ntures about which he was
grumbling. (My readers must not confuse a Boston grumble with the
ordinary ejaculations of discontent indulged in by the inhabitants of
other portions of the world remote from the Hub of the Universe. A
Boston grumble consists of an upward movement of the eyebrow, a slight
twitch of the mustache and a murmur cross-bred from "Deuce take it!" and
"Scoundrelly!") "Young man," he said, "my father said that such a
hazardous venture as copper should return at least thirty per cent. to
be safe, and I feel if I receive but twenty per cent. that something is
radically and unpardonably wrong with the management of the mine." I did
not pursue the argument, for I knew he inherited with his fortune a line
of Boston reasoning, and I remembered once having watched a country boy
put his tongue on a frosty iron door-knob. I knew better than to invoke
again that wintry Boston smile, which in a Western or Southern community
would be used to _frappe_ mint-juleps or cold-storage hogs with.

No better illustration of the attitude of the shrewd New York investor
to "Copper" can possibly be given than to detail my first interview with
H. H. Rogers and William Rockefeller on the subject. To-day Mr. Rogers
is known throughout the world as the leading figure of the copper
world--the copper Czar, so to speak; yet it was only nine years ago when
I said to him at the end of a gas-talk:

"Mr. Rogers, would Mr. Rockefeller and yourself look into Copper?"

"Copper?" said he in an amused way, "copper? What kind of copper?"

"Why, copper such as we know in Boston--copper the metal, copper the
industry, copper stocks."

He burst into one of his jolly laughs. "Look into it? Why, I don't know
a thing about copper other than that we had old copper kettles when I
was a boy which were used to fry doughnuts in, but I suppose my plumbers
would look at anything you wanted, for I remember I get big bills for
copper tanks at the house."

FOOTNOTES:

[18] For those unacquainted with such business terms as "gross" or "net"
profit: Gross profit on business done is that first profit which remains
after deducting the first cost of producing the goods--in this case copper,
the metal; and from this gross profit must be deducted other expenses, such
as unusual development expenses, the expense of running the executive
departments, interest, etc. This leaves the net profit which is available
for dividends.

CHAPTER VIII

MY PLAN FO