One or two of their subsidiary concerns are registered there.

Now, I don't know whether they really want your mine, but supposing they do, and you won't sell out to them, I guess you have some idea of what their game would be ?" "I'm afraid I haven't, sir." "Well," said Stirling, "you'll be fortunate if you get half your authorized capital applied for, and it would be quite an easy thing for the Hogarth people to send somebody on to the market to sell your stock down.

That would freeze off any other investors from coming in, and scare those who had applied for stock into selling.

You can't put up a crushing and reducing plant without a pile of money, and dams and flumes for water-power would cost 'most as much; but you'd have to have them, for you could never pack your ore out to a smelter through the kind of country you have described to me.

Now, unless you could get money enough to start clear with, the concern is bound to cave in.
Then somebody acting for the Combine would quietly buy it up." He broke off for a moment and looked hard at Weston.
"Suppose those people let you feel their hand and then make you a rather higher offer?
What are you going to do ?" "Disregard it," said Weston, quietly.
Stirling nodded in a manner which suggested that this was what he had expected.
"Well," he said, "I guess that's the course most likely to appeal to a man constituted as you seem to be.