finished the final details, Mr.
Rogers said:

"This is a job on which we must not lose time, for if we give any one,
even those who are to be directors, too long to think things over, there
will be counterplots, and a cog may slip or jump and we shall all be
crushed. We must all bear in mind that this thing has rolled up and up
until it is unprecedented in business affairs, and if we slip up in any
of the important details, we shall have a panic on our hands such as
Wall Street has never witnessed."

On all sides for weeks there had been accumulating evidence, which we
could see pointed to a monumental success or an avalanche failure. The
copper market was literally boiling, and investors from one end of
America to the other and throughout Europe were on the _qui vive_ for
the anticipated announcement. At intervals in history great "booms" are
started, which bloom into iridescent bubbles, and for a moment dazzle
the world with fairy dreams of sudden millions. Greatest of all these
was the South Sea Bubble. Since then we have had the tulip craze in
Holland, the Hooley excitement, and the Barney Barnato South African
mining furor in England, the Secretan copper corner, and the tremendous
bonanza delirium in California; but none of these, save the first, is
comparable with the magnitude of the copper maelstrom of 1899. The tulip
craze could have been thrust in and withdrawn again without diverting
one of its currents; the Barney Barnato affair was little more than an
eddy on the surface of English finance in contrast. We were dealing in
hundreds and five hundreds of millions; shares rose and fell twenty to
fifty points in a day; some had mounted to the giddy height of $900
each; thousands of the public had invested their savings in one copper
property or another, and all awaited with bated breath and marvelling
anticipations the launching of this copper monster with its freight of
hopes and visions.

The programme as specifically arranged had several important clauses.
The first involved the notification of James Stillman, President of the
National City, the "Standard Oil" Bank, who was to be let into only as
much of the secret as was necessary to enable him to handle his
important end intelligently. To Leonard Lewisohn it was decided to
intrust the French, English, and German end of the subscription, and he
was at once to receive orders to lay his pipes. I may say here that this
task was admirably executed through his