You find there are too many soap
manufacturers and too much soap, and so you propose to combine, and
put your rivals out of business, and monopolise the soap market.
Your properties are already capitalised at twice what they cost you,
because you are naturally hopeful, and that is what you expected
they would earn; but now for this new combination you issue stock to
the amount of three times this imagined value. Then you fill the
street with rumours of the wonders of your soap combination, and all
the privileges and monopolies that you've got, and you unload your
stock on the public, we'll say at eighty. You may have sold all your
stock, but you've still got control of the corporation. The public
is helpless and unorganised, and your men are in. Then the Street
begins to hear disturbing rumours about the soap trust, and your
board of directors meet and declare that it is impossible to pay any
dividends. There is great indignation among the stockholders, and an
opposition is organised, but you set the clock an hour ahead, and
elect your ticket before the other fellow comes around.
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