"Is it satisfactory to you or not? I am half beginning to think you are crowding this good thing we have in copper a bit too much. I simply ask now, Is this satisfactory to you? Do you leave it to us, or not? But whether you do or not, this particular part does not go to the public in any way."
He really showed a heap of irritation, and even now I think a little of it was genuine anger. It came over me that perhaps I was overcrowding it and treating the whole copper enterprise too much as if it were my personal property; for here was something I had had nothing to do with, the setting out, pruning, and gathering the fruit from, this particular plum-tree, and so I answered without any hesitation:
"It is you, I think, Mr. Rogers, who are a little unreasonable in not giving me a chance to tell you how I look at it. Yes, it is perfectly satisfactory. I will leave it entirely to you and Mr. Rockefeller. Whatever you do will be all right."
At once Mr. Rogers' expression changed. He looked relieved, making no attempt to disguise the fact that he had discharged a troublesome duty. "That is the way to look at it, Lawson," he said. "You'll not suffer, I promise you."
Meditating over the conversation afterward, I realized how delicate his task really had been, and how well he had performed it. It had been to settle this matter and to rearrange our copper plans that he had summoned me to New York, and if I had proved refractory I can see he would have been badly snagged in his negotiations with the Lewisohns. If there had been a trace of dissension in our camp, that firm would never have surrendered their great business on such terms as Rogers proposed to exact.
This is as good a place as elsewhere to tell exactly how fair and just Mr. Rogers proved himself in the cutting of this particular melon, and to explain why he had been at such pains to have me leave it entirely to his and Mr. Rockefeller's generosity. The fifty-one per cent. of the sales company amounted in hundred-dollar shares to 26,000 ($2,600,000). If I had insisted upon the arrangement then in force my share would have been 6,500 shares ($650,000), which to-day are worth a fabulous figure. For some time after this I heard nothing about the matter and was in complete ignorance of what my portion was until one day Mr. Rogers said in an offhand way: "By the way, Lawson, you can send me a check for your allotment of the selling company's stock, 250 shares." Before I got a chance to interpose a word he said: "We had to divide that up among a great many, or there would have been a good deal of hard feeling, but, after all, it's only a side-show and does not amount to anything when you consider our real plans."
At this moment, carefully chosen for that very reason, our affairs were swimming along so magnificently and my own profits were so great, that I had not the heart to make any serious objection. I let the matter go with an inward resolution that at the first convenient moment I would slip out of the selling company. Sure enough, shortly afterward Mr. Rogers said to me:
"Lawson, I do wish we could get in that selling company's stock from the different holders." He did not actually say he was buying it in for the Amalgamated Copper Company, but he desired that I infer it. I snapped him up:
"All right. You can have mine, Mr. Rogers," I said.
"At what price?" And I think he thought that he would be compelled to do some trading.