The charter once obtained, they calculated that the obnoxious clause might be amended out of it at a subsequent session (as a matter of fact this charter, with its 60-cent clause, was afterward made the nucleus of the present Massachusetts Gas companies which has just been floated on a basis of $53,000,000 capital). Besides, the state of feeling of the legislators and conditions in the stock-market had both to be taken into consideration. It was not the fault of the legislators who had voted for the charter that the governor had vetoed it, for they had been given to understand by Mr. Whitney that he would not oppose it. They had delivered their goods, and now, if the governor's sanction could be had under any sort of a compromise, they would certainly hold Towle and Whitney responsible for failure to make whatever arrangements were necessary.
Towle told me, as he waited impatiently in my office for the gold, that in addition to the great losses the drop in price of the two stocks had inflicted on himself and his associates, there were losses on stocks held by legislators, who had plunged on assurances that the charter would go through, and that the amounts he would be called on to pay, if he remained, were far greater than could possibly be met.
CHAPTER XXIII
Since the above was published the American people have become aroused, and as this book is going to press, scores of the greatest financiers in America are having under oath confessions squeezed from them in a life-insurance investigation conducted by the State of New York—confessions which reveal such a condition of perjury, bribery, and habitual sequestration of funds, as to make my statement seem mild.