ment, revising the account, by which I
was given just double the amount first tendered, and the figures in both
accounts ran into millions; yet the amount in the second account upon which
I settled was only one-half the share received by my equal partners, Henry
H. Rogers and William Rockefeller, as I afterward learned.[1]

This is a fair statement of my own share in the first Amalgamated
transaction. I have no desire to evade the issues suggested and raised
by these revelations. My frankness should be absolute proof of that. As
I promised, I shall hew to the exact line of fact, letting the chips of
responsibility, legal and moral, fall where they may, though many of
them stick to my own clothes. My own burden of error I am ready and
willing to shoulder, but I decline any longer to take and carry
responsibilities which belong absolutely to others. There should be a
time-limit on martyrdom, and mine anyhow is up.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I know no better spot in my story than right here to set the public
right on two vital points concerning Amalgamated, upon which they are and
always have been greatly at sea:

John D. Rockefeller did not have before the Amalgamated Company was
organized and floated, nor at its organization and flotation, directly or
indirectly, a dollar's interest in its stock nor its affairs, and I have
what I consider excellent reasons for believing he has not had any interest
up to the time of this writing.

The disasters which have come to the Amalgamated stockholders did not
occur, as has been so industriously and ingeniously advertised throughout
the world, because of the inability of the "Standard Oil"-Amalgamated-City
Bank fraternity to prevent the collapse of the price of copper, the metal,
from the high price of seventeen cents to the low one of eleven cents per
pound. "Cornering" the metal market, forcing the price to an abnormally
high figure and maintaining it there had, notwithstanding the many emphatic
statements to the contrary, absolutely no part in any of our original
plans, and the success or failure of our project was in no way dependent
upon any price for copper, the metal, other than the fair and legitimate
price caused by legitimate supply and demand. In fact, as I shall
demonstrate before my story is ended, forcing the price to extremely high
points and the resulting collapse were all a part of the trickery by which
the public was plundered.

CHAPTER V

THE POWER OF DOLLARS