ster that ensued. The conditions which led to its perpetration are
narrated later. In passing I may say that while the formation of the
Amalgamated Company by the clerks and office boys (as I have already
described it) and the means by which Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller let
in their friends to their appointed "floors" were deceptive and
outrageous in their double-dealing, and should be prohibited by law, I
knew them to be so commonly practised throughout our American financial
centres that it never entered my mind to suggest that they were
criminal. The infraction I have just explained, however, is a tangible
fraud and a very different proposition.

The two announcements alone would have had but little efficacy in
persuading the public to part with its money for Amalgamated stock, but
in conjunction with the third advertisement--mine--they proved
irresistible. There was nothing equivocal in my announcement. I not only
advised the purchase of the stock by subscription on the ground that it
was the best opportunity for safe and profitable investment ever offered
the people, but asserted that the shares could afterward be sold for
fifty to seventy-five per cent. advance on the subscription price, so
that every one who obtained a share of Amalgamated for $100 was buying
something which would subsequently be worth $150 to $200. Further I
promised that all the subscribers should be treated alike and gave it as
my opinion that the whole 750,000 shares could at the time the public
was reading my statement be sold for thirty to sixty per cent. more than
the subscription price, and declared unqualifiedly that the assets owned
by the Amalgamated Company were worth from one hundred to one hundred
and twenty-five millions; that the company was then earning from twelve
to sixteen per cent. per annum, and that from the start and ever
afterward it would pay eight per cent. dividends annually.

As I have previously stated, I had no personal knowledge of the
conditions in the several properties comprising the first section of
Amalgamated, but the facts and figures which were put forward in this
advertisement were supplied me by Henry H. Rogers and through him by
Marcus Daly, who vouched for them, and furthermore the three
advertisements were carefully read and scanned by Mr. Rogers himself.
If I had not believed them to be true I should not have put them
forward nor allowed them to be published, but I accepted them as the
public and t