"Let me show you, Lawson, how you have overlooked the best part of the copper business. We have found that for years Lewisohn Brothers have had a double-clamped and riveted contract with at least half the best producing mines in the country to sell their output, and they have grown very wealthy. As near as we can make it, they have made at least fifty millions in one way or another in the last ten or twelve years. First, they have had a big profit as their commission for selling; next, big interest out of the advances they make to companies while their output is being sold; now, they actually control the copper market of the world. Think of it, Lawson, for a few seconds, and the possibilities will loom up to you. You can buy or sell any number of millions of pounds in futures or actual deliveries. Suppose a man controlling the selling of three or four hundred million pounds a year should knock the price to, say, ten cents, sell to himself the year's output of all the mines he controls and then lift the price to, say, twenty cents. He would have a sure profit, with absolutely no risk, of thirty to forty millions of dollars. If he should sell the next year's output short at twenty and drop the price back to ten, he would have another thirty or forty millions. Wouldn't he? Then if, before he broke the price, he sold copper mining stocks short, and if, before advancing the price, he covered and loaded up with them, he could easily make an additional thirty or forty millions. Think it over, and you will agree with me that the possibilities are far beyond those of oil, and perhaps at the same time you can account for the violent fluctuations in copper stocks and the price of the metal during recent years. A man in such position could absolutely _dictate_ to all new mines whose selling agency he could secure under long-term contracts. When their stocks were up, he could pinch them to the edge of bankruptcy by refusing to sell their metal or advance them the cash they needed for operation. Now, don't you agree with me that you overlooked one of the most important branches of the copper business when you made no provision for taking in the selling end?" Again it crept into my mind that in comparison with the diabolic astuteness of this man, such knowledge and experience of business as I had gathered were as those of the primary student to the post-graduate scholar's. Again, there was no quarreling with his logic or his conclusions. "It is common knowledge in Boston," I replied, "that copper commissions on the surface and below constitute as soft graft as any one would ask for, but no one suspected the possibilities you outline. Do you actually mean to say that that is the way the business has been conducted in the past?" Mr. Rogers lowered his voice confidentially: