CHAPTER XVII

had a double-clamped and riveted contract with at least half the best producing mines in the country to sell their output, and they have grown very wealthy. As near as we can make it, they have made at least fifty millions in one way or another in the last ten or twelve years. First, they have had a big profit as their commission for selling; next, big interest out of the advances they make to companies while their output is being sold; now, they actually control the copper market of the world. Think of it, Lawson, for a few seconds, and the possibilities will loom up to you. You can buy or sell any number of millions of pounds in futures or actual deliveries. Suppose a man controlling the selling of three or four hundred million pounds a year should knock the price to, say, ten cents, sell to himself the year's output of all the mines he controls and then lift the price to, say, twenty cents. He would have a sure profit, with absolutely no risk, of thirty to forty millions of dollars. If he should sell the next year's output short at twenty and drop the price back to ten, he would have another thirty or forty