all right, and in my opinion they are all interested together.'
"This was patriotism with a vengeance. Just think of the audacity of it! Gould enters into a scheme to place the President in a position where he could not interfere with the plan of getting a 'corner' on gold, and then he turns around and accuses the first magistrate of the republic with being privy to a plot that was calculated to create a panic and cause widespread disaster in business circles and make him an object of universal contempt."
Some of the members of the pool got frightened and sold out, but Gould continued to buy. "I had to buy," testified Gould afterward, "or show the white feather. The other fellows deserted me like rats." Gould had the material aid of the Tenth National Bank, an institution which he owned and which he used as an adjunct to his speculative operations. The extent to which he used it in the gold conspiracy was shown by the fact that it in one day overcertified Gould's checks to the amount of $7,500,000. Garfield called this bank "a manufactory of certified checks."
As Gould bought the bears sold "short" and the battle became intensely exciting.
Fisk's assistance was as valuable as Gould expected it to be. He took no stock in the crop theory, but the idea of making the administration a partner in the diabolical enterprise seems to have attracted him. "Nothing," said Garfield in his report to Congress, "nothing but the scent of corruption
