"I do hope you are right," returned Mr. Rogers, in a quiet, earnest, I-pray-it-may-really-be-so tone, "but if it is from six to ten millions we will all take off our hats to you."
This defined the expectation of the man who above all others knew most of what had been done to mature and perfect the venture. I realized that none of the parties to the enterprise anticipated an extraordinary success, and though I felt more confident than the others, I was far from cognizant of the actual feeling abroad among the people. Monday morning I got an inkling of what was coming. My office in Boston was the centre of a dense mass of people from morning until night, and round the National City Bank in New York crowds were gathered watching the throng fight its way through the doors. Inside, a long line of men and women headed for the subscription desk stood laden with checks and currency, patiently awaiting their turn, and every mail brought sacks of orders. The big banking and brokerage offices in the financial districts of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York were packed with customers asking to be shown the way to secure as much as possible of this easy money, while the wires buzzed with messages and bids from the far West and from Europe. The excitement knew no bounds. In my rooms at the Waldorf I sat beside the telephone getting rapid reports from my lieutenants. From 26 Broadway I learned of the progress of events at the bank, and was impressed with the fact that the prevailing excitement and the strain were beginning to affect even the nickel-steel equilibrium of Mr. Rogers himself. Indeed, he made no attempt to disguise his uneasiness, and told me that William Rockefeller was in much the same condition. It was the first venture of size these two strong wheelmen of "Standard Oil" had undertaken without the co-operation of John D. Rockefeller, and it appeared that he was considerably worked up over the public hubbub, and so opposed to the whole Amalgamated affair that nothing short of a great success could justify his subordinates' temerity. However one looked at the situation, it was evident that Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller were playing for the stake of their lives, though how great the stake was no one at that time guessed. Since then they have steadily forged ahead, both in riches and in influence, until to-day they have actually supplanted John D. Rockefeller in the kingship of finance. At that day, though his had always been the master-mind of "Standard Oil," I don't believe Mr. Rogers was worth, all told, over twelve to fifteen millions, while to-day he is probably a hundred and fifty times a millionnaire.
It must be remembered that there was good cause for trepidation over this venture, for though the stock markets buzzed with "Coppers" it was all guesswork as to how far the public would go with us. The question was, What would they do now that our stock was within their reach? It was a tremendous proposition we had put forth, for remember this was before the period of the great trustifications, and ten to twenty millions figured as the limit of large flotations. Even these were of well-known properties and invariably were offered below par. To come into the open, offering at $100 a share a brand-new stock capitalized at $75,000,000, was breaking the record, and we might well wonder what was before us.
So far as man could do I had safeguarded the public and my own reputation, and believed that the assurances I had secured eliminated all opportunities of fleecing investors. Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller had each pledged me his solemn word, under no circumstances to sell to subscribers over five million dollars of the stock, and to place at my disposal the five millions cash received, to use in the open market for the purpose of protecting the stock so that it should never decline below par. That this promise should be kept was of the utmost consequence. While "Standard Oil" held the large majority of the Amalgamated stock and the public but a small minority, there was no danger of the latter being slaughtered, whereas if the public was loaded up with stock at $100 per share, it would be profitable for Rogers, Rockefeller, and Stillman to practise the method I was fast beginning to see was their favorite device for accumulating wealth—selling stock and then dropping its price and taking it away from its holders at twenty-five to fifty per cent. below what they had purchased it at. If my plan of guarding against this possibility were adhered to, I knew that there would be such a demand for the shares in the open market after the allotment that when the second section of seventy-five or one hundred millions came to be offered, it would be even more eagerly sought than the first. So with the third and other sections contemplated, until in time the whole stock would be distributed among the investors of the world, and assuming that part of our enormous profits would always be used to keep up its market price, there could be no possible decline. Thus Amalgamated, like "Standard Oil" or a Government bond, must always be worth more than par, first because there would be value to justify it, and second because its holders would have absolute confidence that the security could always be sold for as much or more than they had paid for it.
So far, I had carefully refrained from discussing with Mr. Rogers how we should go about securing our part of the subscription. I had not forgotten it. Indeed, I had it well in mind and was ready to enter upon the matter when it came up. An iron-bound contract held the Amalgamated Company and the National City Bank over the signatures of a Rogers, a Rockefeller, and a Stillman to allow the public to subscribe for $75,000,000 of stock, and the terms were that every subscription must be in the bank at noon, May 4th, and that each subscription must be accompanied by a certified check of $5 for every share applied for. As we had agreed that the public should be sold but five millions of the stock, that meant that we proposed to retain seventy millions of it ourselves, but to obtain this allotment legally, we must comply with the conditions of the advertisement exactly as outsiders had. So it was necessary that we have a bid in before noon on Thursday for our seventy millions, accompanied by a check for $3,500,000, which would secure us our quota provided the public subscription was no more than five millions. If the public subscription ran over five millions, then the bank must throw out all additional subscriptions over that amount, for the advertised contract specifically declared that all accepted subscriptions would be allowed pro rata. By my suppression of the usual condition that the Bank reserve the right to reject any part of any subscription, it was absolutely precluded from the common method of dealing with such an emergency and so could not reject parts of subscriptions. There was a way out—without practising fraud. If at noon on Thursday the public had subscribed ten or fifteen millions then the insiders must put in bids of $140,000,000 to $210,000,000, in which event the entire subscription would be divided by allotting each subscriber one share for every two or three subscribed.
I presumed then that some such method would be followed. It surprised me at the time that Mr. Rogers should have given so little attention to so vital a part of our programme, for he is in the habit of thoughtfully thumbing over just such details to avoid slip-ups, but the idea that our subscription would run into unwieldy amounts never occurred to him, and he let things go, trusting to luck and "Standard Oil's" motto "To Hell with the people anyway," to adjust the matter at the last moment. To-day Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, and James Stillman would each give five millions from his private fortune if this seemingly unimportant detail had then been provided for. Its neglect is the bloody finger-print on the knife-handle of the murderer, it is the burglar's footprint in the snow. In this case it furnishes the evidence of the crime of Amalgamated.