d 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.[4]

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 impressive chairs, the great majestic table portentously suggestive
of power. Presto! the dim calm is broken; the air vibrates as when an
ancient church is invaded by a swarm of vampire-bats. Into the great
room enter a group of men and a flock of youths, who settle in the
impressive chairs round the majestic table. You wonder what is the
motive of the assemblage. These grave lawyers, whose names are weighty
in the nation's councils, and these gray-haired, dignified financiers
might well be gathered to arbitrate a dispute involving empires; but why
these office-boys and clerks, with their restless, surprised eyes and
uneasy gestures? The flourishing of papers, the murmuring of voices in a
confusion of "seventy-five million," "we buy," "we sell," "we are," "we
will"--words, nothing but words; then silence as one reads from a stiff
parchment certain resolutions which the suave gentleman with incisive
steel-clicking manners, at the head of the table, puts to a vote. Then
these youths, whose souls are afire with the hope of a director's $5
gold fee, timidly sign the record, trembling the while lest a blot call
down on them a scolding; a head cler