It was John Moore's turn then, and he showed me the good thing in an industrial scheme he was floating at that time, and as he wound up he said pleasantly:
"Lawson, we must do something to show for our long talk, so I'll put you down for $50,000 underwriting." And he did.
If John Moore had seen "Coppers" as I tried to show them to him that wet morning he could not have made for himself less than three to five millions, for in the operation which hung on his decision I had expected to buy stocks that soon after doubled and trebled in value. Calumet & Hecla then sold at 256, and later as high as 900, while Boston & Montana, then 50, mounted to 520. On the other hand, the stock of which he had sold me $50,000 worth returned at the end of the year but a mere fraction of that amount, and was one of the worst failures of the industrial boom period. It cost John Moore not only an enormous amount of money, but also prestige, and its miscarriage was one of the few bad disappointments of his brilliant career. Afterward, when "Coppers" were the rage and all Wall Street was green with envy at our success and his enterprise was trying to hide itself behind the garbage barrels, John Moore said to me:
"Lawson, we all think we are the masters of our own fortunes, but we are not. We are only working on a schedule laid out by some One who does not take our desires into consideration."
And it is so. The ablest Wall Street man is only like the burglar who, after working for weeks to loot a second story, is astounded to find, while lugging his swag by the police station, that the bag he thought full of dead sealskins contains a live parrot with a lusty vocabulary, "Police! Robbers!"
CHAPTER X
ROGERS GRASPS "COPPERS"
The next day our gas business brought me to New York, and after Mr. Rogers and myself had threshed out the matter I had come about, he said with a smile: