CHAPTER XVII
"EXTRACT EVERY DOLLAR"
"Standard Oil's" arguments always are absolutely flawless, and this was one of their best. I was fast becoming imbued with the wisdom of the plan which Mr. Rogers was revealing so adroitly, and began secretly to wonder if after all I was not a novice in such business.
Unerringly Mr. Rogers followed my thoughts. He piled Pelions of better things on Ossas of good ones. Surely it was after watching some parallel hoodwinking put through by a remote ancestor of "Standard Oil" that Puck enunciated his famous dictum, "What fools these mortals be." I fell in like the veriest tyro—hypnotized and happy.
"How much of this first section do you figure, Mr. Rogers, that we are to give to the public?" I inquired.
"We, Mr. Rockefeller and myself, have carefully considered this phase of it, and as we all want to retain as much as possible of the stock, we would not sell over $5,000,000 to the public."
"But can you do this?" I asked. "If the public know 'Standard Oil' is retaining nearly all the stock they will sour on it."
"Leave that to us," he said, knowingly. "We can iron this out so easily you need not give it another thought, for no one can have any possible rights in the matter until he has been allotted stock, and as all those who come in are to have big profits from the start, they will raise no objection to anything we do."
"All right, if you think it's wise. You know," I responded; "but who will be in this besides ourselves?"
"Every one of us—Stillman, Daly, Olcott, Flower, Morgan, all who can be of use to us will have to be let in on some of the ground floors. The foundation profits, as we agreed under the old plan, will be twenty-five per cent. to you, seventy-five per cent. to us. After that we will jointly take care of those we let in. Is that all right?"