"Call all that true," angrily replied Mr. Rogers, "and you don't alter the fact that such a scheme as you map out _is impossible_. You must get to work and figure out some plan which is practical." "I knew that we should find this a difficult matter to get right," I said. "Now, what is your idea of how it should be gone about?" This time the burden of explanation was fairly upon Mr. Rogers, and I waited his answer expectantly. He replied, in much milder tones: "There is no real difference between us, Lawson, except that you don't seem to realize the actual position we are in. We are going to do what is fair and right in this enterprise--indeed, there is no necessity for anything else--but we must not put the bank or ourselves in such a place that either or both of us can be held legally responsible for anything that happens in connection with this company. You must keep in mind Sterling's words, that the thing is risky enough anyway, and that even under the best circumstances and conditions we may find ourselves in a hole. Exactly how to do it I have not figured out, but the City Bank must appear as offering the subscriptions, and the Amalgamated Company as owning the stock, and simultaneously some one else must tell all about the advantages. Unless this latter is very fully done, the public will not only refuse to subscribe, but will get suspicious, and there might be a big scandal. It seems to me as though this part of the job is yours to do, and to do just right." So far in our argument we were even. We eyed each other as fighters do in a ring--looking for an opening. Both sparred for an idea. Mr. Rogers' reluctance to shoulder any legal responsibility deepened my suspicions, and inwardly I sweated blood at the thought of the deviltry that might be piled up around the affair. However, there was nothing for it but to square away and keep sparring, for if I lost my temper and exploded, it meant that I should be ground up or disappear in the hopper, and then, good-by to independence. It was the first time I had ever sat in a finish game with the master of "Standard Oil," and I trembled at the possible outcome. Yet this duel--for it was as clearly a fight for life on my side as though we both were armed with deadly weapons--was but one of a thousand similar encounters the Rogerses and Rockefellers had had with other adversaries as fearless and as honest as I, and out of these heart-breaking and soul-crushing sit-downs they had always emerged survivors, while behind the "Standard Oil" juggernaut, defeated and submissive, trudged the men who had dared oppose them. Should the fate of these others be also mine? Across my mind flitted "not while my brain retains its fly-wheels and my hands their power"; and I found myself wondering if there were not some stage at which a man cornered by arbitrary conditions and legal observances was justified in bursting all such trammels and meeting artifice with physical violence. Murder is a