comparable with the magnitude of the copper maelstrom of 1899. The tulip craze could have been thrust in and withdrawn again without diverting one of its currents; the Barney Barnato affair was little more than an eddy on the surface of English finance in contrast. We were dealing in hundreds and five hundreds of millions; shares rose and fell twenty to fifty points in a day; some had mounted to the giddy height of $900 each; thousands of the public had invested their savings in one copper property or another, and all awaited with bated breath and marvelling anticipations the launching of this copper monster with its freight of hopes and visions.
The programme as specifically arranged had several important clauses. The first involved the notification of James Stillman, President of the National City, the "Standard Oil" Bank, who was to be let into only as much of the secret as was necessary to enable him to handle his important end intelligently. To Leonard Lewisohn it was decided to intrust the French, English, and German end of the subscription, and he was at once to receive orders to lay his pipes. I may say here that this task was admirably executed through his son-in-law, Philip Henry, of the English branch of Lewisohn Brothers. The other directors of the company were then and there selected, but it was agreed that they should not be told of the distinction thrust upon them until the very eve of the company's formation.
This decision surprised me at the moment it was concluded, for with my Boston ideas I had regarded the gentlemen we had chosen to preside over the destinies of our great company—all men of the highest prestige and standing in American finance—as so powerful and so independent in their own fields as to be beyond either the coercion or the cajolery of "Standard Oil." It was because of this reputation for integrity and the confidence their names would inspire in the public mind that we had selected them; yet here was Mr. Rogers irreverently using them as the veriest pawns in his game, and taking absolutely for granted their