Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

As I waited the coming of my most powerful customer, I could not keep my mind off the momentousness of the interview before me. I knew I was at a fork of the road, at one of those departure points from which coming events must date, and I thought of a dream I had had years before in which I found myself drifting with the grim ferryman across the brimming flood, the far bank of which is eternity. In my hand was a long staff with strange and irregular notches on it. And these represented the actions of my life. Some were shallow, others deep and wide, and as I ran my fingers up and down, I seemed to remember what each nick commemorated—the good things and the bad things, here a death, there a disappointment, this a victory, that an error. I wondered, as the circumstances of the dream came to my mind, what kind of marking this day's events would make on my life staff, and I felt a conviction that it would be both deep and wide.

Then, as I heard Mr. Rogers' footstep outside my door, I forgot all about dreams and notches and plunged into my argument.

"Mr. Rogers," I began, "you and your associates have unlimited money. You have not always had it. You have obtained it through business projects and you are using it in business projects to get more. There are two ways of adding new dollars to those in your possession: by taking them from others so they are losers and you the gainer, whereby you win at the cost of their happiness; or by expanding the world's wealth so that others gain when you do. You, I know, prefer the latter, that others should make money when you do, rather than that they should lose and suffer when you are benefited."

I did not then know "Standard Oil's" and the "System's" religion as I do now. I had yet to learn the cruelly cynical principles that guide this financial Juggernaut in its relation with men and things. I imputed to it the generosity and freedom which seemed to characterize Henry H. Rogers' personality, ignorant that the man and the machine he served might stand for different things. The "System's" Big Book says: "A dollar honestly made makes another for some one else; but a dollar taken is two dollars, because it increases our power and diminishes the people's. Between the 'System' and the people must be eternal war, and it is the price of the 'System's' existence that all opportunities of weakening the people are sternly utilized."

"Mr. Rogers," I continued, "I have discovered in 'Coppers' an opportunity whereby you and your associates can, by the investment of a hundred millions of dollars, obtain these results: First, your money will be as safe as in anything you now have it invested in. Second, by indorsing this form of investment with the seal of your business success, you will make it known to all who have money and there will at once arise a tremendous demand for its securities. This demand will drive prices up until dividend returns are in normal proportion to the legitimate value of the security, namely, four to six per cent., which is, as I can prove to you, a little more than can be got from anything else but 'Copper' with the same elements of safety. Third, when the advance I foresee occurs, your one hundred millions have doubled, and all those who have joined us in the venture or have held on to their stock will gain in the same proportion. As I estimate that we will have but a third interest in all the good American 'Coppers,' there should be something like $200,000,000 for the people, while we will have made $100,000,000. To bring this about I have planned a campaign which will make what you have done known from one end of the world to the other, and will persuade the people at large to look at 'Standard Oil' in a more favorable light than they do now. And, what is more, all this money can be made and all these benefits rendered without taxing any one a single additional dollar, for there will not be a penny a ton added to the price of copper the metal, nor a reduction of a mill a year taken from the wages of those who mine it or work it."

Here I halted. I had made a beginning, and I was familiar with Mr. Rogers' system of diagnosis and treatment. Propositions placed on his operating-table are invariably dissected in parts—this is the winner's method; so if, under the probe of his keen mind, one section or limb is found stiff, dead, or unhitchable to that to which it belongs, he at once stops operating and the corpse is removed.

"How is it the situation is as you outline it?"

I drew the picture of copper Boston as I have given it in the early part of this chapter. It astonished him.

"How do you prove that safety in this class of investment is more assured than in others?"

I reeled off the facts: A copper-mine, from the very nature of the business, must be developed years and years ahead before it entered the ranks as a regular producer. The price of the metal being practically fixed within certain limits, the mine's value, present and future, could always be told to a certainty.