ne hundred millions of dollars.

It was a creature of that incubator of trust and corporation frauds, the
State of New Jersey, and was organized ostensibly to mine, manufacture,
buy, sell, and deal in copper, one of the staples, the necessities, of
civilization.

It is a corporation with $155,000,000 capital, 1,550,000 shares of the
par value of $100 each.

Its entire stock was sold to the public at an average of $115 per share
($100 to $130), and in 1903 the price had declined to $33 per share.

From its inception it was known as a "Standard Oil" creature, because
its birthplace was the National City Bank of New York (the "Standard
Oil" bank), and its parents the leading "Standard Oil" lights, Henry H.
Rogers, William Rockefeller, and James Stillman.

It has from its birth to present writing been responsible for more hell
than any other trust or financial thing since the world began. Because
of it the people have sustained incalculable losses and have suffered
untold miseries.

But for the existence of the National City Bank of New York, the
tremendous losses and necessarily corresponding profits could not have
been made.

I laid out the plans upon which Amalgamated was constructed, and, had
they been followed, there would have been reared a great financial
edifice, immensely profitable, permanently prosperous, one of the
world's big institutions.

The conditions of which Amalgamated was the consequence had their birth
in Bay State Gas. To explain them I must go back a few years.

In 1894 J. Edward Addicks, of Delaware, Everywhere, and Nowhere, the
Boston Gas King, invaded the gas preserves of the "Standard Oil" in
Brooklyn, N. Y., and the "Standard Oil," to compel him to withdraw,
moved on his pre-empted gas domains in Boston, Mass.

Late in 1894 a fierce battle was raging in Boston between Gas King
Addicks and Gas King Rogers; the very air was filled with denunciation
and defiance--bribery and municipal corruption; and King Addicks was
defeated all along the line and in full retreat, with his ammunition
down to the last few rounds.

Early in 1895 I took command of the Addicks forces against "Standard
Oil."

By the middle of 1895 the Addicks troopers had the "Standard Oil"
invaders "on the run."

In August, 1895, Henry H. Rogers and myself came together for the first
time, at his house in New York, and we practically settled the Boston
gas war.

Early in 1896 we actually settled the gas war, and "St