most humiliating admission to——"

"Hold up right there. Cut out all explanations and excuses. Have you
brought those bonds as you agreed to, or not?" His eyes were snapping and
shifting from one color to another.
"No, I have not got them."
"Why not?"
Had I been a woman I should have clapped my hands to my ears and
screamed, so sudden and bomb-like came those two words.
"He had used some of them and has only $904,000 on hand."
"Only $904,000!"
It is impossible to convey the concentrated scorn and sarcasm Mr. Rogers
infused into these words, and he continued to glare at me for fully a minute,
his eyes as searching as x-rays. When that glare shifted I had a presentiment
it would leave me forever a stranger to him, and I made up my mind to turn
on my heel and leave his office without a word. I felt that he was in the
right, and that if I were in his place I'd glare, too.
Suddenly the expression changed. He said peremptorily: "Lawson, get on
the first train for Philadelphia and bring back those agreements executed
and the $904,000 instead of the $1,500,000."
"Mr. Rogers," I began, but he stopped me with an imperative gesture.
"Don't say a word, but do as I tell you. I warned you you were dealing with
a dog, but you wouldn't have it. Now I'm going to put this trade through
even if I make a fool of myself thereby. You've done your work and that
whelp shall not keep you out of its results. I'm in this now, and we will see
if Addicks can outplay me as well as you. Not another word. I understand
the whole thing."
I returned to Philadelphia deciding once and for all certain things in regard
to Mr. Rogers and others affecting the future of J. Edward O'Sullivan
Addicks; and that night Addicks and I "had it out." I shall not attempt to
reproduce our talk. Suffice it to state that when I called for the bonds
Addicks began to hem and haw, and then I realized that he had a second
time lied to me. We were in his Philadelphia office, and it was night and we

were alone. I demanded the truth, and finally he told me he had no
$904,000 of bonds. As a fact he had not a single bond. He had used them to
the last one and had deceived me for months. In regard to this interview
Addicks has always maintained that I laid hands upon him, and that he was
on the verge of doing some awful thing, but this is false. What I did was to
turn the key in the door and then, without undue regard to his sensibilities,
draw a word-picture of the position he had placed me in. Also I said what I
thought of him. That is all.
The vast profits which the stock operator makes apparently overnight are
often subjects for the world's wonder and envy. But if the gains are great,
the road is muddy. If those who covet the golden rewards will participate in
a deal or two, wallow in the filthy double-dealing which is an inevitable
part of the cost price of success, they will quickly realize the dark side of
the glittering game, and that the sacrifices are in proportion to the winnings.
If I had been asked that night what price would recompense me for the hell
Addicks' shabby deceit had stirred up in me, I should have said—that night
—that no number of millions would pay for the bitterness of the experience.
It was after midnight when I left Addicks' office, and as I walked to my
hotel I was steeped in gloom and bitterness. Before me was the most
humiliating ordeal with which Fate had ever saddled me. I had to confess
failure a second time, and under such circumstances that Rogers would be
justified in believing me either a swindler or a dupe unworthy of respect or
consideration.
I was at 26 Broadway by ten o'clock the same morning. Mr. Rogers was in
his main private office. His secretary was with him. He was full of business,
and, I thought, preoccupied. As I entered, and before a word of greeting
passed, he gave me one of his keen, appraising glances.
"Well?" was all he said.
"Your estimate of Addicks was correct. He has no bonds," I said, giving him
the worst of it at once. I was desperate and certainly in no mood for
apology. Rogers looked at me. I thought he gasped. He rushed—whether he
pushed or pulled me, or we both slid, or how we got there I don't know—
but in an instant after I had said "He has no bonds" we were in one of the
number of 8 x 12 glass-sided pens he calls waiting-rooms, but which the

clerks have dubbed "visitors' sweatboxes." He put both hands on my
shoulders and he yelled—fairly yelled: "Say that again! I did not get it."
In after-years I became on rather playful terms with the extraordinary bursts
of wrath to which Henry H. Rogers occasionally gives way, and which
sweep through the "System's" shrine like a tornado; but this was my first
experience, and it was a shock and a revelation. Just what was going to
happen next I could not imagine. I remembered afterward that the most
definite of the impressions that chased each other through my mind was that
Henry H. Rogers would surely have a stroke of apoplexy. Then that he
would "bust." However, I pulled myself together and began:
"Mr. Rogers, what's the use of getting excited?"
I got no further. He jumped backward. The next second I was in the storm-
centre. The room was small. Suddenly it became full of arms and legs and
hands waving and gesticulating, and fists banging and brandishing;
gnashing teeth and a convulsed face in which the eyes actually burned and
rained fire; and the language—such a torrent of vilification and
denunciation I have never heard, mingled with oaths so intense, so
picturesque, so varied that the assortment would have driven an old-time
East Indiaman skipper green with jealousy. I was horrified for an instant,
then surprised, and after that, if it had not been for my position as the cause
of it all, I should have been interested in the exhibition as a performance.
I could hear a stirring and a movement outside. The clerks were evidently
aware of the scene. Forms passed rapidly across the ground-glass walls.
After a time Rogers controlled himself. Then he said to me in a voice still
vibrant with passion:
"Lawson, tell me—put it in short, plain language—do you mean to say that
after coming to me of your own accord and agreeing to do certain things,
and then returning here to this very office, admitting that you had tricked
me; after my overlooking that breach of faith and agreeing to take half the
collateral simply because it was all you could raise, and because I desired to
assist you—do you mean to say you have the audacity to tell me to my face
that the whole thing is a lie and you have imposed on me?"

"I mean, Mr. Rogers, to tell you that Mr. Addicks has just proved to me that
he has no bonds; that he is a liar and worse."
"Oh, he is, is he? But does that justify you in coming?—oh!—--"
Again he was off. When he stopped for breath I raised my voice and made it
loud and emphatic enough to convince even a man temporarily insane that
my part as audience and victim had ended. I said:
"Mr. Rogers, I can't say more than that I apologize for the part I've been
made to play in this transaction, and I'll leave your office prepared to take
any kind of medicine, however harsh it may be, that you will deal out on
account of all this. Not only will I take it, but I'll think you are right in
administering it."
Rogers once more got himself under control. I stepped toward the door.
"One minute, Lawson—one minute. What are you going to do? Go back to
your associate, that gentlemanly, square-dealing fellow in Philadelphia?"
"Mr. Rogers," I replied, "I ask no mercy at your hands, but there's a limit to
the things a man will stand under the mess I'm laboring with. I'm going to
do the best I can. What it will be I don't know. There's a deal of money at
stake—my friends', the public's, my own—I'm responsible for it. I've made
a terrible blunder. I am paying for it, but nothing that has happened has
altered my idea of the duty I owe myself and others."
He was about to say something sarcastic. Then he choked back the words.
His manlier nature rose to the surface.
"Lawson," he said, "I'm sorry for you. Upon my soul I am."
"You needn't be, Mr. Rogers. It's all right; it's part of the game, but I'm
awfully sorry I came near you." I opened the door.
"One second more, Lawson," he said, stopping me and putting out his hand.
"I'm not only sorry, but I give you my word I have not a doubt—no, not a
suspicion of your good faith throughout this business—and if at any time
you see your way to open up negotiations, you're welcome. Do you
understand? You're welcome to come in here or to my house at any time
you think you see your way out."

I said "good-by" and bolted before my feelings overcame me.

CHAPTER XIX
ENTER H. M. WHITNEY

It is not surprising that there should now have ensued an interval of silence
and peace in the Boston gas war. Disheartened, disgusted, disappointed, I
had to take stock of our position. However enraged I might be at the new
revelation of Addicks' extraordinary veniality, the other elements in the
situation remained as before. I could see nothing for me to do but to resume
the tactics I had employed previous to the meeting with Rogers. My friends'
interests had to be protected, and to do that war must be waged until a
vulnerable spot in Rogers' armor had been found. But it was some days
before I could screw my enthusiasm back to fighting-pitch. In the mean
time Rogers did nothing. He, too, was waiting for new developments.
To this extent the situation had altered, however: I knew just where I stood
with Rogers, and he realized the consequences of pressing us into a corner. I
knew he would sell his company and retire from the field if I could find a
way to pay him for so doing. He knew that if he turned the screws too hard
I would as a last resort turn the tables by throwing Bay State Gas into
bankruptcy. I tried many times and in many ways to find means to bring
about a termination of the struggle, but to no purpose. Our extremity was
such that it was impossible to do more than protect our companies from a
receivership. To raise new capital to deposit as collateral with Rogers was
out of the question, for the public, looking on at what was evidently most
disastrous warfare, was in no temper to buy new stock.
The lull in our hostilities was only a pause between battles. It suddenly
came to an end January, 1896, when a new enemy appeared in the field.
Henry M. Whitney, who had built up Boston's electric street-railway
system, and who, from his frequent dealings with the Massachusetts
Legislature in obtaining franchises, had the reputation of carrying that body
in his waistcoat-pocket, came before this Legislature with a proposition for
a charter for a new and independent gas company. Up to this time Whitney
had had no relation with the gas public. He based his new departure on the

claim that he had come into possession of a patented device through which
it became possible to turn the low-grade sulphuric coal of Nova Scotia into
coke without sacrificing either the valuable by-products, such as ammonia,
tar, etc., or illuminating gas. This was a very remarkable pretension, for we
had long ago eliminated these low-grade coals from consideration as
material for gas-making; but if Whitney's device actually was what he
claimed, undoubtedly he would be a dangerous competitor. Whitney's
petition set forth further, that because of the exceedingly low price of this
Province coal and its richness in by-products he could afford to sell gas to
consumers at 50 cents per thousand feet (the legal charge was then $1 per
thousand feet), a price which would enable the great manufacturing
institutions and all the steam and heating plants to use gas economically for
fuel purposes.
The thing was sprung one day and was all over town before night. There
were interviews and pamphlets floridly setting forth Mr. Whitney's good
intentions toward gas consumers.
Mr. Whitney was, and is, one of Boston's most important citizens, at the
present time president of the Chamber of Commerce, and a brother of the
"System's" most Machiavelian votary, the late William C. Whitney. The
application, backed by his prestige, and the roseate dreams of cheap gas it
conveyed, created a sensation in Boston. Evidently he intended to have it
seem that the people were in favor of the new charter, for simultaneously
there appeared notices in the press calling for three distinct citizens'
meetings. There seemed to be general rejoicing that at last the odious
Standard-Oil Addicks-Bay State Gas outfit with all its corruption and
unwholesome wrangling was to be deposited outside the city walls.
The experience of any man who has had to do with political and financial
affairs invariably shows him that nothing ever happens of itself.
Thunderbolts do descend from clear skies, but an enemy and not nature has
hurled them. A clever tactician will always look for his antagonist's hand
behind any isolated or detached fluctuation of public feeling which bears in
the slightest degree upon his problem. In going over the circumstances,
looking for the correct interpretation of the appearance in our field of this
second Richmond, I took into consideration the fact that H. M. Whitney
was deep in a speculative venture, Dominion Coal, which owned vast tracts

of these low-grade coal lands in Nova Scotia, and it was known he had been
trying vainly to utilize their products in the locomotives of the Boston &
Maine Railroad and several other ventures in which he was a controlling
factor. In one way it seemed reasonable that if Whitney really had found a
way to get something out of his coal, he was justified in making the best
possible use of it. On the other hand, I could not but see how the new
project brought about the very situation at which Rogers had so long been
aiming. Selling gas at 75 or 50 cents, the new company would absolutely
command the business; the old companies must go bankrupt, pass into a
receiver's hands, and in due course would be absorbed by the Whitney
corporation. That would leave but one gas company in complete control of
the Boston field, and it would not be bound to continue the low prices when
competition had disappeared, but would be legally free to go back to the old
rates of $1 and $1.25. In a combination which so completely went Rogers'
way, surely his fine slim Italian hand might be perceived at the throttle.
Once I had made up my mind by what we were confronted, I lost no time.
Inquiries revealed that Whitney's alleged control of the Legislature was not
exaggerated. In fact, it seemed eager to do his bidding in any direction.
There was no space for negotiation or deliberation, so I returned his bomb
with another, which, exploding in his breastworks, created as much of a
sensation as his own had done. I did not believe Whitney could do with
Nova Scotia coal the things he claimed, but, whether or not, if he got his
charter, Rogers' object would be accomplished. If he were absolutely
bound, however, under heavy bonds to do exactly as he had promised, his
proposition would be so loaded that it might go off in his own hands and
blow him to pieces. The next day I went personally before the Legislature
and agreed to pay the State of Massachusetts $1,000,000 for the charter
Whitney had applied for, and offered to give bonds to do all the things
Whitney would give bonds to do on receipt of it.
This proceeding caused a halt. It startled the public and set the Whitney
forces agape. My proposition was decidedly novel, and on its face absurd—
the State could not under the law accept a million dollars or any other sum
for its charter—but, on the other hand, it was the quickest-acting horse-
sense producer that could possibly have been brought to bear. It was
discussed everywhere. Men said: "Why not? If the State has a valuable
thing to give away, why should it not go to the one who will pay the people

the most money for it?" I had outflanked the enemy, and if he gave battle it
would have to be on my conditions. Whitney was furious, and his privately
owned Legislature cursed me for interfering with its plans; but he and they
recognized my advantage, and that night I had a call from Mr. Whitney and
his attorney, George Towle.
"What are you trying to do, Lawson?" Whitney asked.
"Only trying to protect from destruction the Boston gas companies of which
I am vice-president and general manager," I replied.
"But my proposition is a perfectly legitimate one," Whitney objected. "I
have got hold of this invention, which enables me to utilize my Dominion
coal in such a way that we can make coke out of it, and at the same time get
all the gas. This coal is cheap to produce and costs little per ton to bring in.
So I can sell gas cheaper than you can make it."
"And we have a plant for the manufacture and distribution of gas which has
cost us seventy years and millions of dollars to get together, and we have
also the customers to whom you must sell your cheap gas," I returned. "If
you can really do what you claim, why not go ahead, make your gas, and
sell it to us? We will distribute it to the people and we will divide the profit,
and you will make as much as though you did it all, for you will not have a
fight on hand nor be obliged to build up a duplicate plant. That's all you can
do now; you cannot get a charter to duplicate our plant, because whatever
price you offer the Legislature for it we will go you a few hundred thousand
better."
We argued for hours. I showed him that if he finally prevailed and got what
he was after, his charter would bind him to the absolute fulfilment of his
promise under bonds that would make it unprofitable and dangerous. He
finally made up his mind that such a victory was not worth winning, and he
said to me:
"What kind of a hitch-up can I make with you and your companies?"
"Any fair one," I replied. "This is the situation as I see it, and I'm going to
be frank: You say you have a good scheme, but you certainly have a
Legislature, and you have evidently entered into a compact with Rogers
whereby he is to utilize what you have, to knock us on the head. Now we

have fairly checkmated you, and Rogers is out. Seems to me you owe it to
us and yourself to give us the same chance you offered him. Let us utilize
your plans to save ourselves and to knock Rogers on the head. But first, are
you free to go on with us without explaining things to 'Standard Oil'?"
Whitney assured me that his arrangement with Rogers was tentative,
depending on whether he could get the charter and could carry out his other
plans.
After some further manœuvring we agreed that we should withdraw our
offer from the Legislature, that Whitney should secure the new charter, and
that it should be so worded as expressly to allow his company to lay pipes,
manufacture, buy or sell gas, and to consolidate any or all of the existing or
new gas companies in the State of Massachusetts; and that when the charter
was granted it should belong equally to the Addicks Boston gas companies
and to Whitney. Upon their part the Boston gas companies would buy of the
new company all the gas it produced at something less than it was costing
them to manufacture it under the old process. That bound us to nothing
dangerous, and we were not forced to take Whitney's gas unless he actually
got the results he promised.
At this time I knew nothing whatever of the workings or the wire-pullings
of State legislatures. My business life had been engaged at the stock end of
corporate transactions, and I had not troubled myself about franchises, or
how they were obtained, being content to play my part with the
manufactured product with which we dealt on the market. In a general way
I knew political corruption existed. That Rogers had obtained favors for his
Brookline Company through bribing officials I had good grounds to
believe; I had read of strange doings in connection with H. M. Whitney's
West End Railway franchise obtained from the Massachusetts Legislature
amid an accompaniment of much public scandal; but being quite without
personal experience I had no clear conception of how things were done and,
innocently enough, I asked Whitney before we parted:
"How is it possible for you to get this valuable charter from the Legislature,
particularly with such a strong and honest man as Roger Wolcott in the
governor's chair, when Addicks has been trying continuously for four or

five years, regardless of expense, to secure an ordinary one under which he
can combine our gas companies?"
George Towle answered for Whitney:
"Lawson, that part of the transaction is no affair of yours. Mr. Whitney will
absolutely guarantee to deliver all those goods, and should it prove
necessary to override the governor in getting them, he will guarantee to do
that too. You can call all that done the minute we sign papers."
There was no doubt the new combination was a winner for both of us. If
Whitney got the charter, he would be in a position to make a lot of money
out of his Dominion Coal stock, which would surely go up with a bound in
company with Bay State Gas stock when it became known that our
companies were in the new deal. Besides, all the talk he would make over
the value of the charter would help create a market for new stock which we
would issue for the purpose of obtaining funds to buy Rogers out. Later, if
Whitney's invention was what he imagined, his own profit would run into
millions and our properties, having the sole right to distribution, would be
stronger than ever. That meant resuscitation of Bay State Gas, and that all
the stocks and bonds held by my friends and the public would return
splendid profits.
I tested the scheme in all its aspects and found only one weak spot in it. We,
the Boston companies, were to "go snags" with Whitney in the results of a
legislative game in which he was to bear the expense of getting a charter,
and as Whitney and Towle said it was to cost them $250,000 to $300,000 to
get it, it looked as if there would be some nasty business done at the State
House.
I do not set up for a saint, nor to possessing exclusive virtues which
distinguish me from the ordinary American citizen who does business for
gain. In reiterating that the bribery end of our "hitch-up" with Whitney did
not appeal to me, I am neither pluming nor crowning myself; I am merely
stating a fact. This was an emergency, however, I could not regard as a mere
personal concern. It was my duty to care for the interests of a great property
which must not be endangered by my scruples, and I was willing to be
advised by my business friends in the matter. I went round among my most
conservative banking, business, and newspaper connections and put

hypothetical questions to them bearing on my difficulty. In nearly all
instances the replies were the same, and the subject seemed to be regarded
as a joke—what were legislatures for, anyway, but to be "fixed"? All who
did business with legislatures "fixed" them, and Whitney was certainly the
star "fixer." I frankly stated that I considered bribing a legislator as a low-
down crime and that I did not believe it was done in our strait-laced old
Commonwealth as freely as they all seemed to imagine. Thereupon I was
sarcastically referred to my Bell Telephone, New Haven, and Boston &
Maine Railroad friends, to the organizers of trust companies, and to many
other representative pillars of social and business society who had had
occasion to deal with the State. I started at once a round of investigation
among men who would talk frankly to me, and discovered that a most
iniquitous condition existed. Massachusetts senators and representatives
were not only bought and sold as sausages or fish are in the markets, but
there existed a regular quotation schedule for their votes. Many of the
prominent lawyers of the State were traffickers in legislation, and earned
large fees engineering the repeal of old laws and the passage of new ones.
Agents of corporations nominated candidates for office, and paid the
expenses of their election in return for votes for a favorite measure and
promises to "do business." The Legislature was organized on the same
basis; its executive officers were chosen because of their subservience to
certain corporation leaders; committees were rigged to do given things and
prevent other things from being done. Above all, I learned that the chance
of a citizen of Massachusetts obtaining a charter from the Legislature of his
State, unless he had money to put up for it, was about as good as a hobo's of
securing a diamond and ruby studded crown at Tiffany's by explaining that
he wanted it. In fact, the citizen's request would be regarded by senators and
representatives very much as Tiffany's would regard the hobo's—as a joke
first, then as an impertinence.
Right here I desire to say to my readers and especially to all those
hypocritical and ignorant people who, imagining any strong statement must
express a strong prejudice and not a fact, will cry, "He overstates! He
exaggerates!" that in years after when I had full opportunity to study at
close range the Massachusetts Legislature, its workings and those who
worked it, all the impressions I had received at this time were absolutely
confirmed. I do not hesitate to state, then, that:

The Massachusetts Legislature is bought and sold as are sausages and fish
at the markets and wharves. That the largest, wealthiest, and most
prominent corporations in New England, whose affairs are conducted by
our most representative citizens, habitually corrupt the Massachusetts
Legislature, and the man of wealth connected with such corporations who
would enter protest against the iniquity would be looked on as a "class
anarchist." I will go further and state that if in New England a man of the
type of Folk, of Missouri, can be found who, after giving over six months to
turning up the legislative and Boston municipal sod of the past ten years,
does not expose to the world a condition of rottenness more rotten than was
ever before exhibited in any community in the civilized world, it will be
because he has been suffocated by the stench of what he exhumes.
To return to my story, after my investigations I again saw Whitney and
Towle, and they, not relishing my remarks on the subject of bribery, told me
frankly to attend to my own part of the affair and leave their part to them.
At this stage I called in Addicks, our corporation counsel, and some of the
largest holders of Bay State bonds and stock, and put before them the
bargain I had arranged with Whitney. They all agreed it was an excellent
combination, and ratified the terms I had proposed to Whitney. It was
further agreed that Whitney should make over to us one-half ownership in
the new company, which we were to transfer to the Bay State Company
after the charter had been granted.
There was every reason at this stage in the deal to regard victory as assured,
for it did look as though the flapping sails on our much-buffeted and
battered craft were at last to be filled with a lusty breeze strong enough to
carry us to the harbor we had so long been trying to make. Besides what we
ourselves could do and had already done, we now had Whitney for an ally
in the deal, and certainly he was a stock-selling power throughout New
England. He had agreed to go before the Legislature and the public, and
pledge his word that his scheme would do all the wonderful things he had
promised for it.[8] And when amid acclamation the charter was awarded and
it became known that we were its beneficiaries, I could see our stock
soaring.

FOOTNOTES:
[8] As a matter of fact, he did, later, in the peroration of an eloquent address
before a public legislative hearing, electrify the law-makers with: "I here and
now pledge my word, my fortune, and my sacred honor to the fulfilment of these
promises."

CHAPTER XX
AN AWKWARD ATTACK OF APPENDICITIS

In no walk of life is that head-light axiom, "Man proposes, God disposes,"
so often flashed plump in the eyes of enthusiastic travellers for their
bewilderment or befuddlement as in finance. At this very moment of
success I was, without knowing it, on the brink of ruin, owing to causes and
conditions which were beyond human power to calculate or foresee. Here is
what happened:
All the details of our bargain having at last been agreed upon verbally, it
was proper the principals should get together and formally execute the
documents which should bind the trade. We arranged to meet on a given
Saturday at the beautiful stock-farm of Parker C. Chandler, Esq., the Bay
State's general counsel, and as secrecy was important, a special train was to
take the party the twenty-five miles out of Boston. By an unavoidable
accident I missed the train, and in driving over the road in a bleak rain-
storm, caught a violent cold. I was about three hours late, but when I arrived
we went to work with a will and by seven o'clock, shortly before dinner, our
contracts had been dictated to the stenographers and would be typed, ready
to sign, by the time we came to our coffee.
That dinner was a thing to be remembered. No one in New England
understands more admirably the art of dining than does Parker Chandler,
and he gave us a feast worthy to celebrate the brilliant new combination
which was to end all our troubles and lead us out of darkness into the light.
As the cheese was being served I was seized suddenly with a terrible pain,
which was followed by convulsions. They carried me to a bedroom; lawyers
and capitalists went scurrying after doctors, and in the confusion the
documents which were all ready awaiting execution were put aside. It was
obvious that at that moment I could not O.K. them. At last specialists from
Boston arrived and it was diagnosed that I was suffering from an aggravated
attack of appendicitis. At two o'clock in the morning, after a prolonged

consultation, the consensus of opinion was that my next field of operations
would be in another world.
It must have been some time a little later that I, awaking to a brief interval
of consciousness, witnessed a tableau, the memory of which invariably rises
to my mind's eye whenever I try to mitigate or subdue my feelings of hatred
and disgust for Addicks. The room was dimly lit; the two doctors were at
the foot of the bed; Addicks, standing beside them, was looking fixedly at
me. I caught his eye; doped as I was with opiates I saw the cold, calculating
expression of his face, which told me as plainly as words that he felt it was
all up with me, that my usefulness to him was at an end, and that without a
thought for my interests or a scintilla of regret, he was calculating how to
turn my death to his advantage. An amused conviction of the man's
heartlessness crept over me, and then I passed out into the land of dreams.
From that night until one bright morning ten days later, I was visiting other
worlds than those of finance and gas; but on the tenth day they told me I
had eluded the grim ferryman and, barring accident, might get out into the
world again in five weeks. A suspicion which owed its origin to that
glimpse of Addicks on the first night of my illness awakened in my mind,
and the following day I sent for my principal attorney and demanded an
exact statement of what had happened in the interval of my illness. He had
kept close track of all that had occurred, and the facts he revealed, calloused
as I was to the thought of Addicks' baseness, horrified me by their cold-
blooded villany. My associates had gone ahead with a vengeance, without
waiting a minute to see whether I should live or die. My offer to the
Legislature had been withdrawn; Addicks had substituted his name for mine
in all the documents, and then he had traded with Rogers. It had been
arranged between them that Whitney should go on and get the charter,
which was to allow the company to sell gas at any price, for it was not to be
under the supervision of the gas commissioners, who had pledged the
public that the price of gas in Boston should not ever be more than $1 per
one thousand feet. This obtained, a new corporation was to be organized,
into which Rogers would merge his companies, and Addicks our Boston
properties, in such a way as to leave Bay State stock and bondholders high
and dry, while Addicks, Whitney, and Rogers reaped tremendous profits.
These amiable plans were being hammered into shape at top speed, and
unless I could get into harness at once, my friends and I would most

certainly be ground up. Head-quarters had been opened at the Algonquin
Club, and there Addicks, Whitney, Towle, and the lawyers and lobbyists
were holding day and night sessions.
There was but one thing for me to do, and I lost not a moment. I sent for my
doctors and said: "I will devote to-day, to-morrow, and next day to getting
well; but on the fourth day I will be moved in a special car to Boston and
then to the Algonquin Club." I explained the situation and showed them that
regardless of all consequences this must be done.
I shall never forget the expression on the faces of these loyal associates of
mine—Addicks, Whitney, and the others—when I dropped in upon their
deliberations Saturday morning, four days later. My doctor, a nurse, and my
lawyer accompanied me, and I was swathed in flannels and shawls. I got to
a chair, dismissed my attendants, and launched in. What little I had to say
would be brief, I told them, but "edgy." It was all that. I insisted that we
should go right back to our old bargain exactly at the place we had left it the
night I was taken ill. If they did not comply, I would make application for a
receiver for the Bay State companies and give to the afternoon papers the
inside facts of the affair from beginning to end. No one doubted either my
ability or my determination to carry out my threat. We sent for the
documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three
hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into
with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle
of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the axiom I
have referred to.
The low-down treachery and double-dealing characterizing this transaction,
the utter callousness to sacred obligations it exhibits in men of presumed
high standing and personal honor, may surprise my readers. I assure them
that several such episodes will be told in the forthcoming pages of this
history. Indeed, among a certain school of eminent financiers, loyalty is no
more than devotion to the opportunity of making the highest profit. If
circumstances shift this from the side of their enlistment to that of an
adversary, their arms and hearts go where their pockets lead. It must be
remembered that the Hessian who "down-town" is steeped in perfidy,
trickery, and fraud, may appear before the "up-town" world as a Christian
citizen and an example of domestic virtue. The type is not uncommon

nowadays of the pleasant and proper gentleman, prompt to knock down any
one daring to asperse his veracity after five any evening and all day Sunday,
but who considers himself free to engage in any dirty juggle or
misrepresentation from 9 a.m. to 4.45 p.m. In office hours you run no risk in
calling him a liar, for then he'll laugh at the joke and tell you business is
business. However, the foregoing episode was an experience that left an
indelible impression on my mind, and the hatred and disgust it engendered
precipitated events out of which in the course of years came the offences
and injuries that are responsible for the story of "Frenzied Finance."
The immediate results of my reappearance were not startling. Rogers raved
at Addicks and especially at Whitney, but he was too old a student of men,
and the monkeys Dame Fortune makes of them, to sulk over the facts he
could not remedy. He soon resumed his former attitude of waiting for
something to turn up, which indeed he had maintained ever since my
unsuccessful effort to make terms with him.
Fate had not yet tired, however, of playing shuttlecock with our hopes. The
world learned one morning of a new gas called acetylene, clear, brilliant,
cheap, and simply made from calcium carbide. It would surely
revolutionize gas-making the world over, and the company which could
secure the right to it would have those who could not at its mercy. Addicks
moved like a flash to gather in the advantage, and the announcement that
the new gas had been proved a success was coupled in the press with the
news that the Bay State Gas had captured the invention for New England,
and was to pay millions for it. This did give a boost to our securities, and
for a time it looked as though we had clinched our success with another
rivet. What Addicks had done was this: He had bought the right, subject to
the test of a big public demonstration. For this demonstration a fine flare-up
was arranged. Eminent mayors, counsellors, and gas magnates were to
attend in multitude, and if the invention met its engagements, there would
be such a blaze of publicity and congratulations that we felt sure our new
stock would go off like hot cakes. The demonstration proved in a most
sensational way that acetylene was a failure—a tremendous explosion
occurred; three men were killed, many others injured, and next day back
went our stock to its old figures.

All this time I had sought most diligently for the real solution of our
troubles—a method of purchasing Rogers' companies. A substantial
guarantee there must be, not only for the performance of our financial
engagements but to insure to Rogers the integrity of his properties while
under the domination of Addicks. The difficulty was, in the weakened
condition of the company, to put together any satisfactory guarantee. Others
in our group had wrestled with the problem as strenuously as I had.
Suddenly, a few days before May, 1896, the light came to me. All the time
the solution had been in our hands, and, beset as we were, it had never
occurred to any of us. We absolutely controlled the old Boston gas
companies. They were intrinsically among the richest corporations in
Massachusetts, and although their stocks were pledged for the $12,000,000
of bonds held by the public, they did not owe a dollar. Though the terms of
the agreement between the Bay State Company and the Mercantile Trust,
which held their shares, precluded them from contracting any debts, they
were empowered, through us, their officials, to buy or sell gas, and all their
great wealth was behind such contracts. If, then, we agreed on their behalf
to buy gas of the Brookline Company for a term of years at such a price and
in sufficient quantities to give the latter concern a profit equal to ten per
cent. dividends on its stock, surely we had complied with the very letter of
Rogers' exaction. Testing the idea in one way and another, I found it sound
as a bell. The problem after that was to get into shape for the substantial
issue of new stock we must make to pay for our purchase. The banks and
trust companies were loaded up with our securities pledged for loans, and
before there could be any conviction behind our prosperity it behooved us
to get all our valuables out of pawn. I went to Mr. Rogers and frankly told
him I had solved our problem and his by a financial invention of my own. I
entered into the details of our plan, explaining it would not even be
necessary for us to buy any gas of him, because we would turn over a
sufficient number of our own customers to the Brookline Company to
secure to it the required profit. He saw in an instant the scheme with all its
far-reaching possibilities, and assented. Then I broached the rest of my plan
—we would pay him four and a half millions in six months. To do this we
must sell stocks and bonds. Before we could do that it was necessary that he
help us still further—he must buy of us all the bonds now in pledge and the
stock of the Dorchester Gas Company, another Bay State asset up for
security, all for the sum of a million and a half dollars. For this amount

these securities would at once be released and turned over to him. Then he
should resell them to us together with the Brookline Gas Company for six
millions of dollars. There would be a formal turning over of the
management of his properties so the public should be convinced that we
really were the victors in the strife. Mr. Rogers saw my point, quickly ran
over the details in his comprehensive way, and closed the trade without
further bargaining. That time, thank Heaven, it was not within Addicks'
power to thwart me.
On May 1st we made our settlement in compliance with the terms I had
arranged. The six millions of dollars were to be paid November 1st. As the
necessary options and sales could not legally run to our company, they were
made to Henry M. Whitney, and he simultaneously transferred them to us,
and we elected him a director of our different corporations. Rogers publicly
resigned and turned over to us the control of the Brookline Company, and
we elected our own management. To all intents and purposes we had won.
The settlement was the sensation of the day in financial circles, and I was
the recipient of many generous congratulations. I had neither time nor
inclination to take care of bouquets at that moment, however. I was too
keenly aware of the difficulty of raising six millions of dollars in the limited
period at our disposal. Times have changed since 1896. Then six millions
was quite a large sum, larger than sixty millions now. That was before the
halcyon period of "Frenzied Finance."

CHAPTER XXI
BRIBING A LEGISLATURE

That six months between May 1st and November 1st was the most crowded
period in all my experience up to that time. Events of consequence tumbled
over one another in startling succession. We actually lived on sensations. In
exercising the historian's right to choose the order of setting down incidents
I am puzzled as to which to give precedence. Shall I begin with the
sensational bribery of the Massachusetts Legislature which occurred within
this period, or with the episode that was the exciting climax of that interval
of trial? About this time, too, occurred the laying of the foundation of
"Coppers" and Amalgamated, but that certainly requires a chapter to itself.
However, as all are starry examples of what made "Frenzied Finance"
possible, and as any one fits into my story as well ahead as behind the other
two, I'll take them in the succession above set down.
The Whitney machine for the manufacture and moulding of legislation was
complex but efficient. It achieved its wonders in broad daylight.
Considering all it did and how that all was accomplished, the astonishing
fact is that no outcry to speak of was ever raised at its performances. It was
vastly bolder than Tammany and made fewer excuses for its grabbings. It
must be remembered, however, that its chief engineer was a leading citizen,
and his assistants all gentlemen of great respectability and admirable
antecedents, and, in Boston, social and civic distinctions are shields behind
which much may be concealed.
Corrupting a Legislature is not something a man may do with a fillip of his
finger and thumb. However bold the operations, the convenances must be
observed. When really large designs are entertained, the manipulator sets to
before the preceding election and has his "lawyers" at work throughout the
country interviewing candidates and ascertaining their feelings. Thus a
certain percentage of votes are signed and sealed in advance, ready for
delivery at the proper time. But there is always a crowd of new men who
must be taken care of on the spot, and these must be approached with tact.

Some amateurs have fanatical notions of honor which interfere with both
their own and the interests of franchise-grabbers. To deal with all
contingencies, to take care of captured votes and to shape legislative
proceedings along safe lines, requires the services of almost an army of
men.
At the head of Whitney's forces was his lawyer, George H. Towle, big of
brain, ponderous of frame, and with the strength of an ox. A man of terrific
temper, he knew not the meaning of the word fear. Nothing aroused him to
such frenzy as to have to do with a legislator who unnecessarily haggled
over the price of his vote or influence. On occasions when a lieutenant
reported that Senator This or Representative That would not come into
camp, Towle, with an oath, would say: "Take me to him, and I'll have his
vote in ten minutes or there'll be occasion for a new election in his district
to-morrow!"
Second in command was Mr. Patch, Towle's secretary and factotum, his
exact opposite in every way. Where Towle was brutally straight to the point,
Mr. Patch was as smooth an intriguer as ever connected himself with secrets
by way of keyholes and transoms. It is a Beacon Hill tradition that for years
Towle on final-payment day would have the members of the Massachusetts
Legislature march through his private offices one at a time, and, handing
each of them their loot, would proclaim: "Well, you're settled with in full,
aren't you? That represents your vote on —— and on ——." Then he would
loudly identify the bill and the particulars of the service, while behind a
partition with a stenographer would be Mr. Patch, who after the notes had
been written out would witness the accuracy of the stenographer's report.
When the Legislature assembled again, old members, the same story goes,
would be requested to call on Towle to renew acquaintanceship. Then he
would allow them to look over his memoranda "just to keep them from
being too honest," as he gently phrased it.
Subordinate to Towle and Patch was a long line of eminently respectable
lawyers known over the Commonwealth as "Whitney's attorneys." These
men assisted at nominations, orated at elections, and took care of the finer
preliminary details. The first line of attack was composed of practical
politicians of various grades—ex-senators or representatives, and local
bosses, who were known as "Whitney's right-hand men." Below these were

the ordinary lobbyists, the detectives, and runners, who kept "tabs" on every
move and deed, day and night, of the members of the Legislature. This was
the Whitney machine, and it worked together with that fine solidity and
evenness which can be attained only by constant practice and much success.
In comparison with this competent organization, an average "Tammany
Gang," a "Chicago Combine," or a "St. Louis Syndicate" would look like a
hay-covered snow-plough in August.
It is seldom the public is given an opportunity of seeing a picture, drawn to
life, of the Legislature of one of the greatest States in the Union in the act of
being bribed to grant the votaries of "Frenzied Finance," for nothing, those
things which should and do belong to the people, and for which the
"System's" votaries would willingly pay millions of dollars if they were
compelled to. I shall dwell on the performance that ensued at this juncture
of my story long enough to present an outline of such a proceeding.
Head-quarters for Whitney's Massachusetts Pipe Line were opened at
Young's Hotel—Parlors 9, 10, and 11, Rooms 6, 7, 8, second story front.
Parlors 9 and 10 were the general reception-room, while 11 was reserved
for the commander himself and for important and "touchy" interviews. The
rooms 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 were used for educational purposes. In the morning the
place was deserted, but at noon the parlors began to fill up with the different
officers of the "Machine" and their friends, trustworthy members of the
Legislature. A little later an elaborate luncheon would be served, the
supernumeraries eating in one room, Towle and his chiefs and the
legislators in the other. At table the gossip of the morning session at the
State House was exchanged and the work laid out for the afternoon
legislative and committee sessions. Another interval of silence and peace
until at 5.30 the real business of the day began. Mr. Patch was generally on
the ground first, carrying the books in which the bribery records were kept,
for be it remembered that the efficiency of the Whitney machine was
largely due to the thoroughly systematic manner in which its operations
were conducted. Nothing was left to chance or to any one's memory. In
turn, the subordinates presented careful reports of the day's transactions. At
6.30 Mr. Towle would go over these documents, "sizing up" the actual
results for submission later to the chief himself. Between 7.30 and 8.30 the
"Machine" dined; the remains of the feast having been removed, the doors
were locked and the books brought out.

If an outsider could possibly have obtained the entry to the head-quarters of
the Whitney Massachusetts Pipe Line, say at nine o'clock any evening
during the session, he might easily have imagined himself at the Madison
Square Garden or at Tattersall's on the evening of the first day of an
international horse-sale. This is what he would have seen: In Parlor 10,
seated at a long table a dozen of Mr. Towle's chiefs, all in their shirt-sleeves,
smoking voluminously; before each a sheet of paper on which is printed a
list of the members of the Legislature; against every name a blank space for
memoranda; at the head of the table Towle himself, frowning severely over
a similar sheet having broader memoranda-spaces. One after another the
chiefs call off the names of the legislators, reporting as they go along. The
outsider would have heard droned monotonously: "..... from ..... not my
man; ..... from ..... my man and .....'s man; seen to-day, stood same as
yesterday; ..... from ....., raised price $20, making it $150; agreed; $10 paid
on account, total of $90 due; raised because ..... told him that he had got $20
more from ....."
As each man reports the other chiefs and Towle discuss the details, and
when a decision on disputed points is arrived at, Towle makes a
memorandum on his blank, and the chief concerned records the order in the
little note-book which each carries. All reports at last in, Towle retires to
Room 11 and speedily returns with the "stuff," consisting of cash, stocks,
puts, calls, or transportation tickets, which he deals out to the chiefs to
make good their promises for the day. It would have been obvious to the
outsider, as soon as he had learned what was being dealt in, that a large
proportion of the members of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts
had bargained with the different members of "the machine" to sell their
votes not only in committee but in full session of the Legislature, and that
the price was to be paid when the votes were cast, though something was
invariably exacted on account, to tie the bargain. Payment was made in
cash, calls on Bay State Gas or Dominion Coal, or transportation on any of
the railroads in the United States or Canada. The latter appears to be a class
of remuneration Towle favored, probably because it cost nothing.
The conference seldom closed for the day without Towle admonishing his
subordinates: "The old man's getting dead sore at the way his leg is being
pulled, and if you fellows don't get those countrymen to play a more liberal

game, they'll just drive the boss out of the business, and then there'll be a
slump in prices that'll make them prefer to stay home and farm."
You may ask here, Could such things happen without attracting public
attention? Or are the citizens of Boston so habituated to the corruption of
their Legislature that they could witness unmoved this wholesale bribing
campaign conducted in full daylight from Young's Hotel? Thank Heaven,
this is not so. There are in every American community honest, sturdy souls
who can be depended on to come forward in emergencies and cry out aloud
against a threatened political crime. Above the brute hubbub of a city's roar
their voices are heard like the voice of conscience, and the hurrying throng
pauses a second in its mad rush after dollars to listen to their tale of the
Commonwealth's wrong. But what's in the air is not on earth. The practical
politicians, whose affair it is to heed and counteract these honorable
protests, laugh contemptuously at the vanity of any contest between theories
and the "stuff." They know the overpowering logic of gold.
There were public meetings in Boston; good-government clubs throughout
the State met and "resoluted"; citizens' organizations howled robbery and
malfeasance. For a few weeks all Massachusetts seemed wrought up. From
the space the papers gave the protestants one might have imagined that
there was a chance for virtue, but the results of the clamor were more
apparent than real. Day by day, night by night, the "machine" ground away
at Young's, and as its product fell into the hopper Whitney and Towle only
smiled at the clamor and awaited the moment when, as Towle coarsely put
it, "the reformers would have yawped themselves to a standstill."
That day came at last. One by one, all in a perfectly orderly and methodical
manner, the giving-bonds-to-compel-promises clauses, restrictive
amendments and other people's safeguards had been voted down and the
"Are you ready for the main question?" having been put in both houses, the
Massachusetts Pipe Line Charter was duly passed and sent on to the
governor. It required his signature to make the bill a hard-and-fast law, and
that once appended, all Towle's "promises to pay" became due.
As the campaign neared a finish Whitney had, a number of times, informed
his chiefs, and they the members of the Legislature, that the governor had
given personal assurance that if the bill passed both houses, he would sign

it. On this score all interested had been relieved of doubt, and immediately
upon the Senate's favorable action Bay State and Dominion Coal shares
advanced in price. During the period the governor had the bill under
consideration there was an active and rising market and a great volume of
transactions on the Stock Exchange. Apparently the day of our peace and
prosperity had dawned at last. But we were not yet out of a gnarled Fate's
clutches.
In the midst of a strenuous forenoon of trading, suddenly, without the
slightest warning, both stocks began to sink in price like pigs of lead from a
capsized boat. At once I was on the defensive. To prevent a wild market
panic during the few minutes consumed in getting telephone connection
with the State House, I had to purchase thousands of shares. I knew that
something disastrous had happened, but was not prepared for the startling
information that came over the wire: "The governor has vetoed the Whitney
bill with a savage message." My informant told me that Towle and his men
were making for head-quarters on a run. As I hung up the receiver, the bell
rang again. In a second my telephone with Whitney's office was in the
middle of a spasm.
"Have you got the news, Lawson?"

"Have I got it? The tape is screaming it.[9] Bay State and your stock are
racing for the bottom," I replied.
"What shall we do? This is a thunderbolt."
"Do?" I replied. "It's for you to say what to do. That's your end, not mine,
but from now until three o'clock one thing you must do, or there'll be no
further thinking on the subject—protect Dominion Coal—have your
brokers on the floor every second and tell them to buy all that's offered.
Beat a slow retreat if you must, but prevent a wild break. Things at the
Exchange are bad now. I'll take care of Bay State. Look out for Dominion at
once, and when you are through I must see you—where?"
"At Young's in ten minutes."
"I'll be there."

Ten minutes later I was in Whitney's head-quarters. There pandemonium
reigned; all the cocksureness and bluster of the "machine" had vanished,
and it was a horde of clamorous and excited men I found struggling round
Towle and Whitney, who vainly sought to stay the panic. It was not
disappointment at the governor's message that had so stirred these hardened
practitioners of politics, but the terror of impending loss. The majority of
the Whitney band, lawyers, lieutenants, and water-carriers had bought one
stock or both on margin, and had assured their friends it was safe to plunge
to the limit.
On earth there is no more pitiable sight than the panic of a herd of novice
stock-speculators suddenly awakened to a realization of their ruin. The
ticker clicks a sort of death-watch as the merciless tape, without hitch or let
up, reels off destruction. To such desperate beings the stock operator—the
market-maker—is the straw to save them from drowning, and to him they
turn as the one possible source of aid and hope. I only knew these men at
sight's end, but they knew me and were sure in their abject plight that I
could help them—by what wizardry they never stopped to think. They were
terribly certain that unless the market turned, their brokers must have
additional margin or their stock would be thrown overboard, sinking prices
still lower and bringing down their friends' stock, and so on, like a row of
falling bricks.
From their comfortable viewpoint of out-of-temptation virtue, my readers
may regard these lawyers, lieutenants, and water-carriers of Whitney as bad
men, deserving of no sympathy, meeting here a righteous punishment; but,
my word for it—and I know the world and the human ants and spiders who
inhabit it—while they bore no marks of immorality, they were the average
men one meets in one's journey over the bridge between the two unknowns.
My talk with Whitney and Towle was brief and pointed. It was no time for
pow-wow. It was the moment for action. Men who do things in stock-
markets never waste time over milk that is in the gutter. How to get new
milk to replace that spilt is their care.
"What are you going to do, Mr. Whitney?" I asked.
George Towle started to explain. I stopped him.

"The market is bad," I said, talking quickly. "If time is dribbled, it will be
worse, and—and Boston will be a warm place for you, Towle. It would not
surprise me if it got warm even for Mr. Whitney, when the desperate men
who are filling the brokerage shops and the corridors outside demand a
reason why they were egged on to buy stocks on Mr. Whitney's word that
the governor would sign. No excuses now; I want to know from Mr.
Whitney just what he proposes to do. You both told me the legislative end
was none of my business, and, thank Heaven, it was not. You said it was
your business. Now, how about it?"
Henry M. Whitney is a great general. He also can light his cigar, when the
battle's on, with the friction of a passing cannon-ball.
"I'm going to pass it over the governor's veto," he instantly answered.
"Can you do it?" I asked.
"I can, for I must." He meant it. It needed but one look into his and Towle's
eyes to see they both had read the message on the back of To-morrow's
visiting-card.
"All right," I said. "Let your people have the word, and it must have no
doubtful ring; tell your brokers to buy Dominion Coal, and don't let them
stand on the order of their buying. Dominion Coal must be put back,
regardless of how much it costs or how little you want what you must buy. I
will turn Bay State before three if it is necessary to trade in the whole
capital stock to do it."
As I came out of Parlor 11 to rush back to my office I said to the despairing
men who crowded the corridor outside the head-quarters, and who had in
their desperation thrown all caution or thought of concealment to the winds:
"Coal and Gas look to me like good buys." The sudden revulsion of feeling
was pathetic. In a minute the news had spread by way of them to their
brokers and their suffering friends: "It's all right; Whitney and Lawson are
buying stock." It got to the Exchange almost as soon as I did.
We turned the market.
That night Whitney and Towle's plans were mapped out to the army and
their orders despatched with a vicious snap that plainly said: "Whoever

attempts to put the Whitney machine in a hole will be shown no mercy."
The morning papers announced that Whitney had picked up the gantlet
Governor Wolcott had thrown at his feet, and—all roads led up Beacon Hill.
It was a quick, sharp set-to. Every man was lined up with a jerk, and when
the line was tallied up and tallied down and Towle had consented to the last
raise in price of votes and given away to the final squeeze, the word went
up and down the ranks that the Whitney bill would, on the approaching last
day of the session, go flying through both Houses over the governor's veto
with a vote or two to spare. Again the prices of the two stocks shot upward.
Then, sharp and quick as a bolt of lightning, Fate, who apparently had been
camped on the trail of Bay State Gas and Addicks from the first, let fly
another of her quiver's contents. On the morning of the closing day of the
session (the one selected for the Whitney coup), there slipped in and out
amongst the Whitney legislative ranks a man with a story. As each legislator
listened, his brow knitted and he nodded assent. The story was a simple
one: In one of Whitney's former campaigns, desperate like this one, on
payment-day Towle had gone back on his promises and forced the
acceptance of a fifty-cents-on-the-dollar settlement; and, so the story now
went, he, Towle, had put the saved fifty cents, a matter altogether of some
$75,000, in his own pocket. Probably he was now going to repeat the
operation on an even larger scale. In an hour there came to Young's Hotel a
trusty messenger who delivered to Towle himself the ultimatum of the
Great and General Court of the dear old Commonwealth: "Money in
advance or no bill!"
Consternation reigned. The army was quickly recalled to head-quarters, and
despatched back to the State House to put through every manœuvre known
to the two veterans—but to no purpose. The Great and General Court stood
its ground, openly defied the army and hurled back into Towle's teeth all his
frantic threats. It was the last day, and the Great and General Court was
intrenched inside the protecting walls of the State House, and it knew that
before it could be compelled to come forth to face Towle he must come to a
decision. A terrible dilemma, surely, for the amounts promised had run up to
such an enormous aggregate that it was impossible to pay all in so short a
time, even if such had been Whitney and Towle's intention. Yet to pay one

or a few of the dangerous malcontents meant to pay every one; the gang had
firmly banded themselves together.
This was the real moment of panic. Even Whitney and Towle were at their
wits' end. Finally, in desperation, and as a last resort, Whitney rushed to the
governor, threw up his hands, and asked for mercy. "What would the
governor sign?"
Massachusetts' able and fearless Governor Wolcott, who seemed to have
been expecting some such outcome of the battle, gave his answer clear as
an anvil-blow:
"You have told the people your company would give them cheap gas. Bind
yourself to do it by amending the charter so that the highest price your gas
can be sold at will be sixty cents. Then I will sign."

There was nothing else to do.[10] At the last minute the amendment was
inserted. The governor's representative gave the word that it was
satisfactory, and it passed.
I was in my office taking care of the market. Of the stampede I knew
nothing. Suddenly came the word: "The Whitney bill has passed on the
governor's recommendation." Both stocks started to jump; then a halt, then
—I didn't try to stop the decline, for I saw something terrible had happened.
In a few minutes the news was on the Street: "The charter was not worth the
parchment upon which it was engrossed."
The biter had been fatally bitten.
The market closed with the tape and ticker fiercely, exultingly shouting
"Ruin!" with each tick and slip: and that night Whitney's head-quarters was
little better than a mob. Frantic men demanded money, money due to them
for votes, money they had promised for margins to the brokers before the
Stock Exchange opened the next day, and swearing desperate consequences
to Whitney and Towle regardless of the effect upon themselves.
Early next morning there came to my office two wild-eyed, desperate
creatures, Towle and Mr. Patch.

I had spent the night going over my accounts and those of which I had
charge, and in addition to a quick, real loss of over a million dollars, I
realized that the immediate future was so hung with dark clouds that I dared
not anticipate what the coming day might mean to me and mine; but when I
looked upon the big, powerful man, who had always seemed in any light in
which I had heretofore beheld him to fear neither man nor God—when I
looked and saw his plight I pitied him deeply, sincerely. He carried a large
travelling-bag, and Mr. Patch two others.
"Lawson, for God's sake, don't do what they are all doing—don't upbraid
me! I've got to get out into the world and be dead to all I know—family,
friends, every one. If I stay, it's State's prison or worse, and Whitney says I
must go. I've got all the papers together and Whitney has given me what
cash he had on hand, and this check of $10,000. Do me one last favor, get
me gold for it. I know I have no right to ask any favors of you, but think if
you were in my place. I have a wife and children, and—" and the great,
strong man wept like a child.[11]
I called my secretary, and in a short time George Towle with the $10,000 in
gold and the bags of "evidence" faded out of my life and into the gray mist
of eternity.
A few days after, a vessel dropped anchor off the island of Jamaica; George
Towle's body was carried ashore and buried, and Mr. Patch was escorted
back to the ship. A few days later, with weights of lead to carry it to its last
resting-place at the ocean's bottom, the latter's dead body was dropped over
the vessel's side. And somewhere floating the high seas are a venturesome
sailor-captain and a crew, who when in their cups tell, 'tis said, strange tales
of bags of gold and mysterious documents.
As for the members of the Great and Good Court of the old Commonwealth
of Massachusetts for the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and
ninety-six, they received, none of them could tell from where, their
promised vote-money in the form of a yarn that the "stuff" belonging to
them had been delivered to George Towle, but that Towle had decamped
with it to foreign shores, where he was living in luxury with Mr. Patch.
'Tis writ that some crimes are so black and foul that they will not down, and
when I read over what is written here, I wonder if there will not some day

be another chapter of "Frenzied Finance" written by another pen than mine.
I sent two police officials to the island of Jamaica, and had the contents of
the coffin marked "George H. Towle" photographed. I could not photograph
the contents of the ocean's depths.

FOOTNOTES:
[9] A stock operator's one reliable source of information is his ticker and tape.
For the benefit of those of my readers who are unacquainted with the
paraphernalia by which stock-markets and financial operations are conducted, I
would say that the ticker is a small printing machine through which passes an
endless paper tape. The machine is run by telegraph wires, and it prints upon the
tape letters and figures which are abbreviations of the names and prices of all the
stocks and commodities dealt in on the stock-exchanges and boards of trade
throughout the world. The instant anything of moment happens anywhere, it is
reflected by a rise or fall in the price of securities or commodities such as wheat,
corn, pork, cotton, etc., that are dealt in in the different stock-exchanges or
boards of trade. As soon as a share of stock or bushel of wheat is sold by one
operator to another on the floors of the different exchanges, its price is within a
second printed on the tapes in the different offices. Therefore what the ticker
"ticks" out onto the tape is instantly read by operators throughout the world, and
as "the tape never lies," operators turn to it for their real information. When the
ticker begins to increase its clatter and the tape to travel fast, an operator will tell
you its activity means something unusual is happening. The ticker begins to talk
at ten o'clock each week-day morning and finishes at 3 p.m., with the exception
of Saturday, when the hour is 12 noon. These are the hours that the stock-
exchanges are in session.
[10] The charter as originally passed had gone through by a fair majority, but to
pass it over the governor's veto was another matter. That required a two-thirds
majority of both houses, and in the brief time at the disposal of the conspirators
the securing of the additional votes was wellnigh impossible. From the
necessities of the case such votes must cost much more than those of the original
supporters of the bill, for it may be taken for granted that most of the members
of the minority had already withstood such temptations as the Whitney faction
had cared to offer. It was therefore a case of bringing into camp the most
honorable and the most expensive members of the legislature, and without
opportunity for strategy or manipulation. The sole recourse was rank, flat
bribery, and that in full view of a mutinous following ready at the suggestion of
the slightest favoritism to the new men to become actively hostile. The task was
altogether too fraught with peril, to be undertaken. When they realized how
threatening the situation really was, Whitney and Towle decided to make terms
with the governor. The charter once obtained, they calculated that the obnoxious
clause might be amended out of it at a subsequent session (as a matter of fact
this charter, with its 60-cent clause, was afterward made the nucleus of the
present Massachusetts Gas companies which has just been floated on a basis of

$53,000,000 capital). Besides, the state of feeling of the legislators and
conditions in the stock-market had both to be taken into consideration. It was not
the fault of the legislators who had voted for the charter that the governor had
vetoed it, for they had been given to understand by Mr. Whitney that he would
not oppose it. They had delivered their goods, and now, if the governor's
sanction could be had under any sort of a compromise, they would certainly hold
Towle and Whitney responsible for failure to make whatever arrangements were
necessary.
[11] Towle told me, as he waited impatiently in my office for the gold, that in
addition to the great losses the drop in price of the two stocks had inflicted on
himself and his associates, there were losses on stocks held by legislators, who
had plunged on assurances that the charter would go through, and that the
amounts he would be called on to pay, if he remained, were far greater than
could possibly be met.

CHAPTER XXII
PLUNDERED OF THE PLUNDER

So extraordinary a happening as the disappearance of George H. Towle and
Mr. Patch, you think, should have furnished a national sensation. And this is
the first you have ever heard of it. Bear in mind that here for the first time
the facts of this case are set forth in their proper relation to one another, and
without the fear or favor that has hitherto prevented them from being
understood.
In Boston after the adjournment of the Legislature, however bitter the
feeling of the men who had sold themselves, and those others who had lost
their all in the crash of stock values that had followed Whitney's defeat,
their own complicity enforced silence and prevented outcry. It was given
out that George H. Towle and Mr. Patch, tired by their labors, had gone to
the country for a brief sojourn. On their return there would be a settlement.
And with these assurances, both legislators and lieutenants had, perforce, to
be satisfied. Gradually, betrayers and betrayed drifted back to their own
homes and their erstwhile avocations, and when the strange story of the
disappearance and death of the chief actors in the Whitney drama came
from over the seas, it fell on the heedless ears of men who had written off a
loss and desired to forget the experience. A conspiracy of silence is easily
organized among accomplices.
I myself was the greatest sufferer by the disaster. Banking on Whitney's
assurance of success I had loaded up heavily with Bay State on my own
account; and my customers pinning their faith to my predictions of a rise,
had also bought heavily both of the gas stock and Dominion Coal. In my
attempt to support the market when the first decline occurred, I had further
increased my holdings, and, at the final break, thousands of shares
purchased for my clients were left on my hands. So my loss was very large,
many times larger than Whitney's. Like the others, I said nothing, crediting
the expense to education, while Whitney silently tucked his emasculated
charter into a crypt already furnished with other corporation derelicts, to

await some fair opportunity of legislative or other resuscitation; for the
instrument, shorn though it had been of its immediate availability, was by
no means without real value. Probably in view of prospective
contingencies, perhaps with a sense of what his error had cost me, he said to
me: "Lawson, the Pipe Line charter is worthless now, but if at any time in
the future it becomes valuable, you or your company shall have half of it."
If Henry M. Whitney had kept that promise, what a world of disaster and
bitterness might have been averted. Generated in corruption, perhaps it is
not strange that this charter has since been so fertile a breeder of dissension
and ruin among all who have attempted to handle it. It may be accepted as
an axiom of finance that double-dealing is as dangerous to the dealer as to
his victim. The fierce conflicts that at intervals burst out in the financial
world and like a cyclone spread dishonor and destruction broadcast,
invariably are caused by some one man's treachery.
To return to my story. To all appearances, the gas war was over. We bore the
palm of victory, but looming up before us was the task of getting together
the six millions which Rogers must have by November 1st. That paid, the
companies became permanently ours. It was a period of unremitting effort,
but the prospects of success were excellent. Addicks had got ready a new
lot of Bay State stock, and I had prepared the public to take it. With the
proceeds of this stock and the securities which Rogers would turn over to
us, we should have money enough to meet our engagement, always
provided no slip-up occurred. Since the May 1st settlement our relations
with Rogers had been satisfactory—I should say, my relations—for he
persistently kept Addicks and his crowd at a distance, refusing to have
anything to do with them. But it's hard to keep a big pot boiling in the open
without some intruder smelling the savor of your soup and sneaking up for
a mouthful. Though secrecy had been solicitously preserved regarding the
details of our bargain with the "Standard Oil" magnates, certain of the
camp-followers of "Frenzied Finance" had nosed out the facts, and at the
very moment when our position and prospects seemed most secure a plot
was being laid, which, as after-events will show, came close to bringing
about the destruction we had thus far managed to escape.
As the time of settlement drew near, it became necessary for me to have
frequent conferences with Addicks and his directors, and we opened head-

quarters at the Hoffman House in New York. It was my habit to come over
for a short time every week, when we got together, reported progress, and
discussed future moves. It was at one of these gatherings, on Friday,
October 16th, that we had intimation of our peril. I had come down on the
midnight train from Boston and was brimming over with pleasant news and
agreeable anticipations. The day and all other things seemed good to me.
The air was crisp and the morning sun gleamed brightly on the red and
yellow autumn tints of the trees in Madison Square. For a moment I stood
on the corner beside the naval monument watching the down-townward
procession of cabs and coupés in which the spider aristocracy of finance
makes its way to its webs in Wall Street and lower Broadway. In the parlor
of Addicks' suite at the Hoffman the directors were gathered when I entered,
and with them was Parker Chandler, the Bay State's general counsel. We got
down to business at once. I told them how well our affairs were moving in
Boston and listened to their tidings of progress elsewhere. We were all in
the merry mood of success. The past was nothing but a bad dream; our
thoughts were on the rich moments beyond November 1st when we should
handle and know the real currency of our victory.
The telephone bell rang. Some one wanted Addicks quick.
Addicks stepped to the instrument. We all heard him say: "Hello." Then
—"Is that you, Fred?" (Fred Keller was his personal secretary.) Then
—"Yes, I hear you plainly. Repeat it." Then—a minute's wait while we
listened. Then—"When will they get up there?" Then—"Send every one
home, lock up and go over to the house, and call me on my wire." All this in
his ordinary, well-attuned, even voice, without the emphasis of a word to
show that the subject was a hair more important than any of the hundred
and one ordinary messages which went to make up a large part of his daily
life. The talk was so commonplace that we were none of us interested
enough to even stop our chatter.
Addicks stepped from the telephone and in a "bring-me-a-finger-bowl" tone
of voice said: "Tom, come into the other room for a minute; I want a word
with you."
He passed ahead of me through a small parlor into his bedroom. I followed.
He went straight to the bureau, took something from a drawer, slipped it

into his pocket, turned and dropped upon a lounge. But a minute had
elapsed since he had gone to the telephone. Could this gray ghost be the
same man who a short time ago had been smiling so contentedly at Parker
Chandler's last story? His face was the color of a mouldy lead pipe and
seared with strange lines and seams. The eyes that met mine were dim and
glazed, lustreless and dead as the eyes of a fish dragged from watery depths.
Courage is not character; it is temperamental. There is an impression that
the man truly brave is he who can face sudden, unexpected misfortune or
calamity without a tremor or a flicker to suggest his hurt. That is but a
single phase and indicative of physical rather than moral qualities; or,
perhaps, merely the callousness born of long exposure to danger. One of the
bravest men I've ever known stood watching the ticker one day during a
downward run. Suddenly I heard "My God, I'm ruined!" and he fell in a
faint on the floor. And a certain bank officer, whom I knew to be an arrant
coward when arrested for stealing a million, smiled at the policeman who
had tapped his shoulder and asked him for a light for his cigarette. Addicks
had not turned a hair as he hung up the telephone receiver, and here he was
cowering in a mortal funk, abjectly hopeless.
"Lawson, the game's up," he said in a trembling voice. "That was Fred. He
says Dwight Braman has had himself appointed receiver of Bay State; that
he raided the Wilmington office immediately after he was appointed, broke
open desks, and took all the papers he could find, and that in an hour or so
he will be in Philadelphia and in possession of all my books and papers. He
has a court order for the bank accounts and the right to take charge of our
funds."
"This is a startler," I said; "what are we going to do?"
"The trap is perfect, and I'm in it. They've caught me with every bar down.
Before, when they attempted to get a receivership, things were ready for
them—books and papers packed for Europe and cash in charge of an
unserved officer prepared at the first word to start for Canada. But now, a
few days before election, when if I don't throw a lot of money into
Delaware for my followers, they'll turn on me like wolves—they've caught
me napping. It's a plot, sure—a receiver in possession, particularly Braman,
and appointed in a way that shows deliberate calculation, proves it was

done by some one who knows our situation to a 'T.' It means ruin for me
and the company. You know I won't have a friend left on earth, and enemies
now will rise up like snakes before a prairie fire."
It was indeed a stiff, tough turn, yet I was watching the man rather out of
curiosity to note how he could take a reverse than out of sympathy. I don't
believe there was another man on earth who, similarly placed, would not
have aroused my pity; but Addicks—no man or woman has pity for
Addicks.
"Well," I repeated, "what are we going to do?"
He did not reply for a moment. I continued to look at him. The eyes haunted
me. I noted that the lines round the lids had deepened into furrows. He half
raised himself from the lounge.
"I've said they would never get me, and they won't." Instinctively his hand
sought the pocket into which he had dropped what he had taken from the
dresser's drawer. Then I knew. The yellow streak showed plain at last. I had
guessed from the start it was there.
The stock manipulator in common with the successful general must have
the capacity to deal with the unexpected. The faculty to see a situation
whole must be his, to focus instantly the lay of the land, the enemy's plans
and strength, his own resources, the strategic possibilities of his position;
and instantly, if necessity demands it, he must be ready with a new plan of
campaign fitted to the first emergency. The more rapidly his mind works the
safer are the interests he is guarding. But if he has not this capacity, he can
never be a market manipulator.
For a moment I could not but pause to admire the devilish ingenuity of the
trap that had been sprung on us. The state of affairs that Addicks revealed
was about the worst imaginable. I had been on this particular war-path so
long that my mind instantly grasped the possibilities of destruction that lay
in this new attack. I saw November 1st—no money to pay Rogers;
everything forfeited; Addicks in a nauseating scandal; and all those friends
of mine who had put their funds into Bay State because of their confidence
in my ability to win out slaughtered. No, it should not be if I could prevent
it. Other storms we had met and weathered, why not this? Even if it were a

tornado, we would "ride her out." Perhaps we should not be afloat when the
rollers subsided, but at least we should be at rest—on the bottom. I turned
to Addicks, who, heaped up on his lounge, was staring into vacancy.
"Brace up, Addicks," I said. "We are not knocked out yet. At least let us find
out what has struck us."
I was some moments in arousing him from his condition of despair, but
finally he pulled himself together, and piece by piece we went over the
situation. I had to agree with him that he was in an end-to-end-center-pull
trap. The cunning machinery he had set up to meet just such an emergency,
now that it was in hostile hands, was rather a source of danger than of
safety. There was but one way out of the complication—we must undo this
receivership and release our properties and funds before November 1st.
Addicks, when he got his thinking loom running, declared the receivership
was all a "Standard Oil" plot to ruin him. I felt sure it was an independent
operation, but there was no time for controversy.
The telephone bell rang again. It was Fred Keller, talking from Addicks'
house. We soon had all the details of the raid. This is what had happened.
Dwight Braman, a former Boston broker, now a New York capitalist and
promoter, had suddenly appeared in Wilmington, Del., accompanied by
Roger Foster, a New York attorney representing Wm. Buchanan, one of the
original holders of Bay State Gas income bonds. He held $100,000. They
had gone before Judge Wales, and pleading that the interest on the bonds
was in default and that Addicks was dissipating the assets of the company,
had succeeded in inducing the judge to appoint Braman receiver. The whole
performance was put through with such marvellous rapidity that not one of
Addicks' innumerable henchmen had had a hint of it, and so no warning
could be given in any direction. Braman, an adept in corporation try-outs,
lost not a moment, for the instant his receivership appointment was signed
he pounced down on the Delaware offices of the Bay State and seized
everything they contained. He was waiting there for the first train to
Philadelphia for the purpose of capturing the head offices of our
corporation, which were located there, adjoining Addicks' private offices.
It was the moment for rapid action. We had an hour before Braman and
Foster could reach Philadelphia, and in finance in that time continents' have

been submerged and oceans pumped dry. Addicks instructed Fred Keller to
rush the books of the company into a trunk, together with all the private
papers in Addicks' safe, and to come at once to New York, where he would
be beyond the jurisdiction of the Delaware court. We returned to the large
parlor and hastily explained to the waiting directors what had occurred.
Addicks instructed the Bay State secretary, who was present, to connect
with the trunk upon its arrival and disappear. In the meantime the
company's counsel advised that Addicks and the other directors barricade
themselves in their rooms at the Hoffman to frustrate any attempt to get
legal service on them, for we well knew that Braman and Foster, as soon as
they realized they were balked in Philadelphia, would go to the New York
courts for additional powers—which afterward they did.
This line of defence having been fully organized I hurried down town to 26
Broadway. I felt certain that Mr. Rogers had nothing to do with the Braman-
Foster affair, but to satisfy Addicks and make assurance doubly sure I
determined to see him. After being with him for five minutes I knew I had
not been deceived. Rogers agreed with me that the situation looked as
though it had been made for his interest, for it threatened to leave us
absolutely at his mercy with nothing to prevent his checkmating Addicks at
his own game. As I pointed out to him, however, there were disadvantages
in the position which he must take into consideration. His acceptance of the
opportunity would work such losses to the public and to my friends that
though the responsibility might be laid to Braman and Foster, I would fight
so viciously that no one would be spared. Besides, between the Addicks
scandal and that other which we agreed must unquestionably lurk in the
hasty appointment of the receiver, the whole affair must eventually be
ventilated in court. It is always hard for Mr. Rogers to forego an advantage,
but by this time he was tired of the wrangle and wanted peace, and,
moreover, he did not relish the thought of court proceedings, so he admitted
that my reasoning was good, and promised to do anything in his power to
assist us.

CHAPTER XXIII
TWO GENTLEMEN OF FRENZIED FINANCE

The enemy did not leave us long in suspense. Next day Braman and Foster
arrived in New York, bursting with a noble wrath at the failure of their coup
in Philadelphia. An outrage had been worked upon them, upon the public,
upon the majesty of the law. To hear their ravings one might have supposed
them the evangelists of Justice righteously denouncing a desecration of the
sacred altar; or, that we had deprived them of an inalienable right they had
possessed to our property. It would have been humorous if the conditions
had been less tragic.
No defender of property right is so vociferous as the financier who, having
appropriated his neighbor's goods, argues that possession constitutes legal
ownership. On a country road I once almost rode over two hoboes, who
were so busy wrangling with one another that they had not heard my
approach. I gathered that one of them, having filched a collection of laundry
from a farmer's backyard, had placed it in charge of his mate while he went
off for a second helping, and had returned just in time to stop the latter from
decamping with the swag. The talk the original purloiner was giving his
ungrateful assistant was one of the best expositions of virtue and honesty
I've ever listened to.
We met the following Monday and in reply to my request that we talk
things over, Foster delivered himself of an exalted exposition of the rights
of deluded stockholders, the majesty of the law, and the stern duties of Mr.
Braman, who, for the time being, had departed his private self and, until
further notice, existed only as a rigid arm of the court. Just as I had arrived
at the conclusion that I had got into the wrong shop, Braman took up the
lecture by informing me of things I already had made myself familiar with,
to wit, how he had at different times occupied similar rôles in other
corporations' affairs and how relentlessly he had exposed mismanagement
and peculation. I suggested to him that in most such cases the receiverships
seemed to have been dismissed in favor of the former managers. He waved

his hands and replied that in this particular case there was absolutely no
chance of control being returned to Addicks, who had outrageously abused
his trust; "although, of course (this as a sort of second thought) you know,
Mr. Lawson, if Mr. Foster on behalf of his client should receive the amount
of his claim and the proper fee, from whatever source, I should be
powerless to prevent the dismissal of the receiver."
Braman and Foster were a delightful combination. As the talented Chimmie
Fadden would say: "Dey knew dere biz from de bar to de till an' from de till
by de way of de cash register to de wine-cellar, so's dey could do de circuit
wid dere lamps blinked and dere hands tied." With their corporation mix-up
records I was familiar, and after a few minutes' talk realized that it would be
impossible to do anything with them until they had kicked up against one or
two of the bricks Addicks was now with renewed energy preparing to cast
into their pathway. I left with an agreement to see them the following day,
and a parting reminder that all natural history showed that unpicked ripe
plums were in great danger of being blown from the tree with every passing
breeze.
I hurried back to Addicks. "It's the old game," said I; "they are on the box
and have the lines, and know just how badly we need our coach, and it's
only a case of how much 'inducement' we can stand."
I left him and went down to 26 Broadway. I had not wasted time, but they
had been there ahead of me.
"Lawson," said Mr. Rogers, "this time Addicks is up against a real
condition, and phenomenal work will have to be done or his race is run.
Braman and Foster have been here and made a strong bid for a partnership
with me, but I did as agreed and sent them away with a cold 'I'm in no way
interested.'"
Foster and Braman secured an order from the New York courts to take
possession of all property, money, papers, and books claimed by the
company, and formally laid siege to Addicks' quarters in the Hoffman.
There was considerable excitement for the guests and the newspapers.
Doors were battered down, but the astute and slippery Addicks led them a
merry chase until they finally caught him hiding in a freight elevator which

he was using for a private staircase, only to find he had no books, papers, or
money.
The week that ensued was full of trouble and incident for all concerned.
Addicks led an expedition to Wilmington in an effort to get the court to call
off the receivership, but had his labor and the expense of his lawyers for his
pains. Braman and Foster dragged us through a weary round of special
hearings and demands of various kinds in the different courts, but by
Tuesday night of the second week their ardor had cooled considerably and
they were as puzzled how to let go of the bull they had captured as we were
to find a way to make them do so.
Bright and early Wednesday morning Braman called on me, and when he
threw his coat and hat into a chair he must have dropped his receivership
cloak too, for after he had carefully closed the door and made sure we were
without witness he said:
"If there's any business to be done in this matter it must be done quick."
I admitted no one could possibly appreciate this more than I—but what
could be done? After bluffing for an hour and exchanging honest views for
fifteen minutes we agreed that the situation stood thus:
If nothing were done before the coming Sunday, the 1st, the receivership
would be permanent; the stock, which had fallen to $3 per share, would
remain at that figure or go lower; my friends, the public, and myself would
be tremendous losers; all the past of Bay State, the doings of Addicks and
Rogers, and the appointment of the receiver would come in for thorough
investigation; an awful scandal would be aired in public; every one would
be covered more or less with mud; and no one could possibly be the gainer
but "Standard Oil," for Braman agreed with me that the deal we had made
with Rogers would probably stand in the courts.
On the other hand, if an arrangement could be arrived at by which we could
have the receivership discharged, the company returned to its officers, or
our equities preserved, all would be gainers by the move, for it would be
proof positive that whatever the obstacles, we could overcome them, and
the stock would go flying upward again.

After we had set out all the advantages, disadvantages, and possibilities of
the situation, I bluntly plumped Braman with that inevitable question of all
such "sit-downs": "What's the price?" And Braman as plumply and bluntly
answered: "Buchanan, Foster's client, must have the face of his bonds and
interest, $150,000, and we must have at least $150,000 for our trouble and
expense."
My long experience in corporation affairs, and my intimate knowledge of
the practices which the "System" with its votaries has made habitual was
such that I was proof against shock from anything that could possibly turn
up in even extraordinary financial deals, but I was just a bit staggered by the
business-like way Braman demanded for himself and Foster $150,000 and
the coolness with which he further explained that they must divide their
share with certain influential persons without whose hearty cooperation the
tangling-up which had been so cleverly accomplished would have been
impossible. He made no bones of showing me that once "we gave up" it
would only be a matter of the number of minutes required to get details
fixed before everything would be as it was before he had interfered. I dwelt
upon the possibilities of the judge not following orders to the letter and the
minute, but he only smiled and answered: "Leave all that to us; if we don't
make good as agreed, we get no pay." He was fully alive to the dangers of
the game, and he impressed upon me he would take nobody's word for
anything. With him and Foster nothing but money talked, and it must not be
of the marked-bill kind either, meaning he would not take anything which
could be tied up by injunctions and lawsuits after the receiver had been
dismissed. However, he would play fair. He would not ask us to pay on
anything but the actual delivery of the goods. He also frankly told me that
he had named the very low figure, $150,000, because he expected to invest
what he received in Bay State Gas stock at $3 and, upon its jumping to $10
or $20, to make half a million.
But this is outrageous, you say. You call the performance I have described
by hard names! Surely our courts are not also the creatures of "frenzied
finance"? you ask. I warn my readers that this narrative is no more than a
record of events occurring within my own knowledge, and that dark and
vicious as the pictures seem they are photographs of actual happenings. Nor
should the public conclude that the dishonor and dishonesty revealed in
connection with Bay State Gas are exceptional. On the contrary, such

doings are the rule in the affairs of great financial corporations. Into the
rigging and launching of almost every big financial operation in the United
States during the last twenty years, double-dealing, sharp practice, and
jobbery have entered; and, what is more, the men interested have
participated in and profited thereby. To correct a popular fallacy I want to
say that I am not referring here simply to moral derelictions but to actual
legal crimes. If the details of the great reorganization and trustification deals
put through since 1885 could be laid bare, eight out of ten of our most
successful stock-jobbing financiers would be in a fair way to get into State
or federal prisons. They do such things better in England. During the past
ten years three "frenzied financiers" have practised their legerdemain in
London—Ernest Hooley, Barney Barnato, and Whitaker Wright. The first is
bankrupt and discredited; Barney Barnato jumped into the ocean at the
height of his career, and Whitaker Wright, after numerous attempts to
escape, was hauled up before an English judge and jury, promptly convicted
and sentenced, and committed suicide by poison before leaving the court-
room. I will agree at any time to set down from memory the names of a
score of eminent American financiers, at this writing in full enjoyment of
the envy and respect of their countrymen and the luxury purchased by their
many millions, whose crimes, moral and legal, committed in the
accumulation of these millions, would, if fully exposed, make the
performances of Wright and Barnato seem like petty larceny in comparison.
[12]
But freedom and equality, as guaranteed us by the Declaration of
Independence, have recently been capitalized, and "freedom" now means
immunity from legal interference for financiers, while the latest acceptance
of "equality" is that all victims of special privilege are treated alike by those
who control and exercise such privilege. If the judges and the public
prosecutors of these United States were equal to the sworn duties of their
sacred offices, this "freedom" would have been confined long ago, and
throughout this broad land there would be jails full of "frenzied financiers"
who had imagined themselves licensed to rob the public.
But to return to Bay State Gas: "Braman," I said, "we see the situation
through the same glasses, but before deciding as to prices let us see where
the coin required is to come from. Until the receivership is dismissed not a
cent can come from the Bay State treasury, so that eliminates Addicks. I,
personally, am in such shape because of this same receivership that I can do

nothing. So, as usual, it comes down to the man with unlimited money—
Rogers. The question is, how to get Rogers to advance so large a sum in
such a ticklish business? He does not want to get mixed up in a matter in
which any one man's treachery might mean State's prison."
"Somebody's word ought to be good," he commented.
"Only two men's words would be of any avail," I interrupted—"yours and
Addicks', and you have just made it clear that in this case neither would be
worth the breath expended in pledging it."

FOOTNOTES:
[12] Since the above was published the American people have become aroused,
and as this book is going to press, scores of the greatest financiers in America
are having under oath confessions squeezed from them in a life-insurance
investigation conducted by the State of New York—confessions which reveal
such a condition of perjury, bribery, and habitual sequestration of funds, as to
make my statement seem mild.

CHAPTER XXIV
BUYING A BUNCH OF STATES

I left Braman and went down to Mr. Rogers. After a careful canvas of the
situation it was settled that the only way out was for Rogers to furnish the
money to release the receivership, in consideration of which
accommodation Addicks should forfeit the old Boston companies to him
through Bay State's failure to comply with the terms of the May contract
which matured the following Monday. Rogers would administer these
companies in trust, applying their earnings to the liquidation of the bonds,
and after these latter had been paid off, would turn them back to the Bay
State Company for the benefit of its stock; or he would release the
companies to us whenever we could raise the money to redeem them. Thus
Rogers would make sure of the amount of his original investment, the
million dollars profit the May 1st deal permitted him, while I should have
secured for my friends and the public the amount of their investment in the
property and a good profit for the stockholders to boot. To secure Addicks'
consent to this arrangement would be the difficulty; but there was one
consideration that would probably induce him to give way—his terrible
plight in case the receivership became permanent.
Having reached this point, the next problem was how to get the money.
Rogers refused absolutely to be a party to any payment that could be traced
back to him. He pointed out the sources of hazard; first, through treachery
on the part of Foster, Braman, or Addicks, he might be accused of bribing a
court officer, the receiver; Addicks might blackmail him by charging him
with conspiracy, or a conspiracy charge might be brought by Bay State
stockholders, and he be held for tremendous damages. He refused to put
himself into any such trap. I put forward a dozen ways to meet the
emergency, but he would have none of them. Finally he suggested a method
which was certainly perfect of its kind. He began by letting me into the
secret that the chances of a McKinley victory in the election the following
week looked pretty bad, and that the latest canvass of the State showed that
unless something radical were done, Bryan would surely win. Hanna had

called into consultation half a dozen of the biggest financiers in Wall Street,
and it was decided to turn at least five of the doubtful States. For this
purpose a fund of $5,000,000 had been raised under Rogers' direction,[13] to
be turned over to Mark Hanna and McKinley's cousin, Osborne, through
John Moore, the Wall Street broker, who was acting as Rogers'
representative in collecting the money. It would be legitimate for the
National Committee to pay out money to carry Delaware, and he, Rogers,
would arrange it that the coin to satisfy Braman and Foster should come
through this channel. Thus he would be completely protected.
"Lawson," said Mr. Rogers, looking at me with intense and deadly
seriousness, his voice charged with conviction, "if Bryan's elected, there
will be such a panic in this country as the world has never seen, and with
his money ideas and the crazy-headed radicals he will call to Washington to
administer the nation's affairs, business will surely be destroyed and the
working people will suffer untold misery. You know we all hate to do what
Uncle Mark says is necessary, but it's a case of some of us sacrificing
something for the country's good. Bryan's election would set our country
back a century, and I believe it's the sacred duty of every honest American
to do what he can to save his land from such a calamity."[14]
The "System's" conscience has its own quaint logic—the logic of self-
interest—and this is how it reasoned: "The election of Bryan would disturb
our control of American institutions, therefore American institutions would
be destroyed by Bryan's election. On us, the 'System,' devolves the sacred if
expensive duty of saving the nation, and, however abhorrent to our fine
moral sense, patriotism compels us to spend millions in bribing and
corrupting the electorate so that virtue, 'Standard Oil,' and J. P. Morgan may
continue the good work of caring for the public's interests as their own."
As I listened to Rogers' exordium on the duties of a citizen in an emergency,
I remembered the "Standard Oil" code—"Everything for God (our God);
God (our God) in everything." It was so essentially "Standard Oil," this
willingness to commit even that greatest wrong, subverting the will of the
people in the exercise of their highest function—the election of a President
—but only that good (their good) might come of it. It was no more than
selfish greed tricked out in the noble trappings of morality, an infamous
crime disguised as patriotism. Doubtless, the excellent, God-fearing, law-

abiding citizens of the doubtful States who read this and learn how the
"System" defeated their will at the polls will cry, "Monstrous! Can such
things be in America?" and then will resume their interrupted occupation of
"letting well enough alone." However, this is aside from my story.
Having clearly set forth the political situation through which we should be
saved, Mr. Rogers proceeded to map out my own programme. First, I must
perfect an alibi for him by going to Foster and Braman, and impressing
upon them the fact that he was absolutely out of the affair, and must under
no circumstances be brought into it; next, I must convince Addicks to the
same effect, and in addition tell him that Mr. Rogers had angrily refused to
get into the mix-up; I should then hold myself in readiness to meet John
Moore and Hanna or Osborne as soon as an appointment could be arranged.
That afternoon I got the word and went to 26 Broadway, and from there Mr.
Rogers and I went over to John Moore's office, slipping in the private door
from the rear street.
"John," said Mr. Rogers, "I am going to turn this matter over to you and
Lawson, and I am to have nothing further to do with it. What you two agree
to will be satisfactory to me, and remember, both of you, every dollar that is
paid is paid by the National Committee, but after it's all settled, and if there
is no slip-up, I will look to Lawson for whatever is expended. Is it
understood?"
We agreed that it was, and Mr. Rogers left us.
John Moore deserves more than a mere passing mention here, for he was at
this time a distinguished Wall Street character and one of the ablest
practitioners of finance in the country. During the last fifteen years of his
life, John Moore was party to more confidential financial jobs and deals
than all other contemporaneous financiers, and he handled them with great
skill and high art. Big, jolly, generous, a royal eater and drinker, an
associate of the rich, the friend of the poor, a many-times millionaire, who a
few years before had been logging it on the rivers of Maine, his native
State, John Moore well deserved his "Street" name, "Prince John." His firm,
Moore & Schley, transacted an immense brokerage business, and numbered
among its clients great capitalists and bankers all over the country.
Especially were Moore & Schley famed for their discretion, and the highest

proof of confidence reposed in the firm was the fact that it did the bulk of
the stock speculating for what is known as "the Washington contingent."
This is, perhaps, the most peculiar and delicate business that comes to "the
Street." A big Wall Street house opens a Washington office and organizes an
elaborate system of special wires, wires from which there can be no
possibility of leakage. It is then ready for the patronage of members of
Congress, United States Senators and national officials, whose honorable
positions make them the custodians of national secrets of great commercial
value. If, for instance, a new law is to be passed which must favorably
affect a given stock, legislators who are on "the inside" often buy thousands
of shares in order to reap the profit of the rise in value incidental to its
passage. Or perhaps there is in prospect a law which will interfere with the
special privilege of some other stock and reduce its price. Those in
possession of advance information "go short" of that stock (sell for future
delivery) to profit by the drop. There are many other opportunities the
Washington "insider" of speculative turn may use to advantage. For
instance, if a high official of the Government were about to issue a
proclamation against a foreign nation, and should desire secretly to make a
million or so out of the panic he knew must follow the announcement, he
would cast about him for a broker who would preserve this sacred
confidence. It would invariably be through the Moore firm that his secretary
or confidential man would do the short selling. There are also the operations
of lobbyists who, to affect important legislation for this great interest or the
other, buy or sell stock for the benefit of legislators whose votes they desire
to influence. Extreme caution is demanded in the execution of such orders,
or all hands might by some slip-up find themselves wearing striped suits.[15]
Such a catastrophe seemed imminent some years ago when the Sugar Trust
was before the United States Senate for some legislation necessary to
bolster up its monopoly. Its agents had either been less cautious than usual
in disguising the raw bribery they were perpetrating, or this particular
Senate was too brazen to take the usual precautions to hide its greed from
the world. In any case, so great an outcry was made in the press of the
country that some sacrifice to the people's wrath was called for—one of
those familiar sacrifices which, at intervals of ten or fifteen years in this
republic, our rulers make to the great god Integrity. An investigation was
organized, and a Senatorial inquisition had before it eminent sugar

capitalists and many other distinguished gentlemen who could by no
possibility shed light on the transactions, and then, realizing that a show of
earnestness, at least, was demanded, it was agreed that some member of
Moore & Schley's firm must go on the witness-stand, and, on refusing to
tell which Senators had speculated in sugar, must be sent to jail. This
grandstand play, it was calculated, and rightly, would so hold the attention
of the American people that when the committee concluded its investigation
with the usual loud acclaim of duty well done, its Draconian punishment of
the unsubmissive broker would act as another ten years' stay against outcry.
When this stratagem was decided on, John Moore announced that he as
head of the firm should be the sacrifice. But the representatives of the
"System" and the Senate firmly refused to assign him that rôle, and instead,
to his grief and anger, nominated for jail the associate member who had
charge of Moore & Schley's Washington business, whom they declared the
logical victim. During the thirty days that his friend and partner spent
behind the bars John Moore's hair whitened more than in all the years
before, and from that time until his death he refused firmly to take part in
his old line of work, or was ever again his old jovial self.

FOOTNOTES:
[13] Over a year after the publication of this statement startled the country, John
A. McCall, President of the New York Life Insurance Company, and George W.
Perkins, Vice-President of the same company and partner of J. Pierpont Morgan,
were compelled to confess that they had contributed from their policy-holders'
deposits, large amounts of money to a fund to defeat Bryan in 1896 and to the
Republican campaign funds of the two following presidential elections, and that
they gloried in it. At the same time Jacob Schiff, director of the Equitable Life
and a partner in the great international banking-house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.,
admitted that funds belonging to the policy-holders of the "Big Three," the New
York, the Mutual, and the Equitable, were used in a joint fund to influence the
Legislature of every State in the Union.
[14] President McCall used almost the same language in September, 1905, in
justifying his payment.
[15] The President was notified some few months ago that the cotton report was
being juggled by employees of the United States Department of Agriculture in
the interest of certain Wall Street speculators who were gambling in cotton.
Investigation proved that it was the practice to falsify the report; and certain
Government officials and brokers are now under indictment.

CHAPTER XXV
ATHLETICS OF FINANCE

Entirely apart from his relationship with Mr. Rogers it was a great help in
this Bay State emergency to have the aid of a man of John Moore's wealth
of vim and wide knowledge of men and affairs. Freely and frankly I
explained our situation to him with its innumerable complications until he
had mastered its intricacies. A tough job he pronounced our proposition, and
he was the authority on the subject. After our talk was ended he called in
Osborne, who had evidently already been talked to. He said to Osborne:
"I've been over Addicks' affairs with Lawson, and there is no question in my
mind and that of other friends of the party that he should have what is
necessary to carry Delaware. You had better have the committee ready to
put in between $350,000 and $400,000 if we call for it. I will see that it is
kept down as low as possible."
Osborne then spoke his piece and replied that the committee would do
whatever was decided best, and asked me to send Addicks around next day
to explain just how he was pushing things in Delaware. All this was play-
acting for the benefit of Rogers' alibi.
The next thing on my programme was to persuade Addicks to relinquish his
hold on the old Boston gas companies, and this was likely to prove my most
difficult task. I left John Moore, who agreed to hold himself in readiness at
any hour to consult on and approve such settlement as I could arrange, and
energetically started in on the Delaware financier. It was a trying ordeal. As
soon as Addicks saw I had something to work on he began to demur and
object. If he could not have things his way, he would do nothing. He knew
that I had joined a conspiracy to ruin him; that I was in league with Rogers,
who was in league with Braman and Foster, and that all were banded
together to take all he had away from him. In the course of that two hours'
wrestle I was tempted several times to throw up the whole affair, and there
were some bitter and savage word-passages that left both of us heated. I

could do nothing with him; he must hear from Rogers personally. Finally I
got the "Standard Oil" wire, and Rogers talked so plainly and coldly as
partially to sober him, but ended by agreeing to have his counsel talk things
over with Addicks, which was a distinct concession. A little later Mr.
Rogers' representative was at the Hoffman and he and Addicks had it hot
and heavy. After about fifteen minutes of conference they had wellnigh
come to blows. However, the hot exchanges had begun to tell. Addicks
grew saner, but he insisted on seeing Foster and Braman. I warned him that
he was fast getting our affairs into such shape that no one could patch them
up, but to no avail. He must meet his enemies face to face if only to ram
into their teeth that they were scoundrels. Finally, I got Braman on the
telephone and explained that I was doing my best to quiet a crazy man, who
would consent to nothing until after he had seen him and Foster and told
them what thieves they were. I heard Braman chuckle. He said: "Bring him
along to Foster's house at 10.30," and added: "It wouldn't be a bad idea to
have an ambulance along, too." This suggested further complications, for
Braman has the reputation on "the Street" of being more eager to face a
wild man on a rampage than a sick one in a plaster cast, while Foster,
although a little bit of a fellow, was never known to side-step or duck
trouble. I slipped word down to Moore at the Waldorf to follow along to
Foster's place in a cab.
There are several "spite houses" in New York. Foster's house was one of
them. It is a narrow strip of a brownstone dwelling at 79 West 54th Street,
built to express the enmity of one property owner for his neighbor who
refused to pay an extortionate price for the land. It is about the width of a
front door, and inside there is just about room to move around. It afforded a
queer background for the scene enacted there that night.
Promptly at 10.30 Addicks and I were at the door, and by 10.32 the tunnel-
like walls of the "spite house" resounded with as illuminating a verbal
interchange of billingsgate biographies as I have ever listened to. At 10.35 I
covered Addicks in a hasty but quite successful retreat which he beat to our
cab. Thence to the Hoffman House, where I summoned Parker Chandler to
aid in the calming of our raving associate. The next two hours were of the
pulse-jumping, vein-tearing kind incidental to "frenzied finance," but they
were not without avail, for Addicks finally agreed that he might consent to
"something" provided the Bay State equities in the Boston companies were

so preserved that he could eventually get them back into his hands by
repayment to Rogers or by the redemption of bonds.
Having got thus far, I again went after Braman and Foster, who were at the
Hotel Cambridge. We repaired for further conference to the University
Club, which was then in the old A. T. Stewart marble palace on the corner
of Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. I shall never forget that session. It
was past midnight, but the three of us battled with our smoky problem, now
good-naturedly, now bitterly. At times it looked hopeless because of this
obstinate demand or that steadfast refusal. It must have been three o'clock in
the morning when I left them and stepped into the Waldorf for a moment to
relieve Moore's vigil. Then back again to the Hoffman, where Addicks,
Chandler, and some Bay State directors were nodding. By this time I was in
no mood to say more than that I would be over in the morning, and that
Addicks should go early to the National Committee's head-quarters and
explain the desperation of conditions in Delaware to Hanna, Osborne, and
their associates. At last I was free to return to the Brunswick for a few
hours' rest.
In the country, cock-crow is the signal to be up and doing. In the city, the
signal to be up and to do is a hoarse, metallic roar that would drown a
million country cock-crows if each particular cock were as big as the
mythical rooster of antiquity and could crow in proportion to his size. My
readers who dwell on the hills and in dales and wheat-fields, and who are
unfamiliar with the wild, weird early morning din of the city, may not know
that the metropolitan cock-crow is made up of the jingle and jangle of a
million tin milk cans jolted over a million blocks of stone to the tune of
thousands of steel-shod feet, the shrill cries of an army of butcher and baker
boys and the groans and the moans of countless troubled and tortured
human souls. Cock-crow in the country means "Awake to another day of
life." Cock-crow in the city is a signal for the slaves of Mammon to arise to
another interval of flight and pursuit.
The great city cock was just getting ready to send forth his hoarse cry as I
went to bed, and he was still on his roost a few hours later, when I awoke. I
looked from my window of the Brunswick across the Square, now flooded
with the pure sunlight of early morning, and all the kinks and quirks and
hobgoblins which the rush and irritation of yesterday had generated seemed

to have vanished, and I could not suppress a smile at the thought of the
night before, when this battle—this puny, insignificant battle for a few dirty
dollars—had almost raised feelings I now knew too well should only be
aroused by real battles, battles in which noble principles were involved, and
I felt better able to fight what I had thought, the night before, was going to
be a hard battle.
"Pshaw!" said I, as I looked away and beyond the park to the grand
battlefields of my better imagination, "what will it matter a hundred years
hence what name appears against victor or vanquished in the archives of
fame or the records of infamy when the student reads, 'A.D. 1896, Bay State
Gas-"Standard Oil" war,'" for I saw that among the countless real deeds
there would be no room for any record to mark the existence of any Gas or
Dollar war.
With these thoughts still in mind I sat down to breakfast with Parker
Chandler, and as I listened to his cheerful gossip of yesterday, I inwardly
resolved that whatever the result of the day's effort, I would take it with a
smile.
Thursday was another period of strenuous struggle and unceasing effort. I
began early, and every moment was taken up with arguments, wrangles,
pleadings! Chandler had agreed to see that Addicks kept his appointment
with the National Committee and that a quorum of Bay State directors
should be on hand in the Hoffman so that we could get quick action on any
proposition that came up. This arranged I hurried over to see John Moore,
then down for a last word with Mr. Rogers. Addicks came next for a spell;
from him to Braman and Foster; back to John Moore; more interviews with
lawyers and round the circle again. It seemed as though it were impossible
to arrive at any agreement that some one of the principals interested would
not kick over. At four o'clock Friday morning John Moore and myself
ceased our labors for the day, both of us wellnigh exhausted. With all our
efforts many of the vital points to our agreement were still in the air. A few
hours' sleep and we were back at our task, and by six o'clock on Friday
night the last obstacle had been overcome and the deal was completed.
There remained now the tremendous business of putting all the
arrangements concluded into execution. A multitude of legal documents had

to be drawn up and executed, first by Rogers and then by the Bay State
board of directors and officers. It was a pile of work, but not a second was
lost, and by 11.20 that night we were ready for the third act, which was to
be performed simultaneously by different sets of actors in Boston and
Wilmington. For this our officers were split. With the directors of the
Boston corporations, Chandler, and Mr. Rogers' attorney to supervise the
legal end of next day's transaction, I left on a special car attached to the
midnight train for Boston; while Addicks and the Bay State directors set
forth on another midnight train for Wilmington, Del., to be followed in the
early morning by my New York partner, John Moore's partner, Braman,
Foster, and more counsel representing Mr. Rogers. This contingent was to
carry the money.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE CIRCLING OF THE VULTURES

I don't believe there ever was before or since a financial operation in which
so many things, each of vital importance, had to be done at one and the
same time.
Before I took the train for Boston, just after the last deed had been signed,
Braman, Foster, and I had come to a complete understanding in regard to
the manner in which the court proceedings the following morning should be
conducted. It was understood that no one should take another's word for
anything, and consequently that no money should pass until specific
performance of all the required conditions. Immediately on the release of
the receivership, Foster and Braman were to be paid their "fee," and they
asked that the $175,000 cash coming to them should be arranged in separate
piles of bills. The two packages containing Foster's and part of Buchanan's,
and Braman's $50,000 were to be in the joint custody of John Moore's
representative and my partner, who, with Rogers' counsel and Addicks, had
been assigned to represent Bay State in the court.
What would happen after the transfer of these several amounts was outside
my jurisdiction. Addicks did not confide to me his own scheme of revenge,
but of Braman and Foster's purposes I had a clear idea. As Braman had
explained, the great winning of his adventure should be made in the stock
plunge he and Foster contemplated in Bay State Gas stock, then selling at 3-
1/2 to 4; but lest there be some slip-up in court, "buy" orders to their
brokers were contingent on the word "go!" from Wilmington. To get this off
at the right moment a clerk was taken along, whose only part in the play
was to telephone this word "go!" They expected in this way to make at least
half a million.[16]
Addicks' intentions, as I afterward learned, were less exalted but much more
direct. He had conceived a plan whereby without danger to himself he could
punish Braman and Foster for the wrong they had done Bay State, and at

the same time meet his election expenses at no cost to his own pocket. In
the course of his electioneering campaign in Delaware, conducted as all the
world knows how, Addicks had gathered to his cause as tough and rascally
a set of "heelers" as ever waylaid aged woman or lame man on the highway.
A lieutenant who had been despatched to Delaware early Friday afternoon,
when it had become evident that we should get things settled up, gathered
the sturdiest members of this precious troop together and solemnly told
them that a serious hitch had occurred in Addicks' game and that it looked
as though, owing to the receivership, there would be no "stuff" to put in
circulation this year. The men responsible for this outrage were to be in
Wilmington on the following day and from the appearance of things would
get the money Addicks had destined for his followers. He understood they
were to receive it in cash, too—$175,000—cash that really belonged to
Addicks, who had intended it for his good friends in Delaware. The thugs,
properly indignant at the wrong that had been done "the Boss," dispersed
rapidly to discuss the information among themselves. That night a group of
leaders got together and figured out a little plan of campaign to frustrate the
robbery of their beloved master. Court proceedings to release the
receivership could not take long, and they calculated that the train schedule
would detain Braman and Foster at least two hours in Wilmington after the
adjournment. What more easy than the organizing of a little scuffle on the
station platform or on the street and in the rush—well, many things happen
in a rush. This simple procedure commended itself to all concerned, and
that night there was much rejoicing among the Addicks camp-followers at
the pleasant things that should be pulled "off" at the flim-flamming bee next
day.
All these things were in the air when court opened in Wilmington on
Saturday morning. A special telephone line had been run and arrangements
made for a clear wire right into the directors' office in the head-quarters of
the Gas Light Company in Boston. At the telephone in Wilmington sat my
partner ready to communicate to me the exact course of the proceedings, so
that I might simultaneously make the agreed transfers of our companies to
Rogers. I knew my partner's voice; he knew mine. We, too, were taking no
chances.
* New York, February 21, 1905.

Dear Mr. Lawson: In your article in Everybody's Magazine for
January, among other misstatements upon which I shall not now
comment—since you have committed yourself too far to make it
likely that you will withdraw them—you accuse me of having
speculated in Bay State Gas stock with Mr. Buchanan's money;
and of having subsequently been sued by him. I hold Mr.
Buchanan's receipt for the money collected for him, which I
paid him the night that I returned from Delaware. He has never
sued me. Please inform me whether you are willing and agree to
strike out these statements from your article when published in
book form, and also whether you will agree to withdraw the
same in your magazine. I tried to call on you and discuss the
case when in Boston, January 21st; and I also tried to meet you
on the day after last Thanksgiving; but apparently you were
unwilling to see me. I remain,
Very truly yours,
Roger Foster.

Thomas W. Lawson, Esq.,
Boston, Mass.
February 23, 1905.
My Dear Mr. Foster: I received your letter of the 21st inst., and
in reply will say, if I have done you any wrong in my story,
"Frenzied Finance," or otherwise, it has been unintentional, and
I regret it, and I seek this, the first opportunity, to give my
regrets the same wide circulation as my original statements.
As I wrote you previous to the publication of the magazine
containing the parts you refer to, I try to exercise the greatest
care in allowing nothing to appear in my story but facts—facts I
know to be facts, and in addition only such facts as are
absolutely necessary to my work, which is the portrayal of those
events of the past essential to a proper understanding by the

people of the evils that have been done them, and how they have
been done, that they may do what is necessary to undo them and
to prevent their repetition in the future, and, in addition, such
facts as it is fair for me to use. I repeat what I said to you then: I
have absolutely no feeling in regard to you other than an intense
desire to do you exact justice.
I dealt with you in the entire Bay State receivership affair in
connection with Mr. Braman and I thought that I had every
reason to believe that his Bay State Gas purchases were for your
joint account; but now that you assure me they were not, I
hasten to have such assurances chase my original story with the
hope that they may speedily overtake it.
My information that you had been sued by Mr. Buchanan came
to me in a way that left no doubt in my mind of its correctness—
no doubt until I received your letter. Papers were sent to me
some time ago by reputable attorneys in a suit of Buchanan
against Braman and, I understood, yourself, along the lines
outlined in my story, with the request that I allow my deposition
to be taken, so that Buchanan could get at the facts in his
attempt to recover the moneys claimed.
Your assurances to the contrary in regard to this matter I also
hasten to start on the road you point out, and I will see that both
statements are expunged from my book.
You are in error in thinking that I did not wish to see you when
you were in Boston. I did not know in either case of your desires
until it was too late to see you. I certainly would have had a "sit-
down" with you if it had been possible.
Again assuring you not only that it is a pleasure to set forth the
facts you have called to my attention, but that I am your debtor
inasmuch as you have given me an opportunity to perform that
duty which I owe to every individual my story treats of—to state
facts and only facts with which they have been connected—
believe me,

Yours truly,
Thomas W. Lawson.

FOOTNOTES:
[16] See foot-note on pages 189 and 190.

CHAPTER XXVII
COURT CORRUPTION AND COIN

The closing scene of this most significant drama was enacted on Saturday
morning in the Wilmington Circuit Court-room. There was nothing in the
cold formality of the proceedings to indicate that here was the dénouement
of a serio-comedy in which greed and ambition had clashed in a battle for
millions; nor in the amiable indifference of the men who got within the
enclosed space below the judge's desk to suggest the murderous passions
and fierce hatreds raging beneath the surface of the prevailing calm.
The dramatis personæ were gathered in little groups representing the
separate interests—Addicks and some of his lieutenants; my partner at the
telephone; John Moore's partner and Rogers' counsel with their heads
together; Braman and Foster nearer the judge, their eyes wandering toward
two dress-suit cases piled before John Moore's partner, which, it was
understood, contained the money. At a glance it was impossible to tell the
one containing Buchanan's share from the other laden with the receivership
loot, but each was tagged, and it was evident that possibilities of a mix-up
had been carefully guarded against. Behind Braman was his clerk, and in
the rear of the court-room sat as many of Addicks' thugs as could squeeze
into the narrow space reserved for spectators. They, too, eyed the dress-suit
cases avidly, for the information had been passed around that these innocent
receptacles contained the "stuff," of which the "Boss" was about to be
robbed.
Court came to order. Foster rose, announced that the claims of his client had
been satisfied, and made a formal motion to dismiss the receivership. The
Court formally consented, and as the clerk was entering the dismissal in his
minute-book my partner telephoned the facts to me. I sent back the word
that my directors were resigning—had resigned—that Rogers' directors
were being elected—had been elected—that the Boston gas companies were
now transferred to Rogers. My partner whispered my words to John
Moore's partner and Rogers' counsel. At once the two dress-suit cases, each

loaded with currency, were slipped to Braman and Foster. At the same time
the messenger who was to telephone to their broker rose and quickly left the
court-room. A brief period was consumed in signing receipts, certificates,
and other legal papers, and then the performance was over. Addicks rose
and went out among his henchmen in the rear, who eagerly surrounded him.
In the bustle Braman and Foster, each with his own booty, fled.
Let us see what was happening at the Boston end of the wire while all this
dumb show was being enacted in the Wilmington court-house. My directors
and officials were lined up against the walls of the directors' room in the
Boston Gas Light Company's office like so many members of young John
D. Rockefeller's Sunday-school class, inasmuch as they were prepared to
listen, sing, or shout "Amen!" at any time they received the nod of the class-
leader. In an adjoining room Rogers' counsel had a similar line-up, with the
difference that my men were about to shed the crowns which the others
were waiting to receive, and which would transform them from humble
business men into royal gas kings. Through the open wire I was in such
close touch with the scene in the Wilmington court-room that I was almost
sure I heard the subdued weeping of the blindfolded Lady of the Scales on
the bills which occupied such a prominent part in the disreputable
proceedings. Nothing now could impede the course of events, so I
concluded to take Time by the headgear and secure what Bay State stock
was in the market before Braman and Foster got in their work. Over another
wire which was at my elbow I gave the word "go!" to my own brokers in
Boston and New York, and when a few minutes later they told me they were
securing thousands of shares, and that the stock was climbing toward 10, I
could not repress an inward chuckle at the thought that the money we had
so reluctantly parted with would spread over only one-half or one-third the
surface it was originally intended to cover.
It was all over in a few minutes, and when my partner said, "It's done," and
"By Jove, there go Dwight Braman and Roger Foster on the dead run with a
dress-suit case apiece!" I held my sides as Parker Chandler in his inimitable
way bawled: "Tom, let's leave our straw hats on the pegs, for we'll probably
be back next spring figuring out how to pump air enough through the gas-
measuring meters to pay for that money we've just loaned Braman and
Foster for a day or two."

Braman and Foster, as I have observed before, knew their business. The
danger to which $175,000 in currency would be exposed, in a territory
controlled by Addicks, had appealed to their cautious instincts, and once
outside the court-room they literally took to their heels and ran for a corner
of the railway yard, where awaiting them was a special car and engine.
They jumped aboard, yelling to the engineer: "Let her go." In the meantime
eager-eyed ruffians searched the streets and hung round the hotels, looking
for two men with dress-suit cases. A hundred of them were on the station
platform, awaiting the departure of the regular train. Ten minutes before
leaving-time one of the henchmen appeared among the gang, and passed
round the word that the gents and the "stuff" had got off by a special, and it
was no use waiting any longer. Later that afternoon, Addicks, to use his
own words, in one of his rendezvous, "dealt out his own good money in
place of that he had hoped would take care of the people's rights."
It was a fierce session of the Stock Exchange that Saturday morning.
Shortly before closing time a new set of brokers were frantically grabbing
for Bay State stock round 10, and Monday morning, when all the world
knew that the receivership had been lifted and our company was itself
again, the same crowd continued to buy fiercely. To these eager purchasers I
resold all that I had previously gathered, and enough short besides, to
compensate me for some of the losses I had previously suffered, for this
latter I was enabled to repurchase at half price, when news came that
another suit had begun against Bay State. This latter drop in price so
shattered the nerves of Braman and Foster that they retired, having made up
their minds that they did not know quite as much about one end of "frenzied
finance" as they did about the other. As a matter of fact, nothing came of the
suit in question, for it was evident when the transfer of the Boston gas
companies to Rogers' control became known, that Bay State Gas
receiverships had played their last successful engagement.
My readers will not object if I again call their attention to the inevitable
workings of the law of compensation. The losses occasioned by the market
action of Bay State stock in these four days so mixed up Braman and Foster
in their financial accounts that later they were sued by their client,
Buchanan, who in court stated that he in turn was so confused as to what
was done in connection with this business that he really knew less after it
was over than before the suits were brought. But one thing was indelibly

impressed upon his mind—that his bonds had disappeared in the whirl and
he had not received anything for them. I think this suit is still pending.

CHAPTER XXVIII
PEACE AT LAST

When the curtain fell on the closing scene of the performance in the
Delaware court there ensued a brief interval of quiet in the affairs of Bay
State Gas. Rejoicing in the temporary diversion of public attention, the
chief actors proceeded to assume their former rôles, and soon affairs began
to move at their old gait. Rogers took possession of all the Boston gas
companies and patiently awaited the coming down the pike of some
traveller with more money than brains. Having successfully corrupted the
State of Delaware, Addicks was being measured for the senatorial toga,
when accidentally the blind lady dropped her scales on his unprotected
head, which catastrophe laid him out long enough to enable another to
sneak the prize he had so long striven for. We are not at present concerned
with the affairs of Delaware, and it suffices to say in passing, that after a
heated contest one Richard Kenney was chosen to the senatorial seat
Addicks had so long coveted, and that this man, a typical Delaware vote-
rancher, after being sworn in as United States Senator, was brought back to
Wilmington and tried for robbing a Delaware bank, his accomplices being
some other heelers of Addicks. The disclosures made in the trial showed
that the case in all characteristics conformed to the Addicks standard of
indecency, for the bank officials, not satisfied with "blowing in" every
dollar of deposits and capital the institution owned or controlled, had
actually "lifted" in addition the building in which the bank was situated.
One of the court functionaries who had heard the evidence tersely
remarked: "Talk about stealing a red-hot stove: this is a case where they
took the funnel with it to keep the draught going until they set it up in a new
location!"
But Delaware, as my readers have doubtless gathered long ere this, is its
own kind of a country, and rewards and punishments are so perversely
adjusted that it seems a sort of Topsyturvydom. In this instance certain of
Addicks' heelers went to State's prison and death; Kenney returned to the
Senate to help make laws for the great free people of America, while the

chief conspirator, with a threat to sue the blindfolded lady for damage done,
began to set out the pieces on the Bay State Gas chessboard with a view to
trying certain new moves that had occurred to his perpetual-motion mind.
The situation of Bay State Gas stock was fully understood by the public.
While Rogers had possession of the Boston companies, he simply held
them in trust, and must give them up whenever the parent corporation had
coin enough to redeem them. The securities were still in the hands of the
public and my friends, and my own duty to get Bay State Gas on its feet
was plain. It was again a case of raising money, and to do this we had the
issue of securities which we were preparing to float just before Foster and
Braman swooped down on us. Addicks agreed that if I would undertake the
marketing of this stock, he would issue only enough of it to redeem the
properties from Rogers. His directors met and formally "resoluted" on this
point, and I felt satisfied before going ahead that there was no danger of this
money being put in jeopardy without actually stealing it. The company, for
the nonce, had no other business but to pay office rent and clerk hire, and in
spite of Addicks' financial immorality, all who knew him were aware he
took no chances of ever getting himself sent to jail. So I began to sell the
stock in the open market.

PART II

CHAPTER I
THE MAGIC WORLD OF FINANCE

Though this is the twentieth century and enlightenment is supposed to
prevail throughout this broad land of ours, the majority of people still
regard the world of finance as the world of magic. Within the fairy realm of
finance the laws of nature apparently are suspended, and, overnight,
wonders are worked. The ordinary mortal, wise in all other walks of life,
sees the man who yesterday stood beside him at the plough or at the bench
emerging from the mysterious portals bearing the fruits of the endeavors of
a hundred or a thousand lives, although a moment ago he passed through
them with nothing. Who can deny the magic that thus demonstrates its
power, or fail to accord veneration to the magicians that work such
marvels? No wonder the ordinary mortal feels that he has no license to enter
the world of finance save on his knees, hat in hand, bearing tribute to the
divinities enthroned within this enchanted territory.
It is my purpose to do away with this extraordinary deception and to show it
up as one of the artifices with which tricksters, since the beginning of the
world, have imposed upon the people. There should be nothing in finance
that any man or woman of ordinary intelligence and experience cannot
understand, and I purpose to explain here the machinery of the "System" so
that every one will exactly understand it from headlight to rear-end lantern.
Many intelligent people have no clear idea of what a certificate of stock or a
bond really is, and the words "money," "stock-exchange," and "finance" are
mere terms which they glibly use without knowledge of their meaning.
It is not difficult to understand the grocery or the dry-goods business.
Standard articles of well-known form are sold by weight or measure over
the counters for fair prices. The patrons of such businesses insist on
knowing what they are buying—what they are to get in exchange for the
money which is the fruit of their labor, and then, after they have been told,
and they trade, they require that the goods be as described or they will know
why not. The average American would consider it a huge joke should his

grocer undertake to induce him to buy one hundred times more sugar than
he could use, on the ground that he might find in the sugar bags when he
reached home gold and diamonds. But would he not wrathfully seek the
police if, after opening his sugar bag, for which he had paid $1, he found it
contained only 50 cents' worth of sugar? He would tell you if you met him
at this stage: "You can bet that chap on the corner cannot get away with any
such trick as that—not in America. He might in Zanzibar or in the kingdom
of the Sultan of Sulu, but I will show him he cannot rob Americans in these
enlightened times." The grocer would be hustled to jail without a "by your
leave," and thenceforward his name would be a by-word among all honest
tradesmen.
And so it goes in every business but finance—finance, the most important
of all, the business into which is merged all other businesses, the business
of taking and preserving the results of all other businesses, of all other
human endeavor. Over our land to-day are big, able Americans, long-
headed and experienced, adept at a jack-knife swap or a horse trade—
industrious farmers, hard-handed miners, shrewd manufacturers, each in his
own line a good business man, yet these sturdy traders, whom the "gold-
brick" artist or the "green-goods" practitioner would never dream of
tackling, come weekly into Wall Street, or into such branch shops as exist in
every community on the continent, and are done out of their savings like the
veriest "come-ons." Humbly they take, in return for the gold earned with the
sweat of their brows, a piece of paper of a given value which they return
later and exchange for half the amount the paper cost them originally. In the
space between purchase and sale fifty per cent. of their investment has
disappeared—has been filched away, but yet they have no resentment. They
evince none of the feelings of the man whose pocket has been picked or
whose till has been robbed. On the contrary, their sentiment is of admiration
for the banker, the broker, the financier through whose agency their money
has been lost.
Take, for instance, the prosperous tanner who goes to his banker with
$100,000, the fruit of ten years' success, and exchanges this sum for 1,000
shares of Steel Preferred. Now, if he were to examine this security with half
the thought or investigation he gives to a $500 car-load of bark, he would
learn that there was not 20 cents on the dollar of real value behind it. In six
months the eminent tanner is again at the banker's offering for sale his

thousand shares of steel. In the meantime it has declined in value and he has
to part with it for $50,000. But he does not complain; indeed, he bows his
way out of the palatial office of the great man and is full of sincere thanks
when the banker promises to let him know the next good thing on the
market. Suppose our tanner had purchased ten cars of tan bark and found
that each car-load was short ten per cent. Would he not at once go to his
attorney and exclaim emphatically that he would spend thousands rather
than let the scoundrel who had tricked him get away with his swag?
Suppose our grocer waxing rich invests his funds in the Sugar trust. He
thinks he knows all there is to be known about sugar. The business of the
trust is to make the sweet commodity and sell it to the people. No mystery
or magic, surely, about this simple pursuit. Yet when our grocer invests his
savings, the sugar stock is many dollars more valuable than when, scared
into selling by fluctuations which he cannot see any reason for, he tries to
get back his investment. So many times have investors been milked of their
savings by this one trust during the past twenty years that in the coffers of
its creators and jugglers are hundreds of millions of money that once
belonged to the people for which they have received absolutely nothing in
return.
Both the tanner and the grocer must know, when they look up and down
Wall Street at the great office buildings which tower into the sky on either
side of the street, that these are huge hives of expensive bees who, from
New Year's to New Year's, do not produce a dollar. They should realize that
the hundreds of millions spent each year for the expense of running the
"System's" game, and the millions which the game-makers flaunt in their
faces, must have been derived from such as they—the men who produce.
It is the phenomenon of the age that millions of people throughout this great
country of ours come of their own free will to the shearing pens of the
"System" each year, voluntarily chloroform themselves, so that the
"System" may go through their pockets, and then depart peacefully home to
dig and delve for more money that they may have the debasing operation
repeated on them twelve months later.
You may ask if I desire to convey the idea that the great financial
institutions and trusts of this country, which have their head centre in Wall

Street, are all concerned in a conspiracy to rob the people of their savings.
You think, doubtless, that so sweeping a statement goes beyond the truth. I
desire to go on record right here in declaring that all financial institutions
which in any way are engaged in taking from the people the money that is
their surplus earnings or their capital, for the ostensible purpose of
safeguarding it, or putting it in use for them, or exchanging it for stocks,
bonds, policies, or other paper evidences of worth, are a part of the
machinery for the plundering of the people.
This is a terrible charge, I am well aware, but it is based upon a thorough
knowledge of the subject and made with a full appreciation of its gravity. I
do not mean to say that all the men who handle and control the different
institutions I mentioned have guilty knowledge of the bearing of their
actions. Many of them are of the purest minds and most honest intentions,
and are quite incapable of participating voluntarily in a conspiracy to wrong
any one. They do not know, however, that the relation between their own
minor institution and the general financial structure constitutes the former
an agency for the "System," which controls and has organized the general
financial structure into an instrument for converting the money of the public
to its own purposes. In fact, the "System" has cunningly possessed itself of
the financial mechanism of the country and is running it, not for the object
for which the machine was devised, but for the benefit and personal profit
of its votaries, and so the vast correlated organization of banks, trust
companies, and insurance corporations which were brought into being for
the safe handling of the people's savings has become an agency for
transferring these savings to the control of unscrupulous manipulators, who
take liberal toll of every dollar that passes through their hands.
The duty of the American people is to unloosen the thraldom of the
"System" on our financial mechanism; to pluck out of their high places the
dishonest usurpers who have degraded the purposes of our financial
institutions, and to restore those institutions to their legitimate functions.
When the people are fully awakened to the condition I describe, surely they
will arise in their wrath and sweep the money-changers from the temple.

CHAPTER II
THE "SYSTEM" AND THE LOUISIANA LOTTERY
COMPARED

Years ago one of the greatest evils in this country was the Louisiana
Lottery. Through that lottery millions and millions annually were taken
from the people and transferred to a few unprincipled schemers, who soon
found themselves in possession of enormous fortunes. Wise men called for
the abatement of this awful drain on the savings of the nation, but the law-
abiding, God-fearing people of the country met their plaints with "Why
should we be bothered about this matter? If fools and knaves elect to
gamble in such palpably fraudulent ways, let them gamble, and their losses
are no affair of ours. It is none of our business." But presently these honest
people had it pounded into their well-meaning heads that the principal
instrument by which the swindle was conducted was their own mail service,
one of the most important branches of their Government; that, in fact, in
each and every city, town, village, and cross-road in all our virtuous land,
Government officials were acting as distributing agents for this huge
corrupter and robber.
Then the people rose in their irresistible might, and between the rising of
one day's sun and its setting this powerful machine went as goes the gum-
drop on the red-hot stove cover at a pop-corn soirée. It melted, leaving
nothing but a faint odor and a thin stain, both of which disappeared in the
next morning's scrubbing, and the Louisiana Lottery was as though it had
never been. Yet during its reign its insolent votaries could prove to the
absolute satisfaction of all intelligent, patriotic men that it was useless for
any man or set of men to attempt the lottery's destruction, because they
would be met with the accumulated resistance of the reckless spending of
the vast amounts of festered dollars which had been stolen from the people.
The argument of these comparatively petty thieves was: "No men nor sets
of men can hope to 'stack up' against us, for their money comes hard, cents
and dollars at a time; they are obliged to earn it, while we get ours in

chunks by simply taking it. We can buy lawyers and can hire law-makers,
and we can lease Government officials, and we can outbid any honest men,
who are the only ones who object to our game. In the market for legislative
or business talent you cannot get within touching distance of us." Yet the
people had but to sneeze and this foul parasite was detached from their free
and honest structure and was wafted away with the dead leaves and the dust
to bottomless nowhere.
In the height of its prosperity the Louisiana Lottery took from the people
only a paltry ten or twenty million dollars a year, while to-day there are
single groups of banks, trust companies, corporations, and trusts which take
from the people by might, by trick, and by theft hundreds of millions each
year; and there are scores of such groups. The Sugar trust has been the
instrument of gathering, in one year, a hundred millions of the people's
savings, and the Steel trust alone has robbed the people of over five
hundred millions of dollars in a single twelve months.
To-day the "System" and its methods are as clearly and as sharply defined
in the tangibility of their relation to the people as was ever the Louisiana
Lottery. On certain days the Louisiana Lottery sold its tickets, which the
people bought with their savings. On a certain day the drawing took place,
at which all those who had parted with their dollars expected to receive
them back together with immense profits, and upon that day disappointment
was spread broadcast among the many and unhealthy joy among the few. So
with the "System." On certain days the public is sold their stock, bond, and
insurance policy certificates. Upon other days they look for their savings
and profits. On the contrary, they learn that their savings have decreased in
value or have been wiped out, and that there never was any chance of profit.
My critics will say that such a comparison cannot hold, for in the lottery
nothing was dealt in but gambling tickets, whereas the stock or bond
certificate represents an ownership in the material things of the country.
This is the fallacy the "System" spends millions every year to foster and
disseminate. Between the two the difference is in favor of the Louisiana
Lottery, for both are gambles and the lottery game was square. Those who
ran it had for their trouble a fixed percentage of the profits, an enormous
percentage, it is true, but the general fund was never encroached upon by
the controllers. Who is to say what percentage the votaries of the "System"
take in their game? It depends on how much their victims have to lose. The

public have been persuaded, too, that in purchasing stocks they do not
gamble, but only invest, or, at the worst, speculate, so they are deceived as
well as plundered. A few millions each year satisfied the lottery owners; the
votaries of the "System," among whom the "swag" must be divided,
demand millions upon millions each. The tickets of the lottery had a
definite value at all times until the drawing took place. The stocks and
bonds of the "System" have no rigid or unalterable value when issued or at
any other time, and do not represent a fixed ownership in all the savings of
the people which have been paid for them.
Morally, legally, or ethically, the Louisiana Lottery, with all its attendant
curses, was a far better institution for the people to bump up against every
month than is the "System" against which the whole people are now directly
or indirectly dealing every working day of the year. Startling this statement
may be, but not more startling than the facts. The records of the lottery
company will show how many dollars it took in from the public; how many
were returned in prizes and expenses; and how many went into the pockets
of the owners. The records of the banks, corporations, trusts, and stock-
exchanges will exhibit how many dollars were paid into the "System" by
the people; how much they received back in return therefor; how much the
expense of conducting the business was; and how much profit went to the
votaries of the "System." Compare the two and it will be found that there is
annually taken by the "System" from the people a hundred, yes, a thousand
times more than the Louisiana Lottery ever obtained in the same period.
This being the fact, for how long will the people allow such a monstrous
wrong to be done? How long will they suffer a few men to siphon
automatically the money of the many into their own pockets?
It is only a matter of simple mathematics to ascertain the day, and that only
a few years away, when ten men will be as absolutely and completely the
legal owners of the entire United States and all there is of value in it, as
John D. Rockefeller is the absolute legal owner of the large section of it of
which he is to-day possessed.
When that day is here, the people will legally be the slaves of these ten men.
If this is so—and it is as surely so as it is that the Constitution of the United
States of America guarantees to every man, woman, and child who is a part

of it perpetual freedom—it is so because the legal interest alone to which
the ten men will be entitled and which they must receive (or our entire
structure will fall) will of itself bring to their coffers all the wealth in
existence within a given time. If this is so, then why have the American
people allowed themselves to reach this condition? Why are they to-day not
only resting peacefully under this worse than death-bringing yoke, but
assisting in the further riveting of this badge of dishonor and degradation?
The reason is simple: They have been lulled to sleep by the "System" and
its cunning votaries until they have but a dull appreciation not only of
existing conditions but of their coming consequences. It is almost incredible
that a people as intelligent as the American people, and as alert to that
individual and national honor which they have bought with so much of their
blood and their peace of body and mind, can be so deceived and juggled
with. When one looks about, however, and notes happenings of which one
personally knows, and the degradation and dishonor to which public
opinion is seemingly indifferent, nothing is incredible.
One sees a certain man openly displaying five hundred millions of dollars, a
sum which represents the life earnings of 150,000 of our population, and
knows that this man has secured this incredible amount during forty years
of his life. One sees the second highest and most honorable office in the
nation, a United States Senatorship, openly bought for a few stolen dollars
by a man who up to the very day of its purchase was a watch repairer in a
small country town, and who had never done a single meritorious deed or
been possessed of worldly goods to the extent of $5,000. One sees a wily
adventuress secure from the banks, which exist only to safeguard the
people's deposited savings, hundreds of thousands of dollars on her bare
story that she was the possessor of some mysterious documents. One sees a
$6-a-week office-boy of one of the "System's" votaries able to borrow for
the "System," on his bare note, four millions of dollars from a New York
institution which only exists to safeguard the people's savings—although
the law says that such institutions shall not loan to any man on any kind of
collateral, even Government bonds, one-tenth that sum. One sees two men,
drunk with their success, gouging and tearing at each other's hearts in Wall
Street, and sees their gouging and tearing bring about a panic which takes
from the people in an hour over a billion dollars and drives scores to
suicide, murder, and defalcation—the two men continuing meanwhile as

ornamental pillars of society instead of wearing prison stripes. One sees a
great railroad corporation, in which are millions of the trust funds of
widows, orphans, and charitable institutions, caught "short" (having sold
something it did not own) in the stock-gambling game and held up to the
tune of ten million dollars by a reckless stock gambler, who says "If you
don't settle to-night it will be twenty millions to-morrow"; and the toll is
paid, while the great banker who conducts the release of the hold-up
charges the further tribute of twelve million dollars for his services. And
then one sees this twenty-two millions of "commission" tacked on to the
capital stock of the great railroad which is subsequently capitalized into a
"bond" and sold to great life-insurance companies as a first-class investment
for their trust funds.
When one sees these things and a hundred other as rankly fraudulent, one
should not wonder at anything American connected with dollars.
Such things occur because the "System" has so far been able to keep the
public in ignorance of its doings. On the surface there is nothing to suggest
that a set of vampires have captured the high places of finance and are
sucking away the life-blood of the nation. Our banks and trust companies
all present a fair exterior and apparently are the same safe and honorable
institutions they were before the canker fastened on them. Only its votaries
know what the "System" is, and their way is the way of silence and
darkness. A tie, stronger and more effective than the oath of the Mafia,
binds them to its service, and woe be to him who dares divulge its methods.
He who is bold enough to enter upon a recital of these secrets must be
strong indeed to withstand the bribes to silence which would be placed in
his hands. The "System" can well afford to pay any price rather than be
brought face to face with its past, with an enraged people for referee. And
even if the being be found who will venture an exposé of the conspiracy, he
will find it strangely difficult to get his story past the traps and pitfalls
which will be placed between it and the people for whose enlightenment it
is intended.

CHAPTER III
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCE

Finance is easy enough to comprehend if it be explained, but so long as an
explanation is deadly to the interests of the men who control it, one can be
sure none will be offered. There is no term more common to-day than
"trusts," and we are surrounded by "trusts," institutions whose workings
during the past twenty years have awakened intense public curiosity to
know what a "trust" is. Yet there is not extant a definition of a "trust" which
conveys to the rank and file of the people any real idea of what a "trust" is.
So vague is the general understanding of the "trust's" functions and
purposes that the most intelligent and honest statesmen struggle and
hopelessly flounder when they attempt to define them, and we have at the
present time the able chief of our nation talking of regulating them by law,
when, as a matter of fact, a "trust" is, top, sides, bottom, outsides, and
insides, an absolutely illegal institution, created outside the law, existing
outside the law, and having for its purpose the performance of those things
and only those things which the law says cannot be performed legally.
Imagine our law-makers gravely meeting to make laws for the control and
regulation of the pick-pocket or burglar or counterfeiting industry, or
endeavoring to prescribe legally the times, places, and amounts of national
bank defalcations, or the kind of ink, paper, and pens which must be used
by forgers in the pursuit of their profession—imagine it!
In entering upon an explanation of the workings of the "System," it is
necessary to set forth plainly the fundamentals of finance, the few rules and
inventions by and through which humanity regulates its affairs. In the
beginning, of course, might was right and men supplied their wants by
force, trickery, or cunning. In time the disadvantages of this became
obvious, for while the stronger could overcome the weaker and satisfy
desire, a combination of the weaker units acting together could always
wrest the prize from the individual. To equalize things, the people got
together and made for themselves rules and regulations governing the
conduct of their lives and their relations with one another. This was

invention No. 1: Law. Presently it developed that the physical barter of the
commodities of labor was not a satisfactory basis of exchange; so to the
statutes already in existence a new one was added providing an
interchangeable token of value. This was invention No. 2: Money. The
statute insisted that the money be of a fair and just standard, by which all
the people should receive the equivalent of their labor, and no more. As
conditions became more settled, there grew up a realization of the value of
a man's life to those dependent on him, and of the fact that when he died his
wife and his children were deprived of the livelihood his labor won for
them. A new regulation was added to the code, providing that men
contributing to a fund during their lifetime should be entitled at death to
leave to their heirs a sum in proportion to the amount of their contribution
to the fund, less the actual expense of caring therefor. This was Life
Insurance—invention No. 3. But there were other calamities less distant
than death to be guarded against, and a common fund, also based on the
contributions of individuals, to aid and relieve in case of fire and kindred
calamities, was organized. Hence invention No. 4: Fire Insurance.
And thus the fabric of civilization grew, each addition to the structure being
made to cover a want which experience developed. As time went on, some
of the people accumulated the fruits of labor, money, in greater quantity
than was requisite for their own needs, but which less thrifty or less
fortunate brethren could so profitably employ in their own affairs as to be
able to pay for its use a fair proportion of what it could be made to earn.
Thereupon provision was made for a common place of safety for this
surplus money, a place where experts in the handling and putting to use of
money could employ their talents, first, safeguarding it and, then, loaning it
to others. And the law was made to say that all money put into this common
place should be so guarded as to be ready for its owner when he demanded
it; that its owner should receive all it earned less the necessary expense of
holding it, and that the amount it earned should be only such as those who
borrowed it could fairly make it earn. This was invention No. 5: The Bank.
As the years followed one another, "the bank" became one of the most
important of the people's institutions and grew in number and variety. There
came to be many different forms of banks. For instance, national banks,
which, under the control and regulation of the Government, became
depositories for the circulation of the Government's money and were

privileged to lend money to individuals or corporations with or without
collateral. Funds confided by the people to these national banks had always
to be ready for their owners. A second form was the savings-bank, which
grew out of the requirements of small depositors and was governed by the
laws of its community. The savings-bank used and safeguarded money
confided to it in small sums, and these amounts could be withdrawn only by
their owners in person, after an agreed term of notice. The savings-bank
was allowed to lend only on real estate or certain other securities, the
character of which was rigidly regulated by the law. In consequence, it
could use its funds for long-time loans and mortgages, so it earned larger
rates of interest than the national banks. The trust company was a third
variation, coming somewhere between the national and the savings-bank,
and was regulated, as was the latter, by the laws of the community in which
it existed. The trust company, too, received deposits from the people, but
was allowed a broader latitude in employing them. It was also authorized to
engage in certain other business—for example, to act as manager for a
deceased person's estate and even to buy and sell securities. Because of the
extra-hazardous business in which it engaged and from which the other two
institutions were legally debarred, the trust company earned and paid larger
rates of interest to its depositors, and the men who handled its funds were
allowed to take for their own remuneration profits in excess of those
derived by the custodians of national and savings-banks.
Another deficiency in the business structure growing out of the increasing
prosperity of the people was next provided for. When an enterprise became
so large as to necessitate several owners for its conduct, the prescribing and
defining of the relation of these owners to each other and to the common
property became a task of increasing difficulty. So the idea arose of welding
the enterprise itself into a separate entity which could do all the things the
individual might, and yet exist apart from the individual and independent of
his personal dealings and comings and goings. His ownership should be an
undivided interest in the whole represented by certificates of stock or
bonds, which could pass from him to another without interfering with the
enterprise. This was invention No. 6: The Corporation. The law then
provided regulations for the creation and conduct of these corporations
which compelled them to keep their affairs in such shape that all could
ascertain of what each consisted.

When these six organizations had been founded, the machinery for the
conduct of the business of a civilized people was almost complete. But still
one other want developed: with the multiplication of the corporation tokens
of property, it became necessary that there should be some place where the
worth of these might be ascertained either by purchase, sale, or loan under
the regulation of experts. So there was created a common market-place, to
which came all those who had corporation tokens of property to sell and
those who desired to purchase them; and the prices these brought were
announced to the world and became the measure of the value of the
institution they represented. Rules for the regulation of the business of the
market-place were gradually formulated, and invention No. 7—the Stock
Exchange—came into existence.
With this addition, the people's organism for safeguarding and economically
handling the funds of their labor to the best advantage of all concerned and
without interfering with the rights and privileges of individuals was fully
equipped. Each separate institution had grown out of an actual necessity
and had its own legal organic function, fully understood and defined. And
there was no branch of human industry which could not be safeguarded,
handled, and perpetuated through this organism, nor could evil come from
the existence of any one of these seven components. The robber, the thief,
and the pirate, as defences against whom they had been erected, could not
seize any of them or the people's savings which they were created to
safeguard, because the constitution of each provided adequate penalties for
such a seizure. As long as the members of the organism performed their
ordained functions the fabric of the people's fortunes was safe from plunder.

CHAPTER IV
THE MAGIC "JIMMY"

It was at this stage that the class which is now the "System"—of which the
mighty robber of barbaric days was the prototype—began to cast envious
eyes at the accumulated earnings of a prosperous people locked up and
safeguarded against depredation, while the owners (the public) rested easy
in the conviction that they had fully protected themselves against the
spoilsman. The "System" reasoned: "If only a way could be devised to win
control of the seven institutions so that all the benefits the people intend for
themselves may revert to me and yet I be exempt from the punishment
provided for those who attempt unfairly and dishonestly to secure such
benefits, I can get a much easier and surer possession of the results of the
labor of the people than I was wont to when I took them by might."
A need defined is half relieved. Outside the treasure-house was the robber
enviously surveying its strong walls and iron doors, its locks and bolts,
specially designed to defy the felonious intentions of such as he. How
safely to win his way in and possess himself of the piled-up gold was his
problem. And as he waited and watched, the lawyer, at his solicitation,
invented for him a magic "jimmy"—an instrument with which he could not
only break through the outside door, but as easily force his way past the
complex locks of the chambers inside. What was still better, this magic
"jimmy" was also a license to enter upon and take possession of others'
properties and use them for his own benefit. It conferred on its owner a
legal privilege to steal. The robber was satisfied. The "jimmy" which the
lawyer had brought him was the "trust."
All this sounds very hyperbolical and far-fetched, perhaps, but it is exactly
what a "trust" is. The "trust" may also be defined as a master key to the
people's financial structure, which enables its owner to enter any or all of
the separate institutions I have mentioned, and combine any or all of them,
without affecting their respective organisms, into a new organization which
possesses the potencies and the privileges of each, but is unhampered by the

legal restrictions of any one of them. Like electricity, the exact nature of a
"trust" does not admit of rigid definition, but it is a force which can be
exerted only in conjunction with financial organisms, which it joins and yet
releases, adds power to, and exempts from consequences. Let us suppose
that two men are made into a "trust"—this human combine becomes at once
free from the bondage of matter and the senses, sees out of the back of its
head and passes in and out through solid walls. It has all the combined
strength and more that the two men had and all their human privileges and
possessions, but it evades nature's laws as to individuals, and the laws of
man both as to individuals and other material things.
To put the description in still another way, a "trust" is an institution which
endows itself with the right to use any or all of the seven institutions of the
people as the people use them, but so made that its user derives from the
institutions the benefits the people intended for themselves, and yet is
immune from the legal consequences of appropriating such benefits. Two or
more men make a "trust" by combining—acquiring the control of—an
insurance company, a trust company, and a savings-bank. The new
organization is all of these institutions, performs the functions of all of
them, yet can legally do with their incomes, capital, and surpluses things
which, from the very nature of each, none of the institutions is allowed to
do—the new organization is all of these institutions until the law attempts to
bring it to book; then it evades being any one of them. The trust company is
empowered to lend money on speculative ventures which the insurance
company and savings-bank may not do, so the "trust" lends the insurance
company's vast accumulations and the savings-bank's hoard through the
trust company with great profit or tremendous loss and enjoys immunity
from the consequences which should follow such disobedience of the law.
Moreover, when the trust company shows a profit the "trust" appropriates it,
and when a tremendous loss is sustained the insurance company or the
savings-bank must bear it.
An illustration: A, B, and C form a "trust." A and B are president and
controller of a savings-bank and an insurance company respectively. They
organize a trust company with $1,000,000 capital, of which the insurance
company furnishes the majority; they then elect C president and controller
of the trust company, and make him their associate or a dummy. The trust
company receives $5,000,000 of the people's money on deposit. The

insurance company deposits $5,000,000 of its surplus funds, and the
savings-bank $5,000,000 more. The trust company now has $15,000,000 of
the people's savings in its control with which by law it is allowed to do
certain things; but what it does with the $5,000,000 of the savings-bank and
the $5,000,000 of the insurance company the law specifically says neither
one of the institutions can do itself. The "trust" then purchases for
$5,000,000 the stock of an industrial corporation. It borrows the $5,000,000
and an additional $5,000,000, which represents its own first profit, from the
trust company through irresponsible dummies, depositing the industrial
stock as collateral. The "trust" next causes the trust company to issue bonds
for $15,000,000. These bonds are based upon and secured by nothing of
worth but the stock. The trust company offers these bonds for sale. The
insurance company buys $7,500,000 of the bonds, and the trust company,
through dummies, the other $7,500,000. By the operation so far the "trust"
shows a profit of $10,000,000. After making this profit and the true worth
of the bonds becoming known, these decline back to the original worth of
the stock upon which they are based, $5,000,000, and there is the
tremendous loss of $10,000,000 made. The trust company "busts," and there
is a loss to its depositors of $10,000,000. This loss is divided as follows:
$3,333,000 to the savings-bank, $3,333,000 to the insurance company, and
$3,333,000 directly to the people, less the small amount which will be
recovered from the stockholders. (These losses will be affected in an
unimportant way by the $1,000,000 original capital.)
In this case the "trust" has done nothing for which those responsible for it
can be held civilly or criminally liable. Neither has the insurance company,
the savings-bank, nor the trust company, and yet, if there had been no
"Trust" and any one of the three institutions had made the loss directly
through its own actions, the officers of that institution would have been
civilly and perhaps criminally held responsible.
The utility and convenience of the "trust" having been demonstrated, it
became a popular instrument for financiers desiring to accomplish all
manner of illegal purposes. Especially was it an apt tool for the "System,"
which in the meantime was perfecting its control of the people's institutions.
The owners of railroads running through the same territory, finding
cumbersome and hampering the restrictions with which the community they
served had safeguarded its interests, formed "trusts." Straightway there

were valuable results—the combination was emancipated from the
regulations which had bound its individual members; competition was
eliminated and rates were raised.
As time went on new "trust" possibilities were discovered and other
institutions linked up—corporations of all kinds, insurance companies and
national banks and savings-banks, were brought together for the benefit of
the "System" and the detriment of the public. The end of the trustification of
the institutions of the nation is not yet, but the people are to be shown a way
by which the plundering process can be reversed and through which they
can make their freedom complete and absolute by the complete and
absolute enslavement of the "System" itself.

CHAPTER V
HOW THE "SYSTEM" DOES BUSINESS

To follow the various steps in the crimes of Amalgamated, my readers
should know how the securities of a corporation are manufactured, how
"put upon the market," how admitted to the Stock Exchange, how prices are
made in the Stock Exchange, how fictitious and fraudulent quotations are
created and disseminated, until the very shrewdest members of the Stock
Exchange cannot distinguish those which are real from the fictitious in
cases outside their own manufacturing. Then there is an elaborate and
ingenious procedure by which public opinion is moulded, that is, by which
people are made to believe that the prices at which they buy and sell the
stocks and securities are bona fide; and this is a procedure as compact and
as well understood by the "System's" votaries as are the methods of the
bank-breaker or burglar—who sends his "pals" ahead to "pipe" the lay of
the land—by felony's votaries. When I have shown these things, about
which little is known to-day by the public, my readers will have no
difficulty in comprehending what I shall lay before them of the actual
robberies in the case of Amalgamated and other notorious enterprises.
The underlying principle of the several organisms through which the
commerce of the country is conducted is the protection at once of the
interests of the individuals composing them and of the public with which
they do business. Provided this principle is adhered to, no harm can be
wrought to either. Most of the contemporaneous swindles through which the
people have been plundered were perpetrated through the agency of
corporations, and this organism has become a sort of synonym for corrupt
practice. Yet the original corporation invention as I have described it was
devised to meet a real want of the people, and it has merely been diverted
from its proper use by the lawless votaries of the "System." Consider the
institution as we now understand it. Certain individuals decide to conduct
their business in railroads, mines, manufactories, patents, etc., in the form
of a corporation and apply to the community—the State Government—
asking authorization to do so. They are compelled first to conform to the

rules and regulations laid down by the State for the control of corporations,
which say in one form or other:
"We create you for the purpose of doing those things that are best for the
many, not the few, and if we knew you would use our authority to oppress
the many in the interest of the few we would not create you." The
fundamental privilege of incorporation is the legal authorization to issue
paper titles of ownership to the business just incorporated. These are in the
form of stocks and bonds. Whoever owns these paper titles shall possess the
property and the business as the individuals did before they incorporated,
and the law presumes that they shall manage and control that business,
receive the benefits which come from it, and suffer any loss arising from its
conduct, and that all these benefits and responsibilities shall be as laid down
in the law. It follows that no harm other than that the law expressly
prescribes penalties to prevent can come to any one from corporations thus
created, always provided the laws are what they appear and what the people
intended them to be, and that they are enforced as the people intended they
should be.
It is most important to all concerned in a corporation that the paper
ownership shall represent the real value of the property on which it is based,
and no more. When the people exchange their savings for these authorized
paper tokens, they should be able to rest confident in the State's guarantee
that they are worth what they purport.
There have probably been jailed in the United States during the past twenty
years thousands and thousands of American citizens whose aggregate
stealings do not amount to one-tenth the total taken from the people by
either the Amalgamated, the United States Steel, the American Tobacco
Company, or a score of other fraudulently organized or fraudulently
conducted corporations.
There are various ways of organizing corporations and issuing their stocks
and bonds. Sometimes a company is organized to acquire a property;
individuals and institutions set down their names to take and pay for the
shares or bonds. With the money thus obtained the property is purchased.
Or the individuals who own the property which is to be the basis of the
corporation exchange it for all or part of the stocks and bonds. In the latter

event those original owners usually sell to the public the tokens thus
acquired.
Honest men in forming a corporation make publicly known the character
and worth of the properties or enterprises they are organizing, what they
have cost, what their profits are, and what may reasonably be expected by
investors. The tricksters and the "System," with whom incorporation is
generally but the first step in a conspiracy for plunder, surround the
proceeding with an air of mystery and refuse information usually with: "We
do our business quietly and in silence, and those who do not like our ways
may keep out of this scheme." Their whole procedure is of that high and
mighty order which impresses the ordinary mortal with a sense of
confidence in the independence of its users and a conviction that their
scheme must be so good that they do not care whether they sell or not. This
is just the effect it is intended to produce.
The next step is to lead the people toward the shambles. This is done by
"moulding public opinion," and for this interesting function the "System"
and Wall Street have an equipment of magical potency. Public opinion is
made through the daily press, through financial publications of various
kinds, and through "news bureaus." Every great daily has a financial editor
and a corps of experts in finance who spend their days on "the Street"
cultivating the friendship of the financiers. At night they are round the clubs
and hotels where the brokers and promoters congregate, debating the events
of the day and organizing those of the morrow. There are also the strictly
financial papers—daily, weekly, and monthly—whose corps of editors and
news gatherers live on "the Street," and know and care for nothing but
finance. And lastly, there are the news bureaus, with runners out everywhere
to gather in items of news affecting stocks, Wall Street or finance. These are
printed on small square sheets of paper, and delivered by an army of boys at
brief intervals while the Stock Exchange is open at the offices of the
bankers, brokers, insurance companies, and hotels; or the same matter is
disseminated by means of an automatic printing machine called a news-
ticker. For this service the offices pay the bureaus from $1 to $2 a day.
News bureaus form an important cog in the machinery for making stock-
markets, as it is through the news they furnish to the Stock Exchange and to
the offices where investors and speculators gather together that the big

operators affect the market. A decision to buy, sell, or "stand pat" is often
based on the on dits of these printed slips.
The first step toward "moulding public opinion" is taken when the
"System's" votaries send for the dishonest chief of a news bureau, a man
usually up in every trick of the trade. I will later describe one of them, a
scoundrel so able and experienced that, to use the vernacular of the gutter of
"the Street," he can give cards and spades to the frenziedest of frenzied
financiers. To this man the "System's" votary will say something like this:
"We are going to work off blank millions of blank stock; it costs us thus and
so, and we want to sell for so and so many millions." Nothing is kept back
from this head panderer and procurer, for it would be useless to attempt to
deceive him, and, to quote his always picturesque language: "Never send a
sucker to fish for suckers or he'll lose your bait, so spread out your bricks
and I'll get the 'gang' to polish up their gildings." After the quality and
amount the "System" intends to work off in exchange for the people's
savings are explained, that part of the plunder which is to come to the head
news-bureau man is settled upon. The amount varies with the size and
quality of the robbery to be perpetrated. In some cases as high as a million
dollars in cash or stock or their equivalent has been paid to a "moulder of
opinion" for simply so shaping up a game that the people might be deceived
into thinking one dollar of worth was four, six, or eight dollars.
The head of the news bureau, having taken the contract to lay out and carry
through the deceptive part of the scheme by which the people are to be
buncoed, now begins operations. First, bargains are made with
conscienceless financial editors of the daily and weekly newspapers,
whereby for so much stock or for "puts" or "calls" or both,[17] they agree to
insert in their paper's financial column whatever yarns are fed them by the
bureau man, regardless of their truth or falsehood. To justify the attention
paid the subject by each editor, a certain amount of money is spent in
advertising, in the newspaper that employs him, the merits of the enterprise.
The financial journals are dealt with about on the same basis. In return for
straight advertising or for "puts" or "calls" they agree to insert the
manufactured news. The news-bureau man then puts his entire staff to work
inventing fairy tales of one kind or another to excite the interest and
attention of the people, and these tales must be so concocted that the public
is drawn into believing that the statements disseminated represent actual

conditions. I shall, later, give real instances of the working of this nefarious
game of "moulding public opinion," and present it in the lime-light
necessary for its appreciation. To show the extent to which this "moulding"
process is carried, I know in one instance of a high-priced financial scribe
being sent to live in St. Petersburg for no other purpose than to send certain
"news items" to a confederate located in Germany, who would get these
items to a reputable English banking-house through whom they were given
out in London as news: the whole object of this complicated system being
that the news items might be sent back to New York without Wall Street
suspecting they were bogus.
I must not be understood as meaning to say that all financial editors, news
gatherers, or news bureaus are engaged in this, one of the lowest forms of
swindling, for such is not the case. On the contrary, there are many of them
whom no amount of money or influence could make waver in their
allegiance to the truth and to honest dealings. With some of the others I
hope to deal specifically later, and I shall not hesitate to set forth in detail
certain transactions in which they have been engaged.

FOOTNOTES:
[17] A "put" is the right to sell to a certain firm or individual shares of stock at a
stated price for a stated period, and a "call" the right to buy under the same
conditions. The holder of the "put" or "call" is under no liability, as he can use
the "put" as margin to buy stocks, or the "call" as margin to sell stocks, or he can
hold them for the profit there may be in selling or buying the stock after it has
declined or risen below or above the price named in the "puts" or "calls" he
holds.

CHAPTER VI
HOW WALL STREET'S MANIPULATIONS AFFECT THE
COUNTRY

What is the connection between the "System" and the minor financial
institutions throughout the country which are owned and controlled by
groups of sturdy men who know not Wall Street and its frenzied votaries,
and who are ignorant of "made dollars"? Let us see. We will take five
national banks in different parts of the country, each having a capital of
$200,000 and deposits of $2,000,000. One is in the farming district of
Kansas; another is in Louisiana in a cotton district; a third is in the orange
groves of California; in the mining district of Montana is a fourth; the fifth
in the logging and lumber country of Maine. These $10,000,000 of deposits
represent savings earned by the type of men who have made America what
it is, and who laugh when they read in their local papers: "Panic in Wall
Street; stocks shrink a billion dollars in a day." "Fools and their money are
easily parted," they say, "but Wall Street gets none of our honestly earned
money." Now the officers of these five banks are honest men and they know
nothing of the "System," yet the day of the panic they each telegraph to
their Illinois correspondent, the big Chicago bank, "Loan our balance,
$200,000, at best rate." That day the Chicago bank with similar telegrams
from forty-five other correspondents in various parts of the country, wires
its New York correspondent, the big Wall Street bank, "Loan our balance,
$2,000,000, at best rates."
Thereupon the great New York bank sends its brokers out upon "the Street"
to loan on inflated securities of one kind or another which its officers, the
votaries of the "System," have purchased in immense quantities at slaughter
prices the millions belonging to the Chicago bank and to other
correspondents of its own in Cincinnati and Omaha and St. Louis and other
big cities. The decline is stayed, and then the world learns that the panic is
over and that the stocks, of which the people have been "shaken out" to the
extent of a billion dollars, have recovered in a day $500,000,000 of it, and

that probably in a few days more will recover the other $500,000,000. Who
has recovered this vast sum? The people who had been "shaken out"? No,
indeed! The votaries of the "System" have made it—they and the frenzied
financiers whose haunt is Wall Street, and whose harvest is in such
wreckage.
The part that the five little banks innocently played in this terrific robbery
was unimportant. What is important is that it was the funds of their
depositors and others like them which the "System" used to turn the Stock
Market and make an immense profit out of the recovery of values. It is true
the banks received but two and one-half or three per cent. for the use of
their balances, and their officers would scorn the suggestion that they had
put any of their money in jeopardy in a Wall Street gamble. But what I have
outlined happened, and has happened many a time before and since, and
goes to prove my assertion that every financial institution which is taking
the money of the people for the ostensible purpose of safeguarding it or
putting it to use for them, is a part of the machinery for the plundering of
the people.
Sooner or later, every dollar taken by the "System" through Wall Street's
manipulation of stocks directly affects every man, woman, and child in the
United States. Let us, for example, see how a stock slump in New York
affects the owner of a small life-insurance policy in Wyoming. The shares
of the American and English ocean steamship companies were bought up by
the "System" at double their worth and converted into a "trust." New stocks
and bonds to a number of times their value were issued and sold to the
public. The great insurance companies bought many millions worth of these
securities, using for the purpose the money they had collected from the
policy-holders, a dollar at a time. This "investment," at the moment it was
made, actually represented a loss to the purchasing insurance companies of
millions of money, for millions more than the property was worth or could
possibly be made worth had gone to the people who formerly owned the
steamship properties, and many millions more to the "System" as its share
of the swag. And it should be remembered that the men who organized the
steamship trust were the men who invested the insurance company's money
in its securities.

The policy-holder in Wyoming knows about the steamship trust and about
the terrible loss sustained by those who invested in its securities. He does
not realize, however, that his insurance company has been buying such poor
stuff, for he is persuaded it is a great and noble institution, and far above
Wall Street and its rash gamblers. Even when he and his kind find their
yearly dividends on their policies growing less and less and their premiums
rising "because of the tremendous increase in the expense of doing
business," they do not dream of connecting these misfortunes with the
"System's" trustifications of inflated securities; nor do they associate them
with the glowing accounts of the half-million-dollar seaside palace built by
the insurance company's officer who entered the employ of the institution a
few years before, with his salary for his fortune, and who is now pointed to
as an example of thrift, being worth from ten to fifteen millions.

CHAPTER VII
ECONOMICS OF COPPER

A thorough familiarity with the facts and conditions set forth in the
preceding chapters will help my readers to an understanding of the series of
complicated transactions through which the snaky course of Amalgamated
must be pursued. Its flotation was the most tremendous and public ever
even attempted, much less successfully carried out, and in its market career
the full resources of stock jugglery were exercised on its behalf. The crimes
of Amalgamated are to the delinquencies of Bay State Gas as the screaming
of eagles to the chirping of crickets. From its birth this great enterprise went
hand-in-hand with fraud and financial dishonor, and the facts I shall
proceed to reveal are so formidable in their indictment as to startle even
those calloused to the trickery of modern stock deals.
An armistice followed that last desperate battle of the gas fight in the
Delaware court-house, and gave me time to turn my whole attention to the
plans I had long been maturing in my mind in connection with quite another
project—"Coppers."
For sixty years past Boston had been the home of the copper industry. From
it great fortunes had been derived, and there was in course of development a
copper aristocracy which threatened the supremacy of the East India
aristocracy that had so long lorded it in Boston society. Indeed, so far had
the rival contingents progressed that there was a serious searching of the
pretensions of any new-comer whose origin had to do with other
enterprises. "Coppers" were respectable, were genteel, and, above all, were
not "trade," for the average old-time Bostonian affects the Anglo-Saxon
contempt for the traffickings of retail commerce.
For the benefit of those in the outer darkness, to whom the ways of Boston
are strange, it may be explained that the East India trade goes elsewhere
under other less euphonious names, and consisted in the swapping of New
England rum, made from molasses, water, and other things, for human

cotton-pickers. It was a most profitable industry, with a spice of adventure
to it, and in which at the time it flourished a gentleman might honorably
engage. It may be said that with the paradoxical conscientiousness
characteristic of the Puritan mind, the first outcry against the personal
ownership of human chattels was voiced by New England, and her leading
citizens generously devoted the incomes of the fortunes their forefathers
had amassed in the slave traffic to releasing their colored fellow-creatures
from bondage. That, however, is still another story.
To return to "Coppers." In my young days in "the Street" in the early '70s,
the first task I remember performing was making deliveries of copper
stocks traded in by "the house" which was entitled to my twelve-year-old
services in return for the three large dollars which I received each Saturday
with far more honest pride than any three millions I have since handled. As
I grew up I watched Calumet and Hecla advance from a dollar to 450 (it
afterward sold at 900) because of its real worth, and imbibed the conviction,
which all true Bostonians entertain, that money acquired through copper is
at least 33 per cent. better than money from any other source. I sympathized
with the State Street code which declares, or should: "Gold can be found in
a day by any one with eyes, silver in a week by any one with hands, and
money in a year by any one with sense enough to save it, but no man gets
into copper without capital, fortitude, patience, and brains." As a matter of
fact, it requires, even to-day, with all of to-day's facilities and rush,
$5,000,000 in money and five years of spending it after a copper deposit
has been found before it can be made to yield returns. Is it surprising that a
project requiring so much money for so long a time should appeal to
Boston's regard for endurance, expensiveness, and exclusiveness? Could
there be found an enterprise better calculated to discourage the upstart?
My daily round of errands led me from broker to broker and from bank to
bank, and always I heard talk of copper. It is not remarkable that my
youthful mind became impressed with the profound importance of the metal
and all pertaining to it. I picked up a great deal of information on the
subject, which I fortified later with a careful study of copper the metal,
copper the mine, and copper the investment. As I mulled over the immense
returns obtained from their ventures by the men I knew had their money in
copper, it struck me as extraordinary that this industry should be so much
more profitable than others. Here was a great staple, a necessity of the

people, which had been in use since men began to sit up, and would be
needed until Father Time smashed his glass, that returned 100 per cent.
gross profit on the business done in it, while the business done in any other
staple did not return, gross, over ten to eighteen per cent.; which gross
profit gave to the capital invested in copper a net profit of sixteen to twenty-
five per cent., while that invested in the other staples returned a net profit of
only three and three-fourths to four and one-fourth per cent.[18] The value of
money had decreased with the world's development; the cost of the great
commodities of life had all come down with the decline in interest—all but
copper, which kept its old places throughout all the changes that had
occurred in the relations of capital to labor and business. I realized that
copper, in that year, would afford a gross profit of 100 cents on each $2
worth produced; that this great gross profit was legitimate, was not brought
about through unfair restrictions or forced combination, or evasion of the
country's laws, but was wholly natural, being founded on the fact that the
supply was so limited that the demand prevented the price dropping below a
certain figure, and that this under ordinary circumstances represented at
least 100 per cent. of gross profit to the producer after he had paid for labor
and material the highest ruling prices.
No better illustration of the main facts about copper can be found than the
condition of the industry to-day, in 1905. The metal is now fifteen and a
half cents per pound, and the consumption so great that the price still
advances, yet if through an agreement among the producing mines this
sales-rate should be dropped twenty-five per cent., it would so increase
consumption as to force back the price to a point that would again
discourage consumption; and yet in the old mines the cost of producing the
metal sold at fifteen and a half is but six to seven and a half cents, in some
even lower.
Compare these conditions with those existing in the steel industry. Therein
unlawful combinations and unnatural restrictions are essential if those
engaged would show a gross profit of even fifteen per cent. on their gross
output. If more than fair or going returns are earned, then new capital flows
into competition and the surplus again shrinks to an uninviting point. The
same is true in wheat, corn, and cotton—big prices invite fresh investments
and the planting of broader acreage. Hence the sorry spectacle of the cotton
planter who, in 1905, will receive no more for his twenty per cent.

increased crop, coming from over two millions increased acreage planted
last year, than for his smaller one of the year before.
That my readers may quickly, and once for all, grasp the point I wish to
make, I will illustrate:
The Steel trust in 1904 did a gross business of $432,000,000, upon which
they made a profit of $71,400,000, and yet this vast amount was only five
per cent. upon the trust's inflated capital of $1,400,000,000 odd; and as the
"System," in regulating the capitalization, arranged that the preferred stock
(and bonds), which represented the "System's" profit, should receive seven
per cent., there was not a dollar in dividends for the $520,000,000 of
common stock which had been sold to the people for, in round figures,
$300,000,000.
At the same time the Calumet & Hecla Copper Company produced and sold
over $10,000,000 worth of copper, upon which it earned, net, over
$5,000,000, which enabled it to pay to the people who had invested in its
100,000 shares of stock (par value, $25), 160 per cent., or a total of
$4,000,000, and, at the same time, carry an enormous amount to its surplus.
In the commercial world copper occupies an impregnable position. To
compete, it is first necessary to find a copper deposit; then to lock up a vast
sum of money for a long term of years before returns begin to accrue. And
new copper deposits are as rare and few and far between as Lincolns and
Roosevelts in politics or Grants and Lees in war. In the last eight years, or
since the metal has been prominently before the world of capital, but two
great producers of copper have been created—the Copper Range at Lake
Superior, Michigan, and the Greene Consolidated in Mexico—and these
two mines have only, at the end of six years, after an immense expenditure
of millions (Copper Range, with a capital of $38,500,000, 385,000 shares,
par $100, which sold in the open market a few years ago at $6, now selling
at $75, and Greene Consolidated, with a capital of $8,650,000, 865,000
shares, par $10, now selling in the open market at $25), reached the point of
profitable production. Their combined output, while reaching the (for young
mines) unprecedented amount of one hundred and odd million pounds of
metal per annum, constitutes but a fraction of that which Mother Earth has
given up during the period of their development, namely, 2,500,000,000

pounds, all of which has been disposed of and cannot again be used to
satisfy a ravenous consumption.
It seemed to me, then, a curious anomaly that, while capital was chasing
investments which promised but four per cent., it eschewed copper which
yielded from sixteen to twenty-five per cent., and my investigations told me
that a producing copper-mine is the surest business venture a man engages
in, for, by the time it begins to produce profitably, it must be so far
developed that its owners are certain of ore to work on for decades ahead. A
good copper-mine is really a safe-deposit vault of stored-up dividends,
which cannot be stolen nor destroyed by fire, flood, or famine. Calumet &
Hecla, for instance, though it cost its first owners but a dollar a share, has
paid out $87,000,000, or $870 per share, or 3,480 per cent. on its par value
of $25, and while it has been paying dividends over thirty-five years, it paid
last year $40 per share, and has more in sight than it has yet paid. And
Copper Range, though but six years old, will be producing soon as much as
Calumet & Hecla, and has now in sight ore to keep it going fifty or sixty
years.
Having pieced together all the facts and circumstances in this connection, I
was sure that I had grasped a principle of great commercial value, and I set
about finding a cause why the world of capital should for so long have
overlooked the tremendous potentialities of this industry. I found the cause
in Boston herself, in the characteristics of the city, which was head-quarters
for copper, and which had grown in financial power with the revenues her
mines earned for her investors. Boston controlled and managed the copper
industry, and had since the days when copper-mining was a hazardous
pursuit, in which only bold and speculative souls dared engage. In the early
days the canny Bostonian demanded for the honorable dollar his parent had
earned—exchanging five-cent rum for human beings worth $1,000 apiece
—at least twenty per cent. interest, and having acquired this habit, it
became a principle, and such principles as these are clung to in Boston with
the zeal of a miser for his hoard or of a martyr to his faith. Looking back
over the years, I still recall with chagrin the quiescent hilarity of the scion
of a Back Bay family whose good father had been one of the most
successful and most brutal of all the "East India traders," when I suggested
to him that he was fortunate in obtaining twenty per cent. on some copper
ventures about which he was grumbling. (My readers must not confuse a

Boston grumble with the ordinary ejaculations of discontent indulged in by
the inhabitants of other portions of the world remote from the Hub of the
Universe. A Boston grumble consists of an upward movement of the
eyebrow, a slight twitch of the mustache and a murmur cross-bred from
"Deuce take it!" and "Scoundrelly!") "Young man," he said, "my father said
that such a hazardous venture as copper should return at least thirty per
cent. to be safe, and I feel if I receive but twenty per cent. that something is
radically and unpardonably wrong with the management of the mine." I did
not pursue the argument, for I knew he inherited with his fortune a line of
Boston reasoning, and I remembered once having watched a country boy
put his tongue on a frosty iron door-knob. I knew better than to invoke
again that wintry Boston smile, which in a Western or Southern community
would be used to frappé mint-juleps or cold-storage hogs with.
No better illustration of the attitude of the shrewd New York investor to
"Copper" can possibly be given than to detail my first interview with H. H.
Rogers and William Rockefeller on the subject. To-day Mr. Rogers is
known throughout the world as the leading figure of the copper world—the
copper Czar, so to speak; yet it was only nine years ago when I said to him
at the end of a gas-talk:
"Mr. Rogers, would Mr. Rockefeller and yourself look into Copper?"
"Copper?" said he in an amused way, "copper? What kind of copper?"
"Why, copper such as we know in Boston—copper the metal, copper the
industry, copper stocks."
He burst into one of his jolly laughs. "Look into it? Why, I don't know a
thing about copper other than that we had old copper kettles when I was a
boy which were used to fry doughnuts in, but I suppose my plumbers would
look at anything you wanted, for I remember I get big bills for copper tanks
at the house."

FOOTNOTES:
[18] For those unacquainted with such business terms as "gross" or "net" profit:
Gross profit on business done is that first profit which remains after deducting
the first cost of producing the goods—in this case copper, the metal; and from

this gross profit must be deducted other expenses, such as unusual development
expenses, the expense of running the executive departments, interest, etc. This
leaves the net profit which is available for dividends.

CHAPTER VIII
MY PLAN FOR "COPPERS"

The plan I had so carefully formulated in connection with "Coppers" was
simple in application yet vast in scope. It was to buy up all the good
producing mines at their market price, or double if necessary, to organize
them into a new corporation and offer its stock to the public at a
capitalization of double the original cost. By advertising the exceptional
merits of the copper industry and the financial power of the men who were
backing it, the public would become educated to a knowledge of the values
of "Coppers." Under this education the world of capital would invest in
copper shares until the price had advanced, because of so much capital
seeking this form of investment, to a point where the net return was brought
down to the going rate of, say, four per cent. This would mean that the old
going prices of good producing Boston copper-mines would advance 100 to
200 per cent., which in turn meant that those who risked their money in the
first venture (which I figured would require $100,000,000) would make
$100,000,000 to $200,000,000, while at the same time the public would
make $200,000,000 to $400,000,000. This seems like an "Aladdin-lamp"
story when it is told, but, as a matter of fact, prices afterward did advance in
this ratio, and 100 and 200 per cent. beyond, and many of them,
notwithstanding the tremendous drops that have taken place since, still
show from 200 to 300 per cent. advance over the prices then in vogue.
Never in all the history of business was there afforded capitalists so fair an
opportunity to make honestly and legitimately so vast a sum of money and
at the same time to do so much for the people. Nor was there a more
honorable undertaking nor one which a man could be more justly proud of
carrying to success.
As time went on, this big enterprise was more and more in my thoughts,
and I tested it in every way I knew, going over in my mind and trying out
each successive step and link until I was certain the whole structure was
unassailable. Then it became my purpose in life to launch the venture. The
difficulties of the task were never for a moment overlooked, for I well knew

that much money would be required, but with strong backing success was
sure, and such a success was tremendously worth attaining. Next to putting
in force my financial invention which would remedy the evils of the
"System," this great copper project seemed the thing—the dollar thing—
best worth doing in all the world. It was to execute this project that I allied
myself with the "Standard Oil" party, for with their money and backing I
knew I could carry through my plans on the lines I had so carefully mapped
out.
The chief indictment my critics brought against me when my series of
articles appeared in Everybody's Magazine was that I had turned "State's
evidence." Having been "in with" "Standard Oil" in their robberies of the
public, it was not until we disagreed and "split" that I thought of taking the
public into my confidence. The truth is, my relation with "Standard Oil"
was different from that any other man ever had with that mysterious and
reticent institution, and throughout the copper crusade I insistently blurted
out our plans and purposes through every channel of publicity I could
command. At no time was there the slightest secrecy. From the very first
day of the campaign I told the story as I tell it here, and I told it from the
housetops by newspaper interviews and advertisements, market letters and
circulars frankly and freely explaining what I was about. The absolute truth
of the foregoing is easily proved through existing records, for the press of
the country contains an almost continuous story, beginning in 1896 and
running up to date, wherein I have openly and fairly told what I knew about
"Coppers" and detailed the progress of our plans. Time and again, during
this period, financial writers commented on my frankness, quoting brokers
and bankers to the effect that "Lawson will surely have his head dropped
into the 'Standard Oil' basket if he keeps telling people all he knows in this
fashion." For the complete realization of my project the public's interest was
essential. The creation of the vast business structure that I had designed
required the participation of the great mass of the people, and I was
determined that no subservience to the selfish ends of my associates should
swerve me from my plan. I saw the enterprise whole; saw that there was
great profit for all concerned, for "Standard Oil," for myself, and for the
public; but if the public were not taken care of or were discouraged from
participation, then my institution would surely be only another combination
of capitalists and I should fail in my ambition.

This is why I so persistently kept in the open throughout my "Copper"
campaign. I fully realized how anomalous my position was and how far I
had departed from "Standard Oil" precedents; but my thought was to protect
the integrity of my enterprise, and the best way to do this was to have the
people partners in its conception and development. To be perfectly frank,
the prospect of millions of profit counted for less in my calculations than
the honor and prestige I foresaw in the success of my copper structure. As
proof of this, witness how I voluntarily gave back the millions I had
secured, to make good. To create a great institution, to erect a new and
absolutely staple investment, and in doing so to make millions for one's
partners, one's self, and the public, would be to live not in vain. The
knowledge of my attitude will perhaps help my readers to comprehend the
enthusiasm with which I entered into my "Copper" crusade; help them to
understand how strongly I resisted, and how deeply resented, the perversion
of my fair structure into a pitfall for those I had expected to benefit. My
indignation against the "System" is that which any honest man would feel
against ruffians who had used his best ideas and his most generous feelings
to lure innocent and unoffending people into some den of vice and infamy.
If I have not troubled to correct the misstatements of detractors who, in an
attempt to discredit my facts, have tried to pillory me as a traitor, it is
because I knew that when my complete story reached the public it would
make plain how and what I had been doing. The succeeding chapters of this
narrative will yield unimpeachable evidence that all my dealing in
"Coppers" as an associate of "Standard Oil" were open and as much in the
interests of the people as it was possible to have them.

CHAPTER IX
BIRTH OF "COPPERS"

Active upon the Boston market during my Bay State Gas operations were
two copper-mining companies—the Butte & Boston and the Boston &
Montana. Their properties were in Montana and both were large producers
of the metal, that is, they were old and equipped mines. These two
organizations form to-day the most valuable part of the Amalgamated
Copper Company—in fact, more than three-quarters of all the real worth
owned by that corporation.
Butte & Boston and Boston & Montana were essentially Boston
institutions, and were both officered and directed by the same set of men. It
had come to my knowledge, in the course of my stock business, that there
had been bought for the Butte & Boston, with its money, some very
valuable mines; instead of transferring these to that corporation, however,
its directors at the last minute had turned the titles over to the Boston &
Montana. It is only fair to these men to say that up to the present this
alleged fact has not been proven, although set forth in cases still pending in
the courts. This curious proceeding was part of a plot the subsequent steps
in which would be to run Butte & Boston through the bankruptcy mill, and,
by placing it in the hands of a receiver, to drop the stock to a nominal
figure, at which it might all be gathered in from the public. I verified my
information sufficiently to decide to act, and swung the red danger-signal in
a public statement telling the stockholders and people in general of the
coming move. At once there arose a chorus of denials and recriminations
from the management, and the cry, "He's short of the stock and is working a
fake to scare us into throwing over our holdings that he may buy them,"
from the Stock Exchange, stockholders, and the hireling moulders of
opinions, the "News Bureaus."
The rôle of Cassandra is not more popular to-day than it was in ancient
Troy. The swinger of the red danger-signal is seldom heeded, and is
invariably suspected of interested motives by the human moths circling

round the flickering flames of frenzied finance. When I gave my warning,
Butte & Boston was selling between 25 and 30. In accordance with their
plan the insiders began to sell, and soon the price began to slide downward,
for the great majority of the stock was held by the people. There was a halt
when the denials of the management were heard, but only for a moment.
The decline continued, growing swifter as it got lower until the stock struck
$2 per share. At this stage, while the stock was on the way to $2, just as I
had predicted, the property was cleverly slid into a receiver's hands by the
very men who had so indignantly denied my statement that such would be
their action. An assessment of $10 per share was next levied, and those who
held on, hoping against hope, began to throw over their holdings for what
they would bring—which was around a dollar.
So far the scheme had slipped smoothly along the single-rail track
constructed for it by those in the deal, and just as my information had led
me to expect. At this juncture, however, the train struck an open switch, and
with a painful jolt for the conductor and the engineers it slid out on a siding
—it was my siding. From the time the stock struck $2 a mysterious
purchaser took in all that was offered, and when it struck bottom he was
still buying. Suddenly the schemers "tumbled" that the plums they were
shaking off the tree were dropping into some other bag than their own, and
they started into competition for the coveted fruit.
Next day, and for several days afterward, there were strenuous doings in
Butte & Boston on the Boston Stock Exchange. The trading was heavy and
the price pushed up from the bottom to 6-1/2. Soon, however, it was
slammed to 2-3/4, then back to 6 again, down to 3-1/4, back to 5-3/4, and so
on, until the middle of the fourth day, when the rival News Bureau to the
"System's" favorite opinion-moulder sprang the following notice set forth
on a double-leaded sheet:
"We have just solved the Butte & Boston conundrum. The
enormous blocks of stock purchased during the past few days
have come in for transfer, and the management now know who
owns the bag into which all the stock they have for months been
planning to acquire dropped. We have unmistakable evidence
that the bag belonged to Lawson, and that he now is in control
of the Butte & Boston Company. A hasty investigation amongst

the leading floor brokers which we have just made brings out a
consensus of opinion that there will now be music in Coppers."
The announcement was calculated to interest a good many persons, and I
was the target of a thousand inquiries. In answer to the innumerable calls
for a denial or confirmation of the statement, I issued the following:
'Tis true. 'Tis my bag, and there are 46,000 shares in it.
It was not until the following morning that I realized what a rarely
presumptuous thing I had done. I had invaded a valuable preserve. I had
coarsely "butted into" a private copper domain without a by-your-leave to
the natives who thought it belonged to them. I was an interloper, an
intruder, an upstart. The prevailing opinion seemed to be that it now
devolved on me to present what I had purchased to those who had been a bit
late in getting to the bargain-counter, or that I should, at least, turn it over to
the conscience fund of the Stock Exchange. The copper market reflected the
indignation of the baffled schemers. It entered for once into an open
competition with Donnybrook Fair, and to judge by the action and feeling
developed in both individual and corporation classes, the Hub had
Donnybrook jigged to a wind-up. In my various contests with the "System"
I had accumulated a certain hardihood which now stood me in good stead. I
had learned before this that breaking into a secluded treasure-trove is about
as pleasant as taking the lining out of a steel furnace with the metal sizzling
and the blower on.
I stood to my guns for the time being and then charged into the ranks of the
enemy. I issued the following statement:
TO MY FELLOW-BROKERS AND THE PUBLIC
I have stumbled on the fact that the stock—capital 200,000
shares—of the Butte & Boston Copper Mining Company is a
nugget. I bought about 46,000 shares of it at an average of
something over 2-1/4, or, with the assessment paid, 12-1/4 per
share. I am going to hold it until I get over 50 for it. Barring
accidents, I shall get it.
I advise—strongly and unqualifiedly advise—all my friends and
the public to load up with it at anything under that price. My

friends and the public know whether or not I mean a thing when
I say it. I pledge them that I not only mean this but that I shall
fight it out, and shall not sell until there is an active and
legitimate market for not only my stock, but for what they buy,
at over $50 per share. All intending purchasers must bear in
mind this is not a sure thing, for the men who are opposing, and
will oppose me, are not conducting their operations from a
graveyard, but are as lively and aggressive as Bengal tigers at
raw-meat time; but they may rest easy in the knowledge that
barring tripping over stumps or into bogs, I'll give whoever buy
a run for their investments.
Buy and watch Butte all the time, and, above all, pay no
attention to what the fake "News Bureau" says.
This was the formal declaration of war. State and Wall streets, familiar with
my style of fighting, at once lined up and took sides. The papers entered the
controversy. According to what one read, Butte & Boston was either the
greatest mine in the world or a hole in the ground. Feeling intensified;
Geneva and Queensberry conventions were forgotten; it became a go-as-
you-please scramble; mud batteries filled the air with liquid dirt, and both
sides used Gatling guns to fire off their libels. It was altogether a lusty and
vociferous contest, which meant destruction and death for the lame, the
halt, and the slow-footed who got between the fighting lines. I was naturally
the chief mark for the enemy, and was deluged with vilification. In the Bay
State campaign I had learned the personal cost of antagonizing the
"System"; the copper magnates showed me that they had terrors at
command which might make even "Standard Oil" jealous. In those days I
don't believe my bank account varied thirty-five cents without the news
being passed around before the ink on the bank-book was dry, and my
family, down to my ten-year-old, received daily or weekly through the
mails pictorial representations of their parent being hustled along to the
realms where sulphur is the standard of all values. Here is a sample of my
usual breakfast-table reading:
C. W. Barron, the proprietor of the "Boston News Bureau," feels
it his duty to inform his readers, the banks and bankers and
brokers and representative investors of New England, that that