thought was to
protect the integrity of my enterprise, and the best way to do this was
to have the people partners in its conception and development. To be
perfectly frank, the prospect of millions of profit counted for less in
my calculations than the honor and prestige I foresaw in the success of
my copper structure. As proof of this, witness how I voluntarily gave
back the millions I had secured, to make good. To create a great
institution, to erect a new and absolutely staple investment, and in
doing so to make millions for one's partners, one's self, and the
public, would be to live not in vain. The knowledge of my attitude will
perhaps help my readers to comprehend the enthusiasm with which I
entered into my "Copper" crusade; help them to understand how strongly I
resisted, and how deeply resented, the perversion of my fair structure
into a pitfall for those I had expected to benefit. My indignation
against the "System" is that which any honest man would feel against
ruffians who had used his best ideas and his most generous feelings to
lure innocent and unoffending people into some den of vice and infamy.
If I have not troubled to correct the misstatements of detractors who,
in an attempt to discredit my facts, have tried to pillory me as a
traitor, it is because I knew that when my complete story reached the
public it would make plain how and what I had been doing. The succeeding
chapters of this narrative will yield unimpeachable evidence that all my
dealing in "Coppers" as an associate of "Standard Oil" were open and as
much in the interests of the people as it was possible to have them.

CHAPTER IX

BIRTH OF "COPPERS"

Active upon the Boston market during my Bay State Gas operations were
two copper-mining companies--the Butte & Boston and the Boston &
Montana. Their properties were in Montana and both were large producers
of the metal, that is, they were old and equipped mines. These two
organizations form to-day the most valuable part of the Amalgamated
Copper Company--in fact, more than three-quarters of all the real worth
owned by that corporation.

Butte & Boston and Boston & Montana were essentially Boston
institutions, and were both officered and directed by the same set of
men. It had come to my knowledge, in the course of my stock business,
that there had been bought for the Butte & Boston, with its money, some
very valuable mines; instead of transferring these to that corporation,
howev