No one but Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, myself, and one lawyer knew the actual figures of the cost, although a number of the members of the different groups, including Marcus Daly, the silent partner, were sure they were in the secret.
As soon as the properties were secured, they were capitalized for $75,000,000 as the Amalgamated Copper Company and were immediately offered for sale to the public. It will thus be seen that the profit on this section alone was $36,000,000, probably the largest actual profit ever made by one body of men in a single corporation deal, yet so nicely does "Standard Oil" discriminate in dispensing its generosity that in this case those who received the $36,000,000 profit refused to deduct from it $77,000 of expenses connected with the formation of the company, thereby compelling it to start $77,000 in debt. This was something Marcus Daly never forgave and to the day of his death he repeatedly referred to the act as the personification of corporation meanness.