We had agreed that the first companies to go into our consolidation
should be Butte & Boston, Boston & Montana, Calumet & Hecla, Osceola,
Quincy, Tamarack, and any other of the long-established properties of
which we could get hold. It would be difficult, we knew, to purchase the
control of the Calumet & Hecla, for its owners thought too highly of
their investment to part with it, but it was safe to buy whatever was
offered, and if we accumulated less than a majority of the shares we
could easily resell at a large profit. I began my operation with Boston
& Montana stock, buying cautiously and obtaining it at fair prices, and
this transaction, though conducted quietly, added fresh fuel to the
rumor blaze. Finally Boston became so excited over the situation that I
came out with a public statement in which I frankly showed what I was
trying to do. In all such affairs, however, the explanations of any man
known in his business as a stock speculator or manipulator are never
accepted as true. It is assumed that such announcements are merely
blinds to disguise his real purpose; that they are feints or
manoeuvres in his campaign. So when I declared that I was working out
plans for the consolidation of all good Boston "Coppers," and that
associated with me were the strongest capitalists in the world, a laugh
went up from a goodly portion of "the Street." The hireling news bureaus
shrieked at my presumption and the absurdity of my combination, and when
after a hot day's operations I was quoted in the financial press as
telling my followers that it was "Standard Oil" money which was to back
"Coppers," Barron, whose News Bureau moulded opinion for the opposing
copper magnates, came out with a statement:

"Lawson is spreading in his peculiar underground ways that
the Standard Oil crowd is looking into Coppers. Just enough
countrymen swallowed his yarns to enable him to boost prices
over six points to-day, but by to-morrow, when the
Rockefellers or Rogers of Standard Oil put their foot down
on his transparent lies, those who were foolish enough to
listen to his ridiculous fakes will find they must sell at a
loss. We can say, on a high authority in Standard Oil, that
they have never bought nor contemplate buying a share of any
copper stock."

My enemies were numerous and powerful, and there were many other
announcements of the same character as Barron's tending to cast ridicule
on my