Lane launched into a bitter critique of the way Marcus Samuel ran his company. “You are, and have always been, too much occupied to be at the head of such a business,” he wrote. “There seems only one idea: sink capital, create a great bluster, and trust to providence. Such a happy-go-lucky frame of mind in business I have never seen before. … Business like this cannot be conducted by an occasional glance in one’s spare time, or by some brilliant coup from time to time. It is steady, treadmill work.” Unless “some very radical change is made,” Lane prophesied, “the bubble will burst” and then
...more
