r. Rogers. "If you will put
through for us right away thus and so" (naming quite a difficult little
bit of work in connection with the Brooklyn Gas Company), "and do it in
good shape, I'll ask John Moore to run up to Boston next week and
listen to your story. If he says it looks anything like good, I'll go
over it with you to a finish."

The Brooklyn job was done on time, and I began on John Moore in my
office at my hotel in Boston just after breakfast one bleak, rainy
morning the week following. I talked for five straight-away hours, and
he listened. He was a good listener. On all stock things he was
admirably posted, and it was not necessary to waste words. I wasted
none. I knew my subject from the letter-head to "Yours truly," and I was
playing for a stake that looked as big to me as the sun does to a
solitary-confinement life prisoner. At the end of the five uninterrupted
hours I agreed with Moore that I had nothing more to produce, and I
looked for my verdict. Before starting I had felt sure of winning him;
when I was half through I knew nothing could stand against my arguments,
and when I had said the last word I felt satisfied that, being human and
intelligent, he must be convinced. It took him only ten minutes to show
me that I had been talking against ten-inch armor-plate, and that he
meant it absolutely when he said, "Lawson, I want to see it your way,
but I can't."

It was John Moore's turn then, and he showed me the good thing in an
industrial scheme he was floating at that time, and as he wound up he
said pleasantly:

"Lawson, we must do something to show for our long talk, so I'll put you
down for $50,000 underwriting." And he did.

If John Moore had seen "Coppers" as I tried to show them to him that wet
morning he could not have made for himself less than three to five
millions, for in the operation which hung on his decision I had expected
to buy stocks that soon after doubled and trebled in value. Calumet &
Hecla then sold at 256, and later as high as 900, while Boston &
Montana, then 50, mounted to 520. On the other hand, the stock of which
he had sold me $50,000 worth returned at the end of the year but a mere
fraction of that amount, and was one of the worst failures of the
industrial boom period. It cost John Moore not only an enormous amount
of money, but also prestige, and its miscarriage was one of the few bad
disappointments of his brilliant career. Afterward, when "Coppers" were
the rage a