heir woes; and they imagined that the road
was in bad condition, which it was not. Better let it go. The money was
immediately forthcoming, and Cowperwood and Stener jointly controlled
fifty-one per cent. But, as in the case of the North Pennsylvania line,
Cowperwood had been quietly buying all of the small minority holdings,
so that he had in reality fifty-one per cent. of the stock, and Stener
twenty-five per cent. more.

This intoxicated him, for immediately he saw the opportunity of
fulfilling his long-contemplated dream--that of reorganizing the company
in conjunction with the North Pennsylvania line, issuing three shares
where one had been before and after unloading all but a control on the
general public, using the money secured to buy into other lines which
were to be boomed and sold in the same way. In short, he was one of
those early, daring manipulators who later were to seize upon other
and ever larger phases of American natural development for their own
aggrandizement.

In connection with this first consolidation, his plan was to spread
rumors of the coming consolidation of the two lines, to appeal to
the legislature for privileges of extension, to get up an arresting
prospectus and later annual reports, and to boom the stock on the stock
exchange as much as his swelling resources would permit. The trouble is
that when you are trying to make a market for a stock--to unload a large
issue such as his was (over five hundred thousand dollars' worth)--while
retaining five hundred thousand for yourself, it requires large capital
to handle it. The owner in these cases is compelled not only to go on
the market and do much fictitious buying, thus creating a fictitious
demand, but once this fictitious demand has deceived the public and he
has been able to unload a considerable quantity of his wares, he is,
unless he rids himself of all his stock, compelled to stand behind it.
If, for instance, he sold five thousand shares, as was done in this
instance, and retained five thousand, he must see that the public price
of the outstanding five thousand shares did not fall below a certain
point, because the value of his private shares would fall with it.
And if, as is almost always the case, the private shares had been
hypothecated with banks and trust companies for money wherewith to
conduct other enterprises, the falling of their value in the open market
merely meant that the banks would call for large margins to protect