CHAPTER VIII

erect a new and absolutely staple investment, and in doing so to make millions for one's partners, one's self, and the public, would be to live not in vain. The knowledge of my attitude will perhaps help my readers to comprehend the enthusiasm with which I entered into my "Copper" crusade; help them to understand how strongly I resisted, and how deeply resented, the perversion of my fair structure into a pitfall for those I had expected to benefit. My indignation against the "System" is that which any honest man would feel against ruffians who had used his best ideas and his most generous feelings to lure innocent and unoffending people into some den of vice and infamy. If I have not troubled to correct the misstatements of detractors who, in an attempt to discredit my facts, have tried to pillory me as a traitor, it is because I knew that when my complete story reached the public it would make plain how and what I had been doing. The succeeding chapters of this narrative will yield unimpeachable evidence that all my dealing in "Coppers" as an associate of "Standard Oil" were open and as much in the interests of the people as it was possible to have them.