"Your baby is born, Lawson, and if you put the same kind of work on raising it you have in bringing it into the world, it will be a giant."
From that day it was understood that we were together, and that all my dealings in "Coppers" outside Butte & Boston were for the joint account--that is, they were to have the right to come into all my operations. Those they did not care to join in I had the right to put through alone. On the other hand, I must not undertake anything on their behalf without a specific understanding with them.
Thus began Amalgamated, that extraordinary dollar-thing which shot up in a night and grew as grows the whirlwind, until even its creators wondered at its mightiness. It waxed greater and stronger while the world watched and waited, until finally there came that tremendous and unprecedented culmination when lines of investors fought round the portals of the greatest money mart in America, the National City Bank, for a chance to obtain the $100 shares of this $75,000,000 institution. And the world wondered indeed when it was announced that Amalgamated had been oversubscribed over $300,000,000.
Thus began Amalgamated. It might have brought to all the world good-will and happiness, and to the men who made it much glory and the great regard of their fellows. Instead, it has wrought havoc and desolation, and its Apache-like trail is strewn with the scalped and mutilated corpses of its victims. The very name _Amalgamated_ conjures up visions of hatred and betrayal, of ambush, pitfalls, and assassination. It stands forth the Judas of corporations, a monument to greed and a warning to rapacity. May the story that I am to tell so set forth its infamies and horrors that never again shall such a monster be suffered to violate and defile our civilization.
My plans for the great copper campaign were most carefully diagrammed, then spread before Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller, who, before approving, tested every detail of them. The formal scope of our action decided on, it was agreed that I should be free to work in my own way, and it was understood that I should, as far as possible, carry the campaign on my own shoulders, using to the limit my personal capital and credit. "Coppers" was to be a Lawson operation on the face of it, and I was determined, for many reasons, to avail myself of "Standard Oil's" aid only in taking care of completed transactions and not at all in the preliminary negotiations. This was not always possible, but my attitude in the matter and my desire to make a brilliant showing explain the straits I was sometimes put to in conducting some of my deals. From the start I had a big personal stake in the success of my campaign, for at the time I first showed Mr. Rogers my hand I had 46,000 shares of Butte & Boston, and my following among the public owned as many more. They had agreed that the profits on this stock, when it was taken into the consolidation, should be mine entirely in payment of my own work and risk.