Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

MR. ROGERS UNMASKS

There was in Montana a great copper property known as the Daly-Haggin-Tevis group, the centre of which was the huge Anaconda mine with its 1,200,000 shares. This is the mine that Marcus Daly induced the late George Hearst to buy and develop for the marvellously successful syndicate of California mining operators, composed of J. B. Haggin, noted now the world over for his horses; Lloyd Tevis, an extraordinarily shrewd San Francisco financier; and Senator George Hearst, himself perhaps the greatest mining expert America has ever known. After Senator Hearst's death his estate sold its holdings to European investors, who with the other three owned the company at the time of which I am writing. I had never in my copper-consolidation plans contemplated including this property, for the reason that the public I was operating among was not familiar with it. I did not care to put in jeopardy the success of our venture by admitting any but mines of such well-known and unquestionable value that there could arise no possible doubt as to the security of the investment. I was well along in my task of gathering in, through public-market manipulation and private negotiation, the shares of the several good Boston companies whose merits I myself knew about and had so carefully gone over with Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller, when one day Mr. Rogers called me up on the telephone and requested that I come to New York to see him. "I have," he said, "a very important matter to go over with you." I took the train and early next morning was at 26 Broadway. As soon as we started in I was struck by a certain strangeness in his manner—an unusual impressiveness that indicated to me at once that something was in the wind.

This proved to be the case. I was soon in possession of the information that he and Mr. Rockefeller had been putting in a lot of work on the copper business; that they had evolved some further schemes, and that now the plans were so far along that I could not upset them, therefore they proposed to let me in—all this in the pleasantest manner.

In answer to my quick inquiry as to what plans I had ever upset he waved a chilling hand toward me. "Don't start in looking for trouble," he said. "There are certain things which cannot be done by a man who works as you do. From the very beginning you have insisted upon taking the public into your confidence, with the result that they get large profits which otherwise would come to us. If you did your business as we do ours—acted first and talked after, or, better still, did not talk at all—there would be no difference of opinion between us. Still, we recognize that each man must do business in his own way, and we have let you go ahead where it was possible." After a short pause he continued:

"While you were getting the Boston companies in shape I unearthed another situation which almost seemed as though it were made to order for us. What do you know of the Anaconda Company?"

The way he asked this question in one of his cross-bred, cat-purring-and-fox-bark tones which I had seen him work on others, and which I had observed always denoted a perfect knowledge of your answer to his question before you had it, did not help my guessing any.

I told him I knew nothing more than that there was such a company with stock dealt in on the English and our markets.

"Nothing more than that?" And he looked at me quizzically. "Have you been watching the stock's actions in the market?"

In a second it flashed over me that Anaconda had been quite active of late, that is, had been largely traded in without attracting much attention, although the price had been steadily advancing.

"I thought you boasted you could read the tape, Lawson?" he went on, "and that nothing could be happening in a field you were interested in without your smelling it out? When I tell you Mr. Rockefeller and myself have bought control of the biggest copper property in the world, measured either by the number of shares and their selling price or by production, without your even suspecting it, much less the public's jumping in and running up the price on us, you can see there is something in our quiet way of doing things compared with your public way."