development work. Hundreds of thousands of copies of my letters
from the north, filled to the brim with the enthusiasm I had felt
for my work and projects, had been sent out broadcast, luring
buyers of stock. In one of these letters I had said that if a half
of the lakes I had mapped out were fished the north could be made
to produce a million tons of fish a year. Two hundred thousand
copies of this letter were sent out, but Brokaw and his associates
had omitted the words, 'If a half of the lakes mapped out were
fished.' It would take fifteen thousand men, a thousand
refrigerator cars, and a capital of five million to bring this
about. I was stunned by the enormity of their fraud, and yet when
I threatened to bring the whole thing to smash Brokaw only laughed
and pointed out that not a single caution had been omitted. In all
of the advertising it was frankly stated that our license was
provisional, subject to withdrawal if the company did not keep
within laws. That very frankness was an advertisement. It was
something different. It struck home where it was meant to strike--
among small and unfledged investors. It roped them in by
thousands. The shares were ten dollars each, and non-assessable.
Five out of six orders were from one to five shares; ninety-nine
out of every hundred were not above ten shares. It was damnable.
The very people for whom I wanted the north to fight had been
humbugged to the tune of a million and a quarter dollars. Within a
year Brokaw and the others had floated a scheme which was worse
than any trust, for the trusts pay back a part of their steals in
dividends. And _I_ was responsible! Do you realize that, Greggy?
It was I who started the project. It was my reports from the north
which chiefly induced people to buy. And this company--a company
of robbers licensed under the law--I am its founder and its vice-
president!"