Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

These were the conditions when on Tuesday a telephone call came from Mr. Rogers asking me to drop round to 26 Broadway, as he had an important matter to talk over with me. I reported at the appointed time. Mr. Rogers was evidently full of business.

"Lawson," he said, "we have figured everything up and balanced accounts, and each member of the different syndicates is to be given his share, cash and stock, at once."

"All right," I answered. "That suits me."

"I thought so," he continued pleasantly. "Mr. Rockefeller has had Curtis figure up your account, and while in the rush he may not have got everything in, he's fairly accurate. From what you said about getting your affairs into shape to help the market, it occurred to me you might like to have your balance of this section in hand ready for use. I have the statement here, and if you find it all right I'll go upstairs and get all it calls for fixed up at once."

We were in the little glass pen where most of our conferences took place. I, with my elbows on the small mahogany table, sat looking across at him leaning back in his chair. Without knowing what was to happen, but from a certain suppressed eagerness I had detected under his frigid composure, I had a strong conviction that he was nerving himself for a coup of some kind. I realized that he and Mr. Rockefeller had talked me over pretty thoroughly and had decided that they had best run this gauntlet as soon as possible. Since Mr. Rogers had broached the substitution of Anaconda for the properties originally intended for the first section of Amalgamated, I had felt that this balancing of accounts would be a crucial affair, and after the recent turn of the screw, I hardly knew what to expect, but was ready for the worst. Now a swift thrill of apprehension suggested I'd better look for real deviltry. There was perhaps a minute's delay while he fumbled in his pocket and drew out letters and papers. My blood steeplechased in my veins as I waited for him to deal me the hand that might decide my fate. In such tense moments thoughts flash in and out of the mind like lightning, and as I watched him rise, the fateful paper in his hand, it came over me with a sharp exultation that however the trumps fell it was a great game—great even for this king of gamesters who was about to play his hand.

Henry H. Rogers looked piercingly into my eyes and said: "There's the account, Lawson." He laid on the table in front of me an oblong piece of paper. On it were some lines of words followed by other lines of figures. That was all. I spread it out carefully between my two hands and bent over it. Then I looked up. Before I allowed the significance of the figures to penetrate my mind, I wished to know exactly what they represented.

"If I understand aright, Mr. Rogers," I asked, "this statement does not take in our Boston deals nor my loans on the Butte and other affairs, but is a settlement of this first section only—a final clearing-up showing just what my twenty-five per cent. of the Amalgamated and the things connected with it amount to? Am I right?"

My voice was even and calmly business-like, and he answered in exactly the same tone.

"It shows where you stand on this particular affair, and gives your balance of stock and cash, which we are ready to pay over in whole or in part, in case you may want to leave some of it against the loans on the other section."

I turned to the paper; I leaned over it, letting my two hands with the elbows resting on the table support my head. Mr. Rogers could see only the back and top of my head, no part of my face. At the first glance I caught the balance—it was a little less than two millions and a half. At once the other lines upon the sheet became a crimson blur. Into my mind rushed an avalanche of figures and facts which seemed to prove irresistibly that I should have read nine millions in place of the numbers that were burning themselves into my brain. But what if it were rightly but two and a half millions, and the great sum on which all my market movements had been predicated was a hideous miscalculation on my part? Then inevitably was I hopelessly bankrupt, or saved from that only to find my neck irrevocably caught in the "Standard Oil" noose. I strove fiercely to steady my nerves, to arrest the stampeding terrors that had broken loose in my brain. There came to me a feverish memory of the hideous procession of Thursday's midnight vigil. I desperately asseverated to myself, "I must be cool, I must, I must." But all my resolutions went as goes the powder when touched by the match. In an instant more nothing in the world mattered; I sprang to my feet, kicked over the chair, and with an exclamation which was half yell, half imprecation, I stuck the paper under Mr. Rogers' eyes. On the balance line I beat a tattoo with my trembling forefinger. Heaven knows what I said, for all barriers were down and a flood-tide of rage, overwhelming, terrific, swept my being. There was no chance for Mr. Rogers to answer or to interrupt me. Suddenly I became conscious that I was asking, "Am I to understand that this is final? Is this what I get for all I have stood for?" My voice as I heard it was strange—a hoarse hiss—and the words fell on my ear like a death sentence. "No, by God, no!" I sprang between him and the door.