shambles. Before my eyes, with a blind and audacious defiance of my warnings, the old, old game was rigged in full view of the audience and the old players began their venerable antics. In the meantime the "System" attended to its own rôle in the conspiracy—supplying out of its banks and trust companies the public's money for the gamblers to make the game with. Then began the artful process of working up the market; stocks gradually climbed higher and higher. Amalgamated ascended from the forties into the fifties and the sixties and even into the eighties; steel assumed the appearance of life and grew from ten slowly upward into the twenties and thirties. Every day in the Stock Exchange hundreds of thousands of shares changed hands back and forth among the professionals who lustily played their parts in this financial melodrama. The good old myths of great fortunes made by lucky investors began to reappear in the papers. Sales increased; values jumped rather than climbed. The trap was set; the market made. The wily manipulators rubbed their hands gleefully. The public began to bite, to buy. It was then only a matter of sizing up the wool crop before beginning the shearing.
Before I detail the steps I took to spring its own trap on the "System," I should explain that this market was purely an artificial one. The immense advance of prices was not brought about by any honest methods or legitimate causes. The "System's" votaries had enormous quantities of stocks—millions upon millions of shares, bought when the people during the past two years were compelled to throw them overboard at slaughter prices. By employing one of the oldest swindling devices known to finance,1 they could bid prices to any figure they desired. Honest financial writers called attention each week to the tactics of the manipulators and declared the high quotations unjustifiable and unreasonable.
At the stage of the game that I