This is why I so persistently kept in the open throughout my "Copper" campaign. I fully realized how anomalous my position was and how far I had departed from "Standard Oil" precedents; but my thought was to protect the integrity of my enterprise, and the best way to do this was to have the people partners in its conception and development. To be perfectly frank, the prospect of millions of profit counted for less in my calculations than the honor and prestige I foresaw in the success of my copper structure. As proof of this, witness how I voluntarily gave back the millions I had secured, to make good. To create a great institution, to 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. CHAPTER IX BIRTH OF "COPPERS" Active upon the Boston market during my Bay State Gas operations were two copper-mining companies--the Butte & Boston and the Boston & Montana. Their properties were in Montana and both were large producers of the metal, that is, they were old and equipped mines. These two organizations form to-day the most valuable part of the Amalgamated Copper Company--in fact, more than three-quarters of all the real worth owned by that corporation.