COURTS AND CORRUPTION 367 



victim of a confidence game that was worse than 

 highway robbery and the conspirators ought to 

 be punished from the promoter of the scheme 

 down to the trust company officials, but to fight 

 them in the New York courts for my stolen 

 money would be like chasing a rainbow." Al- 

 most, or quite, the ablest of our New York law- 

 yers declared that the trust company was legally 

 as well as morally liable for every dollar lost by 

 the bondholders but that the case was too big for 

 the court, that the liability of the trust company 

 was over twenty million dollars and that our 

 court of last resort would never dare affirm a ver- 

 dict of such an amount against an institution 

 with Standard Oil backing. 



I spent much time in effecting an organization 

 of the bondholders of the Oregon Pacific Rail- 

 road Company, for the canvass extended abroad, 

 w r here one house alone, Hope and Co. of Amster- 

 dam, held $300,000 of the bonds. My big suc- 

 cess was in Philadelphia where the Investment 

 Company signed for the $1,243,000 in bonds on 

 which it had lost and the Finance for $695,000, 



