I defy any man to cite a single instance where I was guilty of crookedness in a mining transaction or a business transaction of any kind in my entire career as a promoter. I have been fearless--too much so. I have been a rabid enthusiast. I have tried to build. I have given quarter, but have never taken any. I have been honest. Were I really dishonest, I could have prevented every publication of an attack of consequence on me by lending myself in advance to the base purposes of my traducers, and I would have millions now for having compromised with them. It is heaven's own truth that in nine cases out of ten, when I have been attacked in print, the motive of the attacking party has been base and the facts have been so distorted or misrepresented that the fabric was a lie. Nor has the cruelty of the operation stayed any one's hand. At the very moment in Goldfield when I knew that the _Denver Mining Record_ would not assault the Sullivan Trust Company again because of the settlement of the libel suit by my lawyers out of court, fresh rumors were spread that the _Denver Mining Record_ was getting ready for another attack and that tens of thousands of copies of that newspaper were to be circulated. But you can't stop a rumor by the declaration of the truth, and the Sullivan Trust Company decided that it would be unwise to make a denial in print, for by so doing it would communicate to all stockholders the news that the Sullivan stocks were actually under attack and thus cause more "frightened selling." Sight drafts from brokers in New York, Chicago, Salt Lake and San Francisco, drawn on the Sullivan Trust Company, with large bundles of Sullivan stocks attached, were pouring into our office through the local banks for presentation. John S. Cook & Company made a specialty of this department of banking, and most of the drafts on us were cleared through the Wingfield-Nixon bank. It was reported to me that Senator Nixon was openly discussing the enormous volume of stocks coming in on us and was questioning our ability to stem the tide. As a strategic measure, the Sullivan Trust Company decided to "cross" sales on the San Francisco Stock Exchange so that it might ship out of the camp, through the banks, large blocks of stock with draft attached against San Francisco brokers and thus convey to the minds of local bankers that we were selling large blocks of stock as well as buying them. The volume of the "cross" trades caused some talk in San Francisco, and was magnified by brokers operating for the decline. THE TIME WHEN MONEY TALKS