PERFECTING THE DOUBLE CROSS
To get back to my story. I realized that though one disaster had been
averted, I was far from any haven of rest. Remembering my cue, however,
I asked innocently:
"Have you all decided to sell more of the stock, Mr. Rogers?"
"All? Why no," he said. "Just let me show you where we stand now. All
the unsold stock, roughly forty-eight millions, has been divided up and
each man has to carry his own. That's easy, because Stillman will carry
them all at the bank, for they are all good, Lewisohn, Morgan, Olcott,
Flower, Daly, and the others. The only loose stock will be Mr.
Rockefeller's, yours, and mine, and that we must turn into money before
we can bring out the second section. You have been losing sight of the
fact, Lawson, that we have millions upon millions tied up here, and Mr.
Rockefeller has decided he will not go ahead until we have turned this
venture into money."
Marvellous, marvellous man! He unrolled the new scheme as openly and as
freely as though he were a world's philanthropist explaining a new
benefaction and I an enthusiastic minister employed to carry the glad
tidings to the people. The plot was obvious. In spite of Flower and
Stillman and all the talk of our taking a rest he was back on his black
courser again, in a new saddle, with a freshly lighted lantern, and the
old blackjack newly leaded. And I was the only one who could stalk the
game. I listened.
"Now let me show you, Lawson, what a pretty campaign I have laid out,"
he went on. "I've pledged all the others to hold their stock and I've
got it rigged in such a way they can't let go a share without my knowing
of it. Then I've got them all enthusiastic and have formed a pool at
Flower's office which, if necessary, can buy 500,000 shares, and what
with the money they have made and the promise that they will be let in
on the second section if they're good, we ought to have things pretty
much our own way."
The scheme seemed to be perfect for robbing every one in sight, and here
was I being taken right in--I who had but one thought: to get those I
had mired on to firm soil and myself outside the breastworks of this
pirate stronghold.
"It looks perfect, Mr. Rogers," I said. "Now where do I come in on all
this?"
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "You see as well as I can tell
you," he replied evasively.
"I take it that you want me to unload our stock on to the pool and the
other members of the syndicate?" I asked with a brutal frankness that I
realized, after I heard the words, was almost indecent.
"What is the use of putting it that way, Lawson?" he replied angrily.
"You know I mean nothing of the sort. You know I want you to keep every
one you can from selling, and simply supply the legitimate demand that
can be worked up among the subscribers all over the country. If worked
as you can work it, this ought to clean up our stock without any one's
being hurt."
I understood perfectly. If Mr. Rogers and I had been on terms of
flippancy instead of dignity, at this stage we should have given each
other the wink. Just what he wanted done I knew. He knew I knew what he
wanted, and I knew he knew I knew, and yet we were pretending not only
that we knew nothing but that there was really nothing to know.
Fortunately, at this stage of the duel Mr. Rogers' secretary arrived
with my checks and stock, and while we were verifying these, I had time
to study my mental chess-board for the next move. The papers were all
passed at last and then I entered into some explanation of my own
intentions. I told Mr. Rogers that for the time being I would hold all
my stock, but that I intended to borrow a stack of money on it from
Stillman through my brokers, for I fully intended to support the
market, as my belief in the stock was absolute.
I could have sworn Mr. Rogers inwardly chuckled at my fatuity, but I
went right on:
"If Mr. Rockefeller has decided that your share and his of the allotment
must, in whole or in part, be turned into money before the second
section is tackled, there's nothing for it but to go ahead, and I will
put in great work for you (I didn't add, "my work, if I can make it,
will keep you in as long as the public have a share"), because," said I,
"my one ambition now is to complete the second section and get things in
such shape that those people I have had locked-in so long can get out,
if they care to."
It was an intricate problem that was thus settled, for Mr. Rogers well
knew that it would be useless to attempt to sell big quantities of
Amalgamated without my detecting it, and he dared not ask me to have a
hand in his plot without including my own stock. When he saw I intended
to stand by my baby, and yet was so anxious to get to the second section
that I would accede to Mr. Rockefeller's wishes, he perceived that the
situation was ideal for his purposes.
"Let me glance over that subscription list," I said; and I opened up the
book, for book it really was.
My readers may surmise how intense was my interest in scanning the
results of my work. This great stack of bank sheets before me was the
official list of the subscription, stitched together in seventeen
sections of twenty pages each; twenty-eight names, with city, State,
street number addresses, and amounts subscribed to a page, all in ink in
longhand.
"Better take them with you to the hotel and go carefully over the names
and amounts," put in Mr. Rogers. "It certainly is a long job, but one
that you must tackle some time, and the sooner the better."
Here was the missing link in my chain of evidence, delivered directly
into my hands without a word of persuasion or cajolery. Providence
played that hand for me surely. I concealed my jubilance by rattling
along vociferously:
"I shall have to work over this a heap, sending out circulars and what
not. It would have been better to have had it in typewriting, but I
suppose Stillman didn't dare intrust it to the machine people. However,
I can divide up the seventeen sections among different people and none
will know the whole story. I will keep it in Boston with the other
papers, and--gracious! what's this?"
"What is it?" he asked, smiling at my excitement.
In front of me was the section beginning with the "Mc's," and the
largest subscription on the page was 6,000 shares--1,200 allotment. I
followed the line back to the name. It was that of Hugh McLaughlin, then
the big "boss" of Brooklyn, who, like all the other big bosses of New
York State, was a trusted lieutenant of "Standard Oil." I put my finger
on the amount and said:
"You have taken care of your friend across the river, I see. No wonder
all the politicians were so anxious to get in, for they know you would
not put this old gentleman into anything that is not pretty sure."
Mr. Rogers nodded wisely:
"Yes, I told the old stalwart he had better have about half a million,
but he went $100,000 better, I see. I sent the word around to the
others, too, but have not had a chance to go over the list carefully.
Have they all gone in under their own names?"
I ran over page after page, looking for names as he called them off, but
most of them had disguised their ventures through dummies. We had no
trouble in putting our fingers on their allotments, however; Mr. Rogers
commenting in his sage and caustic way on men and politics. It was
growing late, and at a natural stopping-place in our talk I sent for
paper and string, with my own hands tied up the book, and--with all the
airs of extreme leisureliness--literally bolted.
No school-boy with a three-pound trout caught in a deep hole under a big
willow bearing the sign, "Any one fishing here will be prosecuted," no
burglar with an unexpected fat swag, was ever in such a fever to lug his
booty to a concealed place as I to get that infinitely precious bundle
to the Waldorf. At last I landed it in my room and began to scan the
interesting pages. My first thought was to look for our own big dummy
subscription. As I supposed, it was not there. _Roughly I added the
totals of the different sheets and compared them, with the 412 millions
we had given the public, which was now indelibly, the world over, a
matter of record._ Again I stopped to congratulate myself on my good
fortune in securing this first-hand evidence of the fraud that had been
practised on the people.
I leaned over the thick pages with their various inscriptions. The names
and addresses carried me into every corner of the United States and into
the great cities of Europe as well. Set down there were towns and
villages I had never heard of, and my mind made pictures for me of
fathers, mothers, and children, beguiled by my pledges and promises,
embracing the opportunity to add to their scanty hordes. But it was not
a moment to indulge in scares, so I slipped over the people's mites and
fixed my mind on the millions.
The Lewisohns were down for eleven millions, and Mr. Rogers' old
cronies, John Moore's firm, were represented by a subscription of
between six and seven millions. As I ran over the names I found million
after million down to Mr. Rogers' friends, which told me that he had
spared no one. All the lieutenants and the queer people who do the
confidential business of the "System," and invariably turn up at
melon-cutting time, were down for round amounts. Conspicuous among the
rest was the name of that rising votary of the "System" who won
notoriety, while Comptroller of the Currency under President Cleveland,
as manipulator of the slick bond deal which has gone into American
history as among the queerest performances of its period. Loaded up with
Government banking secrets, this young man subsequently became a prize
for whom the various organizations of the "System" competed valorously.
There he was, in three places--James H. Eckels, President of the
Commercial Bank of Chicago, 6,000, 2,000, and 2,000 shares--or a million
dollars altogether.
Another name caught my eye: "Bay State Gas Co., J. Edward Addicks,
20,000 shares"--two millions of dollars. I leaned back and laughed as I
thought of this wary old fox, with the bruises and scars of the
"System's" hopper thick all over his body, dutifully bringing his
contribution to his old enemy, Rogers. And Rogers, disdainful and
contemptuous of the man, found his $400,000 good. This, I said to
myself, is a case of spider eat spider with a vengeance; and I wondered
if experience is really as good a teacher as the text-book says.
Hour after hour I pondered over that list, "sizing up" each subscriber
and questioning what his financial condition might be. At last I dropped
it, swearing to myself to use every effort to protect these thousands of
people who had ventured so much money on the strength of my pledges.
Two days later the allotments were officially announced; in a few days
more the receipts were issued and Amalgamated was fairly out in the
world on its own feet. It was not listed on any of the exchanges yet,
but it was very much in the mouths of people, and in the papers. And
every day grew the ominous feeling that something was wrong. It was a
contradictory situation and no one could put a finger on the trouble.
Rumors one heard, but no definite derogatory statements. The truth was
that those who knew what was wrong had good reasons for saying nothing,
while all who had to do with stock affairs and surmised the evil, were
themselves loaded up with the stock and hoping against hope that our
promises of great profits would yet be fulfilled.
It was my part to keep up these anticipations and by hook or crook
prevent Rogers and Rockefeller from unloading. I bought and bought to
steady the market when no one else apparently would buy; and when I
found others whom I could induce to venture, I had them relieve those
who were faltering and who must sell. When Mr. Rogers took me to task, I
invented all manner of excuses to account for my tardiness in creating a
market on which he could unload his holdings. He listened impatiently
and incredulously, and I felt that sooner or later he would take the bit
in his teeth.
In spite of my efforts the price of Amalgamated dropped and dropped and
it was all I could do to prevent a quick crash. My profits--the immense
sum of money I had obtained at the settlement--had been used up,
together with the great sums I had borrowed on my own allotment of
shares. At intervals I stopped long enough to make brief excursions into
sugar or other stocks, out of which I captured additional hundreds of
thousands, but every cent of such gains went toward staying the
avalanche. These indeed were days of desperation and black despair, all
the more trying because I had to look happy and talk hopefully; all the
more difficult because my enemies came out of their holes and did their
share to balk my efforts; all the more painful because the public were
beginning to doubt whether the second section was coming--and whether it
had best come--and our Boston "Coppers" had begun to drop in value.
During all this time I had troubled myself but little about the Flower
pool, which had been set going soon after the conversation in which Mr.
Rogers had told me that he and Mr. Rockefeller intended to unload their
stock. I concluded that the pool would surely get a share of what they
had to sell, and showed no inclination to join in with it. But at last
Mr. Rogers said to me:
"As every one is going into the pool, Lawson, it will seem strange if
you are missing, so you had better send Flower your check and I will see
you get it back later."
"For how much?" I asked him.
"A hundred thousand will be about right," he answered, and I sent it,
and that was all I had heard of the subject until one day after the
stock had been weaker than usual I received by mail a brusk notice from
Flower & Co. to mail them another hundred thousand dollars. Immediately
I called up the banking-house, and learned to my horror and astonishment
that the pool had accumulated over 225,000 shares. I went at once to Mr.
Rogers with Flower's call and said:
"I know nothing whatever of this affair, Mr. Rogers, and as I have not
been unloading any of my stock and have all I can do to keep up my end
anyway, you will look after it, of course."
He took the notice and said: "I will attend to it." Remembering his
intentions to unload, after what I had heard of the pool's accumulations
I was not surprised at Mr. Rogers' willingness to take care of this
matter of mine. It is of interest now, in looking back over our affairs,
to recall that though there were several periods later when the sledding
was hard, and I needed all the money I could lay hands on, he never
offered to return me that hundred thousand, not even after the pool had
liquidated, as will be shown later. In spite of this fact, in his
readiness to hurl any charge or insult at me, he had his hireling, Denis
Donohoe, recently make the accusation that I alone of all its members
refused to keep up my payments to the Flower pool.