These stories were extensively circulated; the value of his paper was depreciated in the market, and was, in several instances bought for a small sum.
Since writing the foregoing with regard to his coming into the Company, and, as he states, being ruined by it, I have ascertained to my own satisfaction, that our connection with him was the means of ruining the Company.

A few days since I was talking with a man who has been more familiar than myself with the whole transaction, and he told me it was his opinion that if we had never seen Barnum we should still have been making clocks in that factory.

It was a great mystery to me, and to every body else, how the Company could run down so rapidly during the last year.

I think I have found out, and these are my reasons.

Instead of having an amount of twenty thousand dollars to cancel of the Terry & Barnum debts and accounts (which the Secretary foolishly agreed to do.) it eventually proved to be about seventy thousand; (this I have found out since the failure.) This great loss the Secretary kept to himself, and it involved the Company so deeply that he became almost desperate; for knowing by this time that he had been greatly embarrassed, he was determined to raise money in any way that he could, honestly, and get out of the difficulty if possible.