repaid, and enabling Mr. Rogers and William Rockefeller, after paying said debts to the National City Bank of New York, to become the absolute owners of $36,000,000 of money, none of which they had owned before, and which they had "made" as absolutely as though they had coined it by permit from the Government of the people who had parted with it.1
The fourth part of the transaction began when months afterward the public, who had borrowed their money from the National City Bank of New York and other banks and trust and insurance companies to buy Amalgamated stock at 100 cents on the dollar, were compelled to repay it, and to do so were obliged to sell the Amalgamated stock which they had purchased at $100 per share for the best price they could get, which was $33 per share; and if we suppose for a moment that the "Standard Oil," after repurchasing it at $33 per share, at a later day repeated the operation of selling it for $100 per share, it will be seen that "Standard Oil," the "Private Thing," would thereby "make" an additional $50,000,000, as absolutely as though they had been allowed by the Government to coin it.2
This explanation is not the creation of an extravagant fancy. It is not romance, but reality. The thing described was a supreme manifestation of the "System," of the perfect working of that tremendous financial machine which reaps, grinds, and harvests for its own benefit, the earned savings of the American people.
In showing how these thirty-six millions were made in the brief space of this creature's (Amalgamated Copper's) life, I deal with reality and not romance; but let my readers for a moment give their imaginations play and picture to themselves one scene in this stupendous drama. A great room in the greatest banking house in America, if not in the world—silent, solemn—an atmosphere of impregnable rectitude—the solid furniture, the heavy carpets, the chill high walls, the massive desks, the