treasurer, or else the names of all the officers and directors are stated, so it is obvious here that the prominent insertion of the vice-president's name is for a purpose. And all Wall Street as well as the general public gathered that "Standard Oil" was so sure of this enterprise that its principal men were anxious to be known as being behind it.
The offer of the National City Bank begins with a reference to "the foregoing statement," as though that really showed the purpose of the sale of stock—leaving the inference that the beneficiary was the Amalgamated Company. Other details—the designation of conditions of subscription, terms, etc., follow the ordinary form. In the matter of oversubscription the offer diverges vitally. Usually it is prescribed that "in case of oversubscription stock will be allotted pro rata and the right is reserved to reject any subscription in whole or in part." In preparing the advertisement I purposely left out the "or in part," thereby making it impossible to reject any part of any subscription—in other words, rejection had to be without compromise, so that every subscriber whose subscription was not wholly rejected would stand on equal terms with every other subscriber, as he would receive his exact proportion.
The terms of these advertisements prescribed the conditions under which subscriptions for the stock of the Amalgamated Copper Company must be made to the National City Bank, and bound the bank to accept subscriptions presented in compliance therewith. In fact they constituted a legal contract binding the National City Bank, an institution doing business under the national banking laws of the United States, to allot to every subscriber whose subscription was not rejected in full, his proportionate part of the entire 750,000 shares of the capital stock of the corporation, his proportionate part being the ratio his subscription bore to the entire subscription received at the National City Bank before twelve noon of Thursday, May 4, 1899. On receipt of official notification from the National City Bank that he had been allotted twenty per cent. of his subscription, or one share in every five