ot get any
stock were the lucky ones, whether Rogers's precise action
was criminal or not. You say yourself that it would have
been good all round if you had pricked the bubble that
night--that is, if you had then and there prevented anybody
from getting any premiums, from buying or selling a share.
Then in the name of reason, why was it not really good for
those who were rejected, that they were left out?

3. Now, in plain language, brief and straight, what would
you have deemed the right thing, that night at the bank?
With hundreds of millions subscribed, how many shares would
you have thought the public should have? How many do you
think now? And how should the balance have been kept for you
promoters? Perhaps in answering this you will make it plain.

Sincerely yours,
(Signed) ----

In answer to Question 1, I said: All my dealings had been conducted on
the basis of selling to the public a fair amount of the first section of
the consolidation and I had no tremors as to consequences. I knew that
whatever allotment was made them would be worth all they were to pay for
it, for I was personally familiar with the value of the properties of
which the section was to be composed. When Mr. Rogers, as I have
explained in my story, substituted, under circumstances that rendered me
defenceless, an entirely new set of mines for those programmed for the
first section--properties about which I knew only what he told me--from
that time on my only guarantee against the jugglery and fraud I feared
was to keep in the hands of Rogers and Rockefeller so large a part of
this stock that they could play no tricks on the public without
themselves suffering much more severely. If they regarded the stock as
so valuable a possession that it was a security to be held as "Standard
Oil," then their attitude to it guaranteed its value, and no harm could
come to any one. When, however, they showed a readiness to part with
more shares than the number they had promised me they would not go
beyond, my fears were aroused, for all the contingencies I dreaded at
once became imminent. Besides, such action was proof positive that in
their opinion the mines were not worth the price at which they were
selling them. Later on, when I had practical evidence that they were
unloading and proof positive that they were juggling the stock, I felt
certain that these facts constituted proof