CHAPTER XX
THE CHRISTENING OF AMALGAMATED
My readers may recall the wave of indignation which swept over this country when the news came of the kidnapping of Miss Stone, the American missionary, by the bandits of Bulgaria, and how hot we all felt at the capture of Ion Perdicaris by Raissuli, the Morocco rebel. Only in remote and barbarous countries, we reflected, could such outrages occur, and we dwelt with high inward satisfaction on our own splendid American institutions and law-abiding civilization. If only these miscreants were on American soil so American justice could lay hands on them—what stern punishment would be meted out to them! Yet, under the panoply of these noble institutions and just laws of ours, one citizen of our commonwealth was enabled to seize from another millions of money and the ownership of a great enterprise—literally wrench it from the hands of men who had spent their lives in developing it—and the execution of the deed involved neither financial nor physical risk and carried with it no legal nor social consequences. Look on the picture, all ye free Americans rejoicing in vaunted liberty and the right to the pursuit of happiness—this able and successful merchant, head of a great business which it has been his life-work to rear, surrendering the splendid structure at the mere nod of one man, whose "I want it" is more potent, more irresistible, than family pride or Government decree. If Leonard Lewisohn, a millionaire many times over, rich in connections with the strongest financial houses of Europe, meekly submitted to the behest of "Standard Oil," what resistance could the average man oppose to such a power? The logic of the situation is inevitable. Can you free Americans absorb the details of this most extraordinary performance and not see the coming storm as clearly as the mariner does when all along the horizon creep the hosts of Boreas and the barometer drops like lead in a shot tower?
At last, in April, 1899, the first section of the much-heralded company was ready to step before the footlights to the plaudits of an awaiting financial world, and it was really a great moment when Mr. Rogers sent me word: "Come over, and be prepared to stay until the consolidation is formed and launched." I was at 26 Broadway next day, and we entered at once on our council of war. It was a momentous sitting and secret, for, until the entire programme was mapped out and decided upon, no one was a party to it or had knowledge of it but Mr. Rogers, his counsel, William Rockefeller, and myself. After we had finished the final details, Mr. Rogers said:
"This is a job on which we must not lose time, for if we give any one, even those who are to be directors, too long to think things over, there will be counterplots, and a cog may slip or jump and we shall all be crushed. We must all bear in mind that this thing has rolled up and up until it is unprecedented in business affairs, and if we slip up in any of the important details, we shall have a panic on our hands such as Wall Street has never witnessed."
On all sides for weeks there had been accumulating evidence, which we could see pointed to a monumental success or an avalanche failure. The copper market was literally boiling, and investors from one end of America to the other and throughout Europe were on the qui vive for the anticipated announcement. At intervals in history great "booms" are started, which bloom into iridescent bubbles, and for a moment dazzle the world with fairy dreams of sudden millions. Greatest of all these was the South Sea Bubble. Since then we have had the tulip craze in Holland, the Hooley excitement, and the Barney Barnato South African mining furor in England, the Secretan copper corner, and the tremendous bonanza delirium in California; but none of these, save the first, is comparable with the magnitude of the copper maelstrom of 1899. The tulip craze could have been thrust in and withdrawn again without diverting one of its currents; the Barney Barnato affair was little more than an eddy on the surface of English finance in contrast. We were dealing in hundreds and five hundreds of millions; shares rose and fell twenty to fifty points in a day; some had mounted to the giddy height of $900 each; thousands of the public had invested their savings in one copper property or another, and all awaited with bated breath and marvelling anticipations the launching of this copper monster with its freight of hopes and visions.
The programme as specifically arranged had several important clauses. The first involved the notification of James Stillman, President of the National City, the "Standard Oil" Bank, who was to be let into only as much of the secret as was necessary to enable him to handle his important end intelligently. To Leonard Lewisohn it was decided to intrust the French, English, and German end of the subscription, and he was at once to receive orders to lay his pipes. I may say here that this task was admirably executed through his son-in-law, Philip Henry, of the English branch of Lewisohn Brothers. The other directors of the company were then and there selected, but it was agreed that they should not be told of the distinction thrust upon them until the very eve of the company's formation.
This decision surprised me at the moment it was concluded, for with my Boston ideas I had regarded the gentlemen we had chosen to preside over the destinies of our great company—all men of the highest prestige and standing in American finance—as so powerful and so independent in their own fields as to be beyond either the coercion or the cajolery of "Standard Oil." It was because of this reputation for integrity and the confidence their names would inspire in the public mind that we had selected them; yet here was Mr. Rogers irreverently using them as the veriest pawns in his game, and taking absolutely for granted their immediate consent to the loan of their reputations and honor for any scheme he might put up. The possibility of one of these eminent financiers objecting to be used in any way "Standard Oil" might desire was a contingency evidently so remote as to be unworthy of consideration.