"Lawson," said he, "let"s talk it out. I don"t see wherein you are in any way to blame, but I tell you if I find true what I now suspect, there will be music in the copper world that will set copper investors by the ears."
I saw there was no use trying to dodge the issue, and we entered into executive session. He had gathered most of the facts, he told me, and to ascertain the balance, proposed at once to call a meeting of Utah Consolidated stockholders. Also he had men out examining the transfer agencies to find who got the shares of Utah delivered to Rogers.
I said to him, "What do you think has happened, Untermyer?"
"I think you people have sold the bulk of that stock," he said.
"Suppose we have," I said; "there is no crime in that, is there?"
"No crime," said he, "but it is a piece of dirty double-dealing."
"All right, suppose I admit it," said I, "what of it?"
"Well, did you do it? Did you sell that stock after we delivered it to you?"
"Not a share," said I.
"Do you give me your word for it?"
"I give you my word, we didn"t sell a share of that stock after you delivered it to us."
"When did you sell it?" said he.
"Every share before we secured it of you."
At this the distinguished impa.s.sivity faded finally away and Samuel Untermyer was actually and absolutely flabbergasted. The sight of him dumfounded, confused, was too much for me. I laughed. It is seldom one gets the laugh on Mr. Untermyer.
"Do you mean to tell me you were short the whole bunch?"
"Short every share of it, and 10,000 besides," said I.
"And where do you stand now?" he pursued.
"Still short of it, and before you can get fairly to work kicking up a rumpus I should not be surprised if we were short the whole capital stock. Rogers, as you know, does play a great game, that is, when he has all the cards, owns the table, the room it"s in, and has control of the doorkeeper."
There was an interval of tense silence. Untermyer was making a n.o.ble effort to swallow his fury. I began to figure the degree of my responsibility if he should burst a blood-vessel or have an apoplectic stroke. Finally he said:
"Lawson, if I don"t blow this thing to pieces and shake 26 Broadway to its foundations, I"m not Sam Untermyer."
The time had come to reason with the heated legal gentleman, and in plain language I proceeded to show him where he stood, the position of the property, the public"s relation to it, and his own duty to the clients whose money he had invested in it. Under the logic of my argument he cooled. He saw the net, and that he and his friends were absolutely enmeshed. He even admitted that he and his friends had unknowingly aided in what had occurred and were mostly to blame for their present position; but while he acknowledged all this, he reiterated over and over again that in all his experience--and in Samuel Untermyer"s professional position he has either prosecuted, defended, or had an inquisitorial finger in every sword-swallowing, dissolving-view, frenzied finance game that has been born or naturalized in Wall Street within the decade--he had never met the equal in high-handed bunco of this deal in Utah.
Finally he said: "There"s one thing I can do, if I cannot get even with Rogers; and that is, I can "fire" the present management of this company, and I"m going to do it now, this very minute, and incidentally I"m going to state what I think of them and the whole dirty business."
I called up "Standard Oil" on the telephone and told what had happened.
Mr. Rogers said: "Cool him down at any cost, but particularly try to show him I had little to do with the deal; that it was largely the outgrowth of what the Clark-Ward people thrust upon us, and that I left the details to you and the lawyers."
Again I had visions of what would be the cost of making "Coppers" a success.
Within an hour Untermyer was back visibly relieved and glowing after his encounter. He had the resignations in his pocket, and he began joyously to detail the specific opprobriums he had cast upon the management. "I shall put in an entirely new management," he proclaimed triumphantly.
"You have positively made up your mind to that?" said I.
"You bet I have," he answered.
"Excuse me for a few minutes, then," I said; "I want to give my brokers orders to rip out 50,000 or 60,000 shares of Utah. Rogers and Rockefeller would take me to task if I wasted a minute."
"Hold on there, Lawson," he said.
"Not a minute," said I; "you know the game well enough, Untermyer, to realize that there are a few millions hanging very low on the boughs at just this second. I want to get my hat under them before you and your friends have an opportunity to roll in your own hogsheads."
It was no time for diplomacy, and I set forth in plain, dog-eat-dog terms to Mr. Untermyer exactly where he was "at," and that no one but himself and his a.s.sociates would be the sufferers by a public explosion.
Reluctantly he agreed with me that under no conditions must the "Standard Oil" management be changed, but he was bound to have one victim to show.
"You have the resignations of the present board--why not put in new men, the strongest "Standard Oil" men you know?" I suggested.
"I"ll do it," he said, "but I"ll throw out the present president, blame him for all that"s happened, but--whom shall I put in to replace him?
How about Rogers himself?"
Knowing Mr. Rogers" cross-purposes I was sure he would never become officially responsible for the company; so I told Untermyer this was impossible, but I continued: "The next best man and the closest I know to Rogers is Broughton, his son-in-law. There"s your president."
Whereupon Broughton was elected president of the Utah company. The stock has since dropped from 52 to 22, gone from 22 to 37-1/2, dropped to 18-1/2, with frequent repet.i.tions, and is now 43: and all the drops have been preceded by tremendous short selling, followed by stories of the absolute worthlessness of the property; and all the rises, by tremendous buying and stories of the mine"s fabulous richness. Some one has made millions.
"Standard Oil" is ever ready to forgive and forget those it has injured, but it has power and place for those who have made it tremble. Its a.s.sociates to-day are often yesterday"s enemies. As one looks back upon the Utah episode from over the divide, it helps accentuate its humor to contrast the present att.i.tudes of the parties engaged with those they then held to one another. We now see the virtuously indignant Samuel Untermyer shoulder to shoulder with his wicked betrayer, Henry H. Rogers, whose counsel he is against the original ally of the same Henry H. Rogers, Thomas W. Lawson, historian of "Frenzied Finance." And the talented expert, most trusted of "Standard Oil" mining emissaries--Broughton, whose unfavorable report on Utah Consolidated was the instrument of the plundering of the Clark-Ward-Untermyer contingent--elected president by Samuel Untermyer, has remained ever since at the head of the property he had p.r.o.nounced worthless.
CHAPTER XV
DEGREES IN CRIME
Every profession has its social grades. Even crime is not without an aristocracy. There are as many cla.s.ses of crooks as there are things to steal, and the more dangerous the theft, the more distinguished is the criminal in the eyes of his professional brethren. In the thieving fraternity the burglar and the highwayman figure as important persons, for do they not take their lives in their hands every time they "pull off" a trick? He who signs another man"s name to a check requires fine dexterity to be successful and endangers his liberty for a long term, so the forger is of high consequence. Pickpockets and sneak-thieves stake freedom on the agility of their fingers and legs, and are the small fry of the fraternity, yet figure as legitimate pract.i.tioners. But the confidence man, he who goes forth among rural communities disguised as a clergyman or doctor, and wheedles money out of some unsuspecting fellow-creature by means of the trust he has inspired, ranks low in the estimation of his plucky brethren of the jimmy and the black-jack. Force they respect; stealth they despise. The burglar is frankly a burglar; the confidence man conceals his plundering purpose under the aspect of respectability. He is doubly a knave in that he pretends to be honest.
The Utah trick performed by the "System," as described in my last chapter, was essentially a confidence operation. The men who executed it had the reputation and appearance of honesty, and their victims were hypnotized into security by accepting standing in the community, great business prestige, and enormous wealth as guarantees of individual probity. The only capital employed in capturing three millions of "made dollars" and the control of a great corporation was respectability. I contend, then, that the magnitude and success of the deal do not make it less despicable.
Some of my readers will doubtless ask me why I so insistently repeat the details of the "System"s" criminality, which for all purposes of argument have already been sufficiently established. My answer is that repet.i.tion alone will impress people with the real character of the cla.s.s of individuals with whom I deal. The ma.s.s of Americans look upon these men as great leaders, and regard their millions as monuments to their commercial genius. I am showing that this commercial genius is no better than a high talent, for financial jugglery, and that its successes are achieved by a calculated disregard of the laws of the game. The "System"s" fortunes have been won by means of marked cards and cogged dice, crooked wheels and bribed umpires--in other words, by the corruption of legislatures, the undermining of compet.i.tors, the evasion of railway rates, the wrongful manipulation of stocks, the perversion of justice, by intrigue, graft, and four play. Once the people realize this, the "System" is doomed; and it is my purpose to demonstrate so clearly and forcibly the crimes of the past that the nation may be aroused not only to prevent their repet.i.tion, but to crush their rascally perpetrators as they would so many reptiles. I shall so familiarize the people with the rights to which they are properly ent.i.tled and with the outrages committed in violation of them under the guise of legitimate commerce, that they will know them as they do the common facts of their daily lives. Let any "System" attempt to interfere between a man and his Bible, his meat and bread, and his proper allowance of sleep, and there would occur an explosion fierce enough to wipe the conspirators and their plots off the face of the earth; yet it is absolutely the fact that in the past our people have suffered unwittingly much fiercer wrongs than these would be, and far more vital invasions of their rights.
CHAPTER XVI
MR. ROGERS UNMASKS
There was in Montana a great copper property known as the Daly-Haggin-Tevis group, the centre of which was the huge Anaconda mine with its 1,200,000 shares. This is the mine that Marcus Daly induced the late George Hearst to buy and develop for the marvellously successful syndicate of California mining operators, composed of J. B. Haggin, noted now the world over for his horses; Lloyd Tevis, an extraordinarily shrewd San Francisco financier; and Senator George Hearst, himself perhaps the greatest mining expert America has ever known. After Senator Hearst"s death his estate sold its holdings to European investors, who with the other three owned the company at the time of which I am writing. I had never in my copper-consolidation plans contemplated including this property, for the reason that the public I was operating among was not familiar with it. I did not care to put in jeopardy the success of our venture by admitting any but mines of such well-known and unquestionable value that there could arise no possible doubt as to the security of the investment. I was well along in my task of gathering in, through public-market manipulation and private negotiation, the shares of the several good Boston companies whose merits I myself knew about and had so carefully gone over with Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller, when one day Mr. Rogers called me up on the telephone and requested that I come to New York to see him. "I have," he said, "a very important matter to go over with you." I took the train and early next morning was at 26 Broadway. As soon as we started in I was struck by a certain strangeness in his manner--an unusual impressiveness that indicated to me at once that something was in the wind.
This proved to be the case. I was soon in possession of the information that he and Mr. Rockefeller had been putting in a lot of work on the copper business; that they had evolved some further schemes, and that now the plans were so far along that I could not upset them, therefore they proposed to let me in--all this in the pleasantest manner.