Yet no one ever saw these officers, all of whom had names connotative of wealth and financial responsibility.

The Gates, Morgan, Rogers, and other families multiplied and brought forth at the mere wave of his pen.

If you wished a half-million bond issue you simply called him up on the telephone and some "Light and Power Company" would hold a directors' meeting and vote a fifty-year debenture gold seven-per-cent security that you could peddle around at fifty- eight and one-eighth to unsuspecting investors, so as to net them merely thirteen per cent.

on their money--when they got it.

You could buy a million in these bonds for about three hundred and seventy-five dollars and fifty cents; but they were real bonds in real companies and legally issued against some form of property, even if it had no market value.