obtain this allotment legally, we must comply with the conditions of the advertisement exactly as outsiders had. So it was necessary that we have a bid in before noon on Thursday for our seventy millions, accompanied by a check for $3,500,000, which would secure us our quota provided the public subscription was no more than five millions. If the public subscription ran over five millions, then the bank must throw out all additional subscriptions over that amount, for the advertised contract specifically declared that all accepted subscriptions would be allowed pro rata. By my suppression of the usual condition that the Bank reserve the right to reject any part of any subscription, it was absolutely precluded from the common method of dealing with such an emergency and so could not reject parts* of subscriptions. There was a way out—without practising fraud. If at noon on Thursday the public had subscribed ten or fifteen millions then the insiders must put in bids of $140,000,000 to $210,000,000, in which event the entire subscription would be divided by allotting each subscriber one share for every two or three subscribed.
I presumed then that some such method would be followed. It surprised me at the time that Mr. Rogers should have given so little attention to so vital a part of our programme, for he is in the habit of thoughtfully thumbing over just such details to avoid slip-ups, but the idea that our subscription would run into unwieldy amounts never occurred to him, and he let things go, trusting to luck and "Standard Oil's" motto "To Hell with the people anyway," to adjust the matter at the last moment. To-day Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, and James Stillman would each give five millions from his private fortune if this seemingly unimportant detail had then been provided for. Its neglect is the bloody finger-print on the knife-handle of the murderer, it is the burglar's footprint in the snow. In this case it furnishes the evidence of the crime of Amalgamated.