While I was dreaming and doing these things,
Brokaw and the others had formed the Great Northern Fish and
Development Company, had incorporated it under the laws of New
Jersey, and had already sold over a million dollars' worth of
stock! The thing was in full swing when I reached headquarters. I
had authorized Brokaw to act for me, and I found that I was vice-
president of one of the biggest legalized robbery combinations of
recent years. More money had been spent in advertising than in
development work. Hundreds of thousands of copies of my letters
from the north, filled to the brim with the enthusiasm I had felt
for my work and projects, had been sent out broadcast, luring
buyers of stock. In one of these letters I had said that if a half
of the lakes I had mapped out were fished the north could be made
to produce a million tons of fish a year. Two hundred thousand
copies of this letter were sent out, but Brokaw and his associates
had omitted the words, 'If a half of the lakes mapped out were
fished.' It would take fifteen thousand men, a thousand
refrigerator cars, and a capital of five million to bring this
about. I was stunned by the enormity of their fraud, and yet when
I threatened to bring the whole thing to smash Brokaw only laughed
and pointed out that not a single caution had been omitted.
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