any financier to gather in
fifty-one per cent. and practically take away its good
thing?

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.

2. Had I been able to keep 700,000 shares in the hands of Rogers and
Rockefeller with but 50,000 in the hands of the public, Rogers and
Rockefeller would never have permitted the stock to go down, because
they would have lost $700,000 at every point drop and by "bearing" they
could make only $50,000 a point drop. Sto