The way I deposited apple
peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made
Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to
victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our
vice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments
. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check for
half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .
conservative and careful almost to a fault."
[Illustration: "That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens."]
Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all
of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was
a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in
the profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest--we
had to have that--of the shares at 50 cents a hundred--just what the
printer charged us--and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.
The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten per cent.
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