our own customers to the
Brookline Company to secure to it the required profit. He saw in an
instant the scheme with all its far-reaching possibilities, and
assented. Then I broached the rest of my plan--we would pay him four and
a half millions in six months. To do this we must sell stocks and bonds.
Before we could do that it was necessary that he help us still
further--he must buy of us all the bonds now in pledge and the stock of
the Dorchester Gas Company, another Bay State asset up for security, all
for the sum of a million and a half dollars. For this amount these
securities would at once be released and turned over to him. Then he
should resell them to us together with the Brookline Gas Company for six
millions of dollars. There would be a formal turning over of the
management of his properties so the public should be convinced that we
really were the victors in the strife. Mr. Rogers saw my point, quickly
ran over the details in his comprehensive way, and closed the trade
without further bargaining. That time, thank Heaven, it was not within
Addicks' power to thwart me.

On May 1st we made our settlement in compliance with the terms I had
arranged. The six millions of dollars were to be paid November 1st. As
the necessary options and sales could not legally run to our company,
they were made to Henry M. Whitney, and he simultaneously transferred
them to us, and we elected him a director of our different corporations.
Rogers publicly resigned and turned over to us the control of the
Brookline Company, and we elected our own management. To all intents and
purposes we had won.

The settlement was the sensation of the day in financial circles, and I
was the recipient of many generous congratulations. I had neither time
nor inclination to take care of bouquets at that moment, however. I was
too keenly aware of the difficulty of raising six millions of dollars in
the limited period at our disposal. Times have changed since 1896. Then
six millions was quite a large sum, larger than sixty millions now. That
was before the halcyon period of "Frenzied Finance."

CHAPTER XXI

BRIBING A LEGISLATURE

That six months between May 1st and November 1st was the most crowded
period in all my experience up to that time. Events of consequence
tumbled over one another in startling succession. We actually lived on
sensations. In exercising the historian's right to choose the order of
setting down incidents I am puzzled