this money
can be made and all these benefits rendered without taxing any one a
single additional dollar, for there will not be a penny a ton added to
the price of copper the metal, nor a reduction of a mill a year taken
from the wages of those who mine it or work it."

Here I halted. I had made a beginning, and I was familiar with Mr.
Rogers' system of diagnosis and treatment. Propositions placed on his
operating-table are invariably dissected in parts--this is the winner's
method; so if, under the probe of his keen mind, one section or limb is
found stiff, dead, or unhitchable to that to which it belongs, he at
once stops operating and the corpse is removed.

"How is it the situation is as you outline it?"

I drew the picture of copper Boston as I have given it in the early part
of this chapter. It astonished him.

"How do you prove that safety in this class of investment is more
assured than in others?"

I reeled off the facts: A copper-mine, from the very nature of the
business, must be developed years and years ahead before it entered the
ranks as a regular producer. The price of the metal being practically
fixed within certain limits, the mine's value, present and future, could
always be told to a certainty.

He saw it. He put me through a thorough examination about my second
claim that the price would advance 100 per cent. I again astonished him
by showing him what a market there was and had been for many years for
copper stocks, and that it was simply a question of educating investors
at large to their merits to advance them to the price my plans called
for.

When he came to the question of the amount to be invested and the
aggregate amount of profit, he did not attempt to disguise his surprise
when I showed him there were 150,000 shares of Boston & Montana which
had been selling at 20-odd and were now 50-odd, and could surely be
bought between 50 and 100; and 200,000 shares of Butte & Boston, 100,000
outside of what I and those who had bought with me owned that could be
had at an average of 20 or 25; that there were 100,000 shares of Calumet
& Hecla, selling at 250, large quantities of which could be gathered in
between that price and 400, and so on through the list. Mine after mine
I enumerated to him, all as sure dividend earners in the future as they
had been in the past, to an aggregate, without touching any of the
uncertain ones, which it would surely take one hundred millions to
purchase, and as