Jerome Company. It
afterwards proved that the entire debts of Terry & Barnum amounted to
about seventy-two thousand dollars, which the Jerome Company were
obliged to assume. The great difference in the real and supposed amount
of their indebtedness and the unsaleable property turned in as stock
were enough to ruin any company. It is a positive fact that the stock of
the Jerome Company was not worth half as much, three months after Barnum
came into the concern as it was before that time. Some of the
stock-holders did not like to have Terry own stock, and Barnum to
satisfy them, bought him out, paying him twelve thousand dollars in
cash--he in the end, making a grand thing out his Ansonia remains. It is
well known that the Jerome Manufacturing Company failed in the fall of
1855, to the wonder and astonishment of myself and of every body else.
The true causes of this great failure never have been made public. I
myself did not know them at that time, but have found them out from time
to time since, and I now propose to make them public, as it has been the
general impression almost every where that Barnum and myself were
associated in defrauding the community. _I wish to have it understood
that I never saw P.T. Barnum_, while he was connected with the
Company of which I was a member, have never seen him but once since, and
that was in February after the failure. About this time law suits were
being brought against him, and as some supposed, by his friends. He was
called upon, or offered himself as a witness, and I believe testified
that he was worth nothing. The natural effect of this testimony was to
depreciate the paper which his name was on. At the time when I saw him,
he told me that the Museum was his just as much as it ever was, and that
he received the profits, which had never been less than twenty-five
thousand and were sometimes thirty thousand dollars per annum; and yet,
he was publicly stating that he was worth nothing! He also, as I
supposed, held securities of the Jerome Manufacturing Company, to a
large amount, (as I suppose about one hundred thousand dollars,) for I
know that such papers had been in his hands. There were many persons who
were interested in the revival of the business, who were in some way
flattered into the belief that Barnum would re-purchase the whole clock
establishment and put them back into the business again. Several men
were sent by some one to examine the property and estimate its value,