That this promise should be kept was of the utmost consequence. While "Standard Oil" held the large majority of the Amalgamated stock and the public but a small minority, there was no danger of the latter being slaughtered, whereas if the public was loaded up with stock at $100 per share, it would be profitable for Rogers, Rockefeller, and Stillman to practise the method I was fast beginning to see was their favorite device for accumulating wealth—selling stock and then dropping its price and taking it away from its holders at twenty-five to fifty per cent. below what they had purchased it at. If my plan of guarding against this possibility were adhered to, I knew that there would be such a demand for the shares in the open market after the allotment that when the second section of seventy-five or one hundred millions came to be offered, it would be even more eagerly sought than the first. So with the third and other sections contemplated, until in time the whole stock would be distributed among the investors of the world, and assuming that part of our enormous profits would always be used to keep up its market price, there could be no possible decline. Thus Amalgamated, like "Standard Oil" or a Government bond, must always be worth more than par, first because there would be value to justify it, and second because its holders would have absolute confidence that the security could always be sold for as much or more than they had paid for it.
So far, I had carefully refrained from discussing with Mr. Rogers how we should go about securing our part of the subscription. I had not forgotten it. Indeed, I had it well in mind and was ready to enter upon the matter when it came up. An iron-bound contract held the Amalgamated Company and the National City Bank over the signatures of a Rogers, a Rockefeller, and a Stillman to allow the public to subscribe for $75,000,000 of stock, and the terms were that every subscription must be in the bank at noon, May 4th, and that each subscription must be accompanied by a certified check of $5 for every share applied for. *As we had agreed that the public should be sold but five millions of the stock, that meant that we proposed to retain seventy millions of it ourselves, but to