The meaning of this is that every legitimate subscriber--and I except the millions of subscriptions which the bank decided were illegitimate and rejected, as they had a perfect right to do under their contract with the public--was defrauded of two shares of each three to which he was entitled. Before me as I write is the original allotment of the National City Bank to the subscribers, which I propose to print in my second volume as part of this indictment, showing that the figures are exactly as I have stated. From the beginning of my narrative I have claimed that the frauds committed in connection with Amalgamated could be completely demonstrated from records outside any evidence of mine. The list of subscribers and the most cursory examination by the Government national bank authorities at Washington will furnish all the proof necessary to substantiate the accuracy of my statement here. At this juncture I shall not attempt to sum up the bearing or the consequences of this illegal and dishonest act, but it was one of the main cogs in bringing about the disaster that ensued. The conditions which led to its perpetration are narrated later. In passing I may say that while the formation of the Amalgamated Company by the clerks and office boys (as I have already described it) and the means by which Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rockefeller let in their friends to their appointed "floors" were deceptive and outrageous in their double-dealing, and should be prohibited by law, I knew them to be so commonly practised throughout our American financial centres that it never entered my mind to suggest that they were criminal. The infraction I have just explained, however, is a tangible fraud and a very different proposition. The two announcements alone would have had but little efficacy in persuading the public to part with its money for Amalgamated stock, but in conjunction with the third advertisement--mine--they proved irresistible. There was nothing equivocal in my announcement. I not only advised the purchase of the stock by subscription on the ground that it was the best opportunity for safe and profitable investment ever offered the people, but asserted that the shares could afterward be sold for fifty to seventy-five per cent. advance on the subscription price, so that every one who obtained a share of Amalgamated for $100 was buying something which would subsequently be worth $150 to $200. Further I promised that all the subscribers should be treated alike and gave it as my opinion that the whole 750,000 shares could at the time the public was reading my statement be sold for thirty to sixty per cent. more than the subscription price, and declared unqualifiedly that the assets owned by the Amalgamated Company were worth from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five millions; that the company was then earning from twelve to sixteen per cent. per annum, and that from the start and ever afterward it would pay eight per cent. dividends annually.