at had followed Whitney's
defeat, their own complicity enforced silence and prevented outcry. It
was given out that George H. Towle and Mr. Patch, tired by their labors,
had gone to the country for a brief sojourn. On their return there would
be a settlement. And with these assurances, both legislators and
lieutenants had, perforce, to be satisfied. Gradually, betrayers and
betrayed drifted back to their own homes and their erstwhile avocations,
and when the strange story of the disappearance and death of the chief
actors in the Whitney drama came from over the seas, it fell on the
heedless ears of men who had written off a loss and desired to forget
the experience. A conspiracy of silence is easily organized among
accomplices.

I myself was the greatest sufferer by the disaster. Banking on Whitney's
assurance of success I had loaded up heavily with Bay State on my own
account; and my customers pinning their faith to my predictions of a
rise, had also bought heavily both of the gas stock and Dominion Coal.
In my attempt to support the market when the first decline occurred, I
had further increased my holdings, and, at the final break, thousands
of shares purchased for my clients were left on my hands. So my loss was
very large, many times larger than Whitney's. Like the others, I said
nothing, crediting the expense to education, while Whitney silently
tucked his emasculated charter into a crypt already furnished with other
corporation derelicts, to await some fair opportunity of legislative or
other resuscitation; for the instrument, shorn though it had been of its
immediate availability, was by no means without real value. Probably in
view of prospective contingencies, perhaps with a sense of what his
error had cost me, he said to me: "Lawson, the Pipe Line charter is
worthless now, but if at any time in the future it becomes valuable, you
or your company shall have half of it."

If Henry M. Whitney had kept that promise, what a world of disaster and
bitterness might have been averted. Generated in corruption, perhaps it
is not strange that this charter has since been so fertile a breeder of
dissension and ruin among all who have attempted to handle it. It may be
accepted as an axiom of finance that double-dealing is as dangerous to
the dealer as to his victim. The fierce conflicts that at intervals
burst out in the financial world and like a cyclone spread dishonor and
destruction broadcast, invariably are caused by