2. How would it have been possible for you with the $5,000,000 from the shares it was originally the plan to sell to protect those 50,000 shares on a bear market with 700,000 shares in Messrs. Rogers and Rockefeller's possession?
3. Why would it not have been a crime to dispose of only 50,000 shares when the whole 750,000 were advertised?
4. Messrs. Rogers and Rockefeller were the Amalgamated Company after purchasing the capital stock from the office-boys, were they not?
5. If Rogers and Rockefeller paid for their shares, what became of the Amalgamated Company's $75,000,000 secured by sale of stock?
These may sound foolish to you, but I'm interested and should like to understand.
Permit me to state that I admire your pluck and ability and wish you success in your remedy, whatever it may be.
Respectfully yours,
(Signed) ——
I replied:
Your first question is a hard one to answer, as it goes to the very foundation of "the stock-market." In the ideal operation of stock-markets, owners of valuable properties should always allow the public to join in their "good things" at fair prices, because all who thus participated would make money and would be ready for the next "good thing," and so on to the end. On the other hand, if the public were only invited into the "bad things," in time they would not come in on anything, good or bad, and there would be no stock-market. The foundation of stock-markets, like all other kinds of markets, is the public interest therein—for it is the people who own the great bulk of the money in the country, and its aggregate is far beyond the amount that the very few rich men possess. Stock-markets are no different, at least should be no different, from horse-markets, boot and shoe markets, or mowing-machine markets. The horse-markets whose dealers sell to their patrons good horses at fair prices, succeed; those whose dealers offer only the "culls" and "no goods," fail.