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nydus/Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of AmalgamatedPublic

This volume compiles a series of articles originally published in Everybody's Magazine concerning the practices of high finance. The author presents a historical account of business dealings spanning twelve years and challenges readers to evaluate the veracity of the events described.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER XIV

LAWYER UNTERMYER DISCOVERS THE "NIGGER"

I have dwelt on this Utah episode because it shows phases of the "System's" methods never heretofore made public, just as episodes which are to follow in the narrative will develop other startling and ingenious deviltries. But, before going on, the sequel to the Utah affair deserves a place in the story. A sequel there was, and my readers will agree, I think, that it has a mordant humor quite its own. To-day, after the years that have gone by, I cannot think of this tremendous bunco game, in spite of its cruel and tragic phases, without a laugh at the manner in which the smart gentlemen who composed the Utah Consolidated crowd were "outwitted." Bear in mind that Clark, Ward & Co. were among the "flyest" operators in Wall Street's juggle factories. They asked no odds of any one in shuffling and dealing their cards, and with them was the eminent Samuel Untermyer, surely the head of his class of corporation counsellors, and himself a master in the fine arts of copper financiering. On the conclusion of the deal, these gentlemen and their partners in Utah assumed all the airs and graces they conceived proper for associates of "Standard Oil," and at once enlarged their hatbands and let out their waistcoats. Some of them, I believe, went so far as to be measured for copper crowns. The stories they set afloat about the richness of Utah, as proved by "Standard Oil's" determination to have its 150,000 shares, would have made the constructor of Aladdin's palace look to his laurels as a treasure-house creator, and the stockholders of the corporation felt so good over their prospects that in London and New York two large banquets were simultaneously given at which the prospective millionaires tossed cable congratulations at one another across the

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