r which to-day is at its height.

Though I had taken up the Westinghouse cause as a business venture and
its successful termination was most profitable to me, I had entered into
the campaign with the ardor of a lawyer defending a client unjustly
accused of a heinous crime. But there was this difference--if in spite
of his efforts the lawyer fails to convince the jury of his client's
innocence it means no detriment to his fortune or his reputation,
whereas all I had and was were involved in this stock-exchange struggle.
The great rewards that are the guerdon of success in financial fights
are balanced by the terrific consequences of defeat. The broker general
engaged in surrounding his enemy requires every dollar he and his
principals can pledge or beg, and where great forces are in conflict
millions are burnt up to seize any vantage, as Kuroki sacrifices a
regiment to gain a hill. I had won for myself as well as for
Westinghouse, but if the fortunes of the war had been on the other side,
I must certainly have been wiped out.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ALLIANCE WITH ADDICKS

It was part of my method of conducting my stock-brokerage business to
expose through the medium of the press or through market letters the
stocks of corporations I thought rotten. It was also my way to work up
bull campaigns in stocks that seemed to be selling for less than they
were worth. With Addicks or the "Standard Oil" I had no connection. I
had watched the Philadelphian's operations and had my eye marketwise on
his bonds and stock, particularly on his stock, which was 100,000 shares
of the Bay State Gas Company of Delaware, of a par value of fifty
dollars each, and which became very active in the market shortly after
it was created, at just under par. I thought I saw in the scheme the
ordinary, cold-blooded, stock-jobbing, unloading-on-the-public affair. I
had heard recounted the man's wonderful doings, particularly his
recklessness in the purchase of the Boston companies; I "sized up" his
mighty effort to be the tremendously rich good fellow as inspired by the
idea and the purpose of giving his "stuff" in the stock-market a good
send-off; and from the start I had put his property on my "to-be-watched
memoranda" as one I might at the proper time let daylight into.

I was tearing large strips from its values when Addicks' bankers, who
happened to be business friends of mine, sought to enlist me on their
side of the gas war. I remember expre