The offer of the National City Bank begins with a reference to "the foregoing statement," as though that really showed the purpose of the sale of stock--leaving the inference that the beneficiary was the Amalgamated Company. Other details--the designation of conditions of subscription, terms, etc., follow the ordinary form. In the matter of oversubscription the offer diverges vitally. Usually it is prescribed that "in case of oversubscription stock will be allotted pro rata and the right is reserved to reject any subscription in whole _or in part_." In preparing the advertisement I purposely left out the "or in part," thereby making it impossible to reject any part of any subscription--in other words, rejection had to be without compromise, so that every subscriber whose subscription was not wholly rejected would stand on equal terms with every other subscriber, as he would receive his exact proportion. The terms of these advertisements prescribed the conditions under which subscriptions for the stock of the Amalgamated Copper Company must be made to the National City Bank, and bound the bank to accept subscriptions presented in compliance therewith. In fact they constituted a legal contract binding the National City Bank, an institution doing business under the national banking laws of the United States, to allot to every subscriber whose subscription was not rejected in full, his proportionate part of the entire 750,000 shares of the capital stock of the corporation, his proportionate part being the ratio his subscription bore to the entire subscription received at the National City Bank before twelve noon of Thursday, May 4, 1899. On receipt of official notification from the National City Bank that he had been allotted twenty per cent. of his subscription, or one share in every five subscribed for, the subscriber had a right to think he knew that the total subscription to the stock had been five times $75,000,000--$375,000,000--or five times 750,000 shares--3,750,000 shares; and that before noon, May 4th, the National City Bank had in hand certified checks to the amount of $18,750,000. The public, including the shrewdest Wall Streeters, has, since the subscription closed, believed that the subscription totalled the figures given above. Indeed no one has ever suspected anything to the contrary, because it was clear that if the allotment was conducted under conditions other than those contracted for in the advertisement, the National City Bank had laid itself open to a charge of fraud and was liable to each subscriber for the proportion of shares of which he had been deprived. _The actual amount of the subscriptions received on or before noon, May 4, 1899, at the National City Bank was but $132,067,500, and the amount of the five per cent. certified checks received in the institution up to noon was only $6,603,375, or $5 per share on a total of 1,320,675 shares._