Chapter XXXIII: A Retrospect and a Moral (6)

The man whom I had expected to find haggard, pale,
wild-eyed, and excited, in the centre of a nervous
hurricane, was rosy-cheeked, cheerful, and apparently as
free from care as though he had never heard of Wall Street.
He spoke rapidly but in an even voice, occasionally pacing
the floor and sometimes gesturing or setting his hands
firmly on his hips. He answered questions promptly and with
an almost boyish appearance of frankness. It would be hard
to imagine a more masculine, compact, and concentrated
personality.

This is the man who left school in Cambridge at the age of
twelve, walked into Boston with his books under his arm, and
secured a three-dollar-a-week position as an office-boy
almost on the very spot where, after thirty-six years, he
has worked himself up into a position from which he feels
able to captain the fight against Standard Oil and its
allies. He owns a palace in Boston filled with works of art;
he has a six-hundred acre farm on Cape Cod, with seven miles
of fences, three hundred horses, each one of whom he can
call by name; a hundred and fifty dogs, and a building for
training his animals larger than Madison Square Garden. Some
of his horses are worth many thousands of dollars apiece.
Even the experts of the German Government who examined
Dreamwold the other day were amazed at its costliness and
perfection. Within forty-eight hours Mr. Lawson wrote and
published a large illustrated book analyzing his farm and
gave it to his German visitors as a souvenir, after
organizing for them a horse show that overwhelmed them with
surprise.

He built the yacht _Independence_ at a cost of $200,000, and
when it was shut out from the America's Cup race smilingly
threw it on the scrap heap. He established a great racing
stable, and when tired of playing with it, broke it up. He
went to Kentucky, and the day before a great trotting race
bought Boralma for $17,000. His pride was aroused by the
fact that the betting was against his trotter. He gave
$104,000 to a friend to sustain Boralma's reputation in the
betting and won $92,000. And yet he claims that he has never
been seriously interested in betting, and that his winnings
on Boralma were simply an accident.

THAT $30,000 PINK

But it was the purchase of a pink carnation, wonderful in
color and vigor, which had been named by a Boston
experimental florist after Mrs. Lawson, that made Mr.
Lawson's name known all over the world. Thirty thousand
dollars for a pink! The news was spread broadcast, and
printed in the newspapers of all countries as an
illustration of the vulgar extravagance and folly of an
American millionaire.

Mr. Lawson explained that incident while I was with him, and
his explanation threw a new light upon his character. He
bought the flower originally as a matter of sentiment, but
the sum he offered was comparatively small. Mr.
Higginbotham, of Chicago, bid $25,000 for the Lawson Pink.
When he heard this news, Mr. Lawson sat down with a florist
friend and figured out the possibility of the new flower as
a business investment. He closed the matter in a few minutes
by paying $30,000. Some time later on the florist bought
back the right to the Lawson pink for $30,000, and gave Mr.
Lawson, in addition, $15,000 profit, according to agreement.

A curious evidence of this man's astonishing coolness is the
fact that, at the very time when the market was closing on
Friday, when it was whispered all over the country that he
was arranging terms of peace for the Standard Oil with Mr.
Rogers, Mr. Lawson was actually explaining the peculiar and
beautiful qualities of his favorite flower.

A REASON FOR HIS LAST ATTACK

"But if Amalgamated Copper shares were worth $100 when you
were market manager for Mr. Rogers and his friends, how is
it that they are not worth that price now?" I asked.

Mr. Lawson leaned against the edge of an open door and
thrust his hands deeply into his pockets.

"I have tried to make that plain to the public," he said
quietly.

"The other day Mr. Rogers's lawyer was trying to get me to
stop. I told him that I intended to force the Standard Oil
crowd to put the price of Amalgamated Copper back to $100,
at which I advised my friends to buy it. He said that the
stock was not worth $100. I asked him how he knew. He
answered that Mr. Rogers, Mr. Stillman, Mr. Rockefeller, and
the other fellows in control had discovered that they had
been deceived when the property was bought. They did not
consider it worth more than $45 a share.

"That settled it in my mind. I appealed to the public to
test the situation. I advised them to sell Amalgamated at
once and keep on selling. If it was worth $100, the men in
the 'System,' having billions of dollars behind them, would
buy it. If it was worth only $45 a share, then the price
must fall to that point in the end. It was simply a question
whether the public could unload on the Standard Oil crowd
before the 'System' could unload on the public."

"Then you caught the leaders of Standard Oil at the
psychological moment."

Mr. Lawson's smile was beyond words to describe.

"That partly explains the crash," he said. "They were ready
to unload on the public, but the public moved too quickly.
Publicity destroyed the one great weapon of the Standard Oil
men, which is secrecy. I had been tricked and deceived, and
those who were responsible had used my name to deceive and
trick the public. I got out into the open and laid the plot
bare. I had been working up to that point for many years,
always waiting, waiting, waiting for the day when I could
begin a work of reformation in behalf of 80,000,000 of
people.

"I know my game. I have stood here in Boston for thirty-six
years studying man and his ways. I have no false conceptions
of my own strength. I know, and I have known all along, that
to win against a system backed by billions of dollars
working in the dark and controlling largely the law-making
powers of the nation, I must have the people with me. My
articles in _Everybody's Magazine_ were simply in
preparation of the public mind for the practical
demonstration which I have made this week, that the
whispering manipulators of Wall Street will not buy at $68 a
share stock which they were selling to the public at $100 a
share.

"The Standard Oil interests came into my world simply
because they entered Boston to control gas affairs. They
wanted to run their automobile down a particular road, but
they found a fellow standing in the middle of the road. They
did not dare to run over that fellow, as little as he was,
because he warned them that he had in his pocket a stick of
dynamite that would blow the machine up if it passed over
him. Mr. Rogers is a really big and brainy man. He saw and
understood the situation. He offered to take me inside of
his secret lines.

HIS INDEPENDENCE

"It is said by my enemies, and they are many--and some of
them are crackajacks, I admit--that I am a squealer, that I
have peached on my pals. That is absolutely untrue. From my
boyhood up I have always insisted on being free and
independent. I have punched a head when I thought it needed
punching, without asking whose it was or what the
consequences would be. But I have never consciously told a
lie or violated a confidence. The newspaper files will show
that when I made my deal with the Standard Oil people, I
publicly announced that I had entered into a secret
agreement with them. That brought a hurried call from Mr.
Rogers, who wanted to know what I meant. I told him, as I
had told him before, that I had to work in my own way, that
my methods were open and above board, and that I could not
work successfully unless I was free to do things as I
thought they should be done.

"That was my arrangement with Standard Oil. They had a great
chest, and the whole method of the 'System' was to prevent
any one from getting a peep at that chest save as one of
them and on their own terms. I refused to be bound by their
code. I told Mr. Rogers again and again that everything I
learned as the market manager of the Standard Oil interests
I felt free to use publicly at any time. Mr. Rogers again
and again assured me that this was fully understood.

THE REMEDY

"All through that time I had, deep down in my heart, the
plan which I am carrying out now. Each day brought me nearer
to the day when I would expose the whole system of fraud to
the public. Having that idea always present with me, I was
careful to avoid deals or partnerships which involved any
loss of independence to act when the day for action came. I
have been worth as much as $28,000,000, and I have lost as
much as $14,000,000. But never have I altered my purpose to
awaken the public to a realization of the great crimes
committed against them in the name of finance.

"If the people will stand by me, and I have always been open
and honest with them, America will witness a great
transformation. With an honest and courageous President in
the White House we shall see whether the 'System' will be
able to use the fiduciary institutions of the country for
piratical purposes. The fall in the price of Amalgamated and
other pool stocks is only a bubble on the surface. The final
revelation, and the final solution, are yet to come into
sight."

Just then the telephone bell rang and Mr. Lawson put the
receiver to his ear and laughed as he listened. "No," he
answered softly, through the instrument, "I am not locked up
with Mr. Rogers, but with a man who has more power."

Then he turned to me, rocking back strongly on his heels and
clasping his hands behind his square head.

"I meant that," he said; "there is more power in the pen of
one honest writer in the service of an honest, fearless
newspaper than in all the wealth and cunning of the
'System.'"

THE MUNROE & MUNROE EPISODE

There came a time in the first twelve months of my "Frenzied Finance" crusade when people rather took the attitude that I was exaggerating conditions and that neither Wall Street nor the "System" was so bad as I had depicted them. About this time, following the so-called Lawson panic, occurred the Munroe & Munroe _esclandre_, the details of which plainly showed eminent financiers in the vulgar business of stock-washing. I frankly treated the subject in _Everybody's_, and as it is part of the history of the movement, I reproduce the passage:

The average man is prone to lose sight of perfidy in magnitude and to say, when he hears all the facts: "At least these rascals hunt big game." I wish to say here that such distinction is undeserved. The "System" is omnivorous. Its insatiable maw yawns as greedily for the ten-cent pieces of the people as for the thousands of the larger investor. It is as avid and relentless in devising ant-traps as elephant-snares. There fell into my hands recently certain valuable documents in the meanest of contemporary swindles, which reveal the connection of the National City Bank, certain of its officers and other important financial interests, with a plot to fleece the fag ends of the public. The details of the Munroe & Munroe-Montreal & Boston conspiracy have been widely published, and the world is well acquainted now with the two Munroes, graduates of a "gents' furnishing-goods" shop in Montreal, introduced into high finance in New York, organizing with the assistance of the great Rockefeller-Stillman-Rogers bank a copper corporation with shares at a par value of five dollars. There never was such barefaced exploitation as was used on behalf of this proposition. It was advertised as a bonanza; investors were guaranteed against loss by an assurance that their stock would double and treble in price, and that the company would stand ready at all times to buy back shares at cost. The intention was plainly to entice into the Montreal & Boston people of very limited means, who could ill afford to lose their savings.

The sudden panic, brought about by the warning to the people of the traps that were being set for them, caught napping many of the "System's" votaries, large and small, and before they could get their different devices even-keeled from the shock caused by that single blast of truth, the public got a peep 'tween decks into the machinery. Among those whose port-holes were blown wide open was the Munroe & Munroe-City Bank-Montreal & Boston outfit, whose scheme went down like a card-house in the blow. A receiver was at once appointed to take care of the debris. This mishap revealed an amazing condition of affairs. With only $2,000 capital, Munroe & Munroe had arranged with the great National City Bank to honor their checks for immense sums every day, the proceeds being used to carry on a series of fictitious transactions in Montreal & Boston stock for the purpose of beguiling the public into purchasing it. The affair was a ten-days' wonder, and was finally squelched by the great bank's throwing over its vice-president, Archibald G. Loomis, who had bravely shouldered the responsibility for the transaction. At writing, two professional gamblers, who seem to have been the principal victims of the underwriting end of the swindle, are being settled with, and the whole affair will soon be buried from public gaze.

The episode was, on the whole, so foul in its revelation of greed that even Wall Street was horrified--not at the arrant double-dealing exposed, but that the "System" should descend to such vulgar malpractice. The documents now in my possession, which I shall publish later in my story, include the original underwriters' agreement, which, at great cost of time and money, has so far been kept from the public, and they show some of the greatest bankers in the land deliberately planning, by the use of fraudulent papers and bogus agreements, to beguile investors to adventure their money in a scheme the sole purpose of which was the enrichment of its organizers. The whole performance reveals a depravity so profound and a greed so heartless that the people may well tremble for the safety of their savings intrusted to the custody of men of this type. It also proves my contention that the "System," while depending on burglary for its largest returns, does not despise the small profits of the pick-pocket.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Groups of Stock-Exchange members each day appear to buy from other groups great quantities of shares of different stocks at advancing prices. In reality all the brokers--the ones appearing to buy and those who sell to them--are in league with each other, and none of the transactions is actual. The performance bears the same relation to legitimate Stock-Exchange trading that the purchase and sale of a gold brick among confederates at a circus do to the genuine work of the gamblers and pick-pockets who are really attending to business around them. On certain days in the months I refer to, when the official records of the Stock Exchange told that one and a half million shares had been bought and sold, and prices had advanced until the aggregate increase in the worth of the stocks dealt in amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, not more than a few thousand shares of real stock changed hands. The rest was barefaced fraud for the purpose of deceiving the millions of investors and speculators throughout the country who are dependent upon the daily press and "market letters" for information in regard to investments for their savings.

[22] Arthur McEwen and James Creelman are among the strongest and ablest of American newspaper writers. Their names are not as familiar to the readers of magazines as some others, but they are, perhaps, the most highly paid men in journalism to-day, and they have a well-earned reputation for independence and personal integrity. Mr. McEwen, who is now one of the editors of the New York _American_, is known throughout the country as a fearless exponent of corporate villainies. Mr. Creelman is a distinguished member of the New York _World's_ editorial staff, and has interviewed more of the world's great men than any other journalist living. From their standing in their profession, their well-known hatred of hypocrisies and shams, their wide experience in estimating men of all degrees--the verdict of Mr. Creelman and Mr. McEwen, as set forth in their papers, should be conclusive.

III

EXPLANATIONS

The revelations I delivered to the public in my story of "Frenzied Finance," together with the accompanying expositions of insurance and other rottenness in the "Critics" department, were not accepted without protest from my correspondents. Though the majority of the letters that came to me in shoals from all parts of the country have been generous in their appreciation of my work, many have seriously taken my methods to task and dubiously questioned my motives. The most salient and satisfactory expression of these doubters was a letter that came to me from a New York banker, to which I replied at length, for it afforded me the opportunity to get before my readers in general many matters about which explanations seemed due them. The letter was as follows:

NEW YORK.

_Dear Sir_: I have read all that you have written in
_Everybody's Magazine_, and have been unusually interested.
If you will consult the Amalgamated subscription list you
will see my house is down for quite a large amount. For this
reason and others, and as an old member of our Stock
Exchange, I naturally follow such writings as yours. At the
beginning I agreed with most bankers in believing that you
were actuated by a desire to get even with Mr. Rogers, Mr.
Rockefeller, or Mr. Addicks; but as your tale progressed I
thought I perceived a sincere desire to carry out some
genuine work of reform in the system of conducting the stock
business; then when you began your advertising work last
December, I shifted again and felt that your efforts were
probably for personal gain.

Since then I have noted your every move with an acute
interest, for I became convinced that you were going to work
considerable mischief before you got through. Of late you
have been so bold--and I believe I voice the opinions of the
large majority of men connected with financial affairs when
I say _dangerous_--that I cannot resist writing you as I do
herewith.

You advertise through the daily press and in your "Critics"
pages that you are doing all in your power to create unrest
and fear among the people for the purpose of frightening
them into selling their stocks and bonds, and you go further
and openly make the most astounding of statements, the most
dangerous and vicious--that you will endeavor to have all
the people owning deposits in banks, trusts, and insurance
companies withdraw them in concert.

I will be frank and state that if I did not know your
business career, and had not read your writings, I should
dismiss this latter statement of yours by calling on the
proper authorities to take cognizance of you as a most
dangerous lunatic, but as your business career and your
writings show you to be an able financier, a successful
business man, an advanced thinker and brilliant writer, I
feel that mental derangement cannot be the cause of this
remarkable proceeding.

Therefore I challenge you, as one who professes to be an
honest man, to answer at once the inclosed list of questions
fully and unqualifiedly in your magazine before you make any
more extraordinary and, I believe, perilous public requests;
and I warn you that if you do not do so, I shall consider it
my duty to make public through the press of this country,
and in other places where you have been advertising your
vicious theories, that you have not dared to make answer. In
other words, I shall, after the next issue of _Everybody's
Magazine_, if it does not contain your answers, publish
broadcast a copy of this letter, and in all fairness and
sincerity, I warn you I shall not be deterred from doing
this by any excuse you may make that my letter was received
too late for the July number of the magazine, or that more
important matters take up your space. I have, by diligent
research, ascertained that you will have at least
forty-eight hours from the time this letter is placed in
your hands before the section containing your "Lawson and
His Critics" pages is sent to press; or, to be plainer, I
can have advertisements inserted in the same section as that
containing your "Critics" pages if I hand in my copy
forty-eight hours after you will have received my letter.

Therefore you have sufficient time to formulate your answer,
and you know as well as I that, in the present excited
condition of the public mind, which has been created largely
by your public statements, there can be nothing more
deserving of space in _Everybody's Magazine_ than the
answers to my questions. You must realize, sir, that in all
sections of the country small holders of stocks are not only
selling their holdings, but that small depositors in banks
and trust companies are already beginning to withdraw their
deposits, that already many small banks have failed because
of this feeling of apprehension. So far as Wall Street is
concerned, legitimate business is practically dead, and you
have, for the time being at least, killed it. I will not add
what ill your attacks have worked in the large insurance
companies, for it is, I am sorry to say, patent to all that
there is but little life-insurance business being done at
present by the very large companies, and at best it will
require years to live down the unsettlement you have
wrought in the people's confidence in this worthy and
time-proven institution.

These are the questions I want answers to, and answers in
keeping with those broad professions of honesty and keen
regard for the best interests of the people which you have
been making.

Earnestly and respectfully yours,
----

1. Do you know economics and finance, money, banking,
credits, corporations, and business in their broad relations
to the people, the American Government, and natural law, and
the relation each holds to the other, or is your knowledge
confined to the skimming and smattering such as any alert
and bright stock speculator would naturally pick up in years
of experience as a broker and manipulator?

2. Do you not know that in all times there have been, and
must naturally be, very rich men, and that necessarily there
can be but very few of these, and that where they are there
must be very many times as many poorer ones, very poor ones?

3. Do you not know that there must be billions of dollars'
worth of stocks and bonds in America, and that they must not
only increase but increase very rapidly, and that their
existence instead of being evidence of great evil is proof
positive of the great prosperity of the whole country and
the whole people, and that it is the sacred duty of all the
people down to the very poorest, who own none of these, to
guard, protect, and maintain their price, and not the duty
of any honest man to destroy or shrink the value of this
evidence of real wealth?

4. Do you not know that a large portion of all these stocks
and bonds is owned by the masses of the people; that if they
should be frightened into selling them there would be no
place to put the vast sums they would receive for them, as
the banks could not profitably use this cash if it were
added to what is deposited now, and that the only sufferers
by this frightened and forced selling would be the people
whom you profess to be working for?

5. Do you not know that if the people should start on a
given day to withdraw their money from the banks and trust
companies throughout this country, there would be the worst
calamity in this country that the world has ever witnessed;
that all lines of business would be disorganized; that the
country would be set back a very long time, and that the
principal sufferers would be the working people and the
farmers, and, in fact, all those classes you profess to be
working for; and do you not know that in the middle of this
calamity you would probably be lynched and perhaps torn limb
from limb by the crazed and deluded people, who would then
see the danger of your teachings?

6. Do you not know that the result of the people's selling
their stocks and bonds in concert would be a great drop in
their price, and that the people's raiding the banks and
trust companies of their deposits would also bring about a
tremendous drop in the price of stocks and bonds; that the
only ones who can possibly benefit are the bears who sell
short; that these bears have no legitimate standing in the
business world, and should have none, and that in the
broadest sense of the term they are not honest men?

7. Do you not know that the greatest institution in this
country to-day is life insurance, and that if you disturb
the confidence of the people in life insurance their
families will be deprived of the greatest source of income
at a time when most in need of it?

8. Do you not know that there can be no new remedy for the
present condition of affairs, even if it is really as bad as
you picture it, and that the only remedy or cure possible is
a more honest enforcement of our present laws, a more honest
conduct of our present enormous business, and a more
intelligent recognition by the working people and farmers of
the inevitable natural laws? Also that there can be nothing
more pernicious than this constant teaching them that their
interests are opposed to the interests of the very rich
class?

9. Did you not write your story to advertise yourself for
the purpose of making money out of the following your
disclosures would bring you and for the purpose of making
money for _Everybody's Magazine_?

10. Do you not own the largest part of _Everybody's
Magazine_, and has not your part of the profits received
from that source since you began your story been very large?

11. Do you not sell stocks short before each of your
advertisements, and are not the press stories and the one
now current in Wall Street that you made over a million
dollars in the decline which preceded the appearance of the
June _Everybody's_, true?

12. Are you going to commit the crime of calling out bank
and trust company deposits?

13. If you make such a call, and it is answered, and there
is a destructive panic and a number of the big New York
banks and trust companies fail, what will you do?

14. If the masses should sell their stocks and bonds and get
their money, what would then happen?

15. Do you dare say to your readers now and unqualifiedly,
that you have a real remedy for the present financial evils,
and that it will show when it is given that it is anything
more than some new scheme by which you personally are to get
the people's money?

16. Do you dare to say now to your readers unqualifiedly
that this remedy will show conclusively that it has not been
invented since you began your story of "Frenzied Finance"?

17. Do you dare tell your readers now and unqualifiedly that
you personally did not make money out of what you call the
"Amalgamated swindle"?

18. Do you dare tell your readers now and unqualifiedly that
you have not made money, and an enormous amount of it--very
much more than all you have spent in connection with your
work of "Frenzied Finance"--out of the people since your
story began?

I will state in fairness to you before you make answer to
the above questions that it is now my intention to take
your answers into court in a suit which will be brought, and
that if you have made answers different from those you make
under oath you will be held up to the scorn of the whole
American people.

I replied:

I admire your smartness. Of the thousands of letters I have recently received yours is the cunningest. If I do not answer your shrewd and adroitly put questions in the brief space at my disposal, you will discredit my work. If I take offence at your way of putting your questions, you will have the pretext you are evidently looking for. Then, your closing warning is so manly and generous! I must not lie, because, if I do, you will expose me in court! You thought that would make good reading after I had refused to make reply in this issue, and you had advertised your letter. Again, you probably figured that as my June chapter was all taken up with my story and there was no room for the insurance article I had promised, I should need all my "Critics" space this month for it; so, all in all, I guess you were pretty sure I could not answer your apparently fair and honest questions.

I'll disappoint you. If my "Critics" pages had actually been on the press at the moment your questions came in, I should have telegraphed the publishers to yank off the plates and hold up the edition at my own expense until I should have had time to polish off your interrogations. Before starting in let me say to you that if you will find a way of getting my answers out into the open under oath, I shall consider that you have done me and my work a good turn.

QUESTION 1. I _know_ economics and finance, money, banking, credits, corporations, and business in their broad relations to the people, the American Government, and natural laws, and the relation each holds to the other--not so well as I should like to know them, but as well as any member of the "Standard Oil," of the "System," or any one of their hirelings knows them. You have been brutally blunt in putting your questions, so don't accuse me of egotism if I bluntly answer: I know them all, top, sides, and bottom, from thirty-six years' book study of them and thirty-six years' actual experience in the nine-pin alleys where they are daily and nightly set up for the express purpose of being knocked down. I know the relation of each of these important life factors to each of the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't jokers of the "System." Make no mistake, Mr. Banker, my knowledge is not "a skimming and smattering such as any alert and bright stock speculator would naturally pick up in years of experience as a broker and manipulator," but the straight brand which the "Standard Oil" and the "System" so like to impress into their service when they run up against it in their continuous robbing excursions. You may judge that my knowledge is not of the smattering kind when I say that for years, in spite of my refusal to join the band and wear the collar, whenever Rogers and Rockefeller had a particularly hard nut to crack they called me in to try it on my "_knows_."

2. Yes, I am aware that there have always been, and that there will always continue to be, very rich men, and that there cannot be many of them, and that where they are there must be very poor ones. And I also know that no honest man, rich or poor, objects to the necessarily few very rich ones who have honestly acquired great fortunes as the reward of their own or their ancestors' labors of body or brain in the interest of all the people. Don't misunderstand me--no honest man or woman can object to the _necessary_ great fortunes, but all honest American men and women do object, and are getting ready to make their objection heard, to all unnecessary great fortunes, "made dollar" fortunes gained by trick of finance or evasion of law, or the brutal and ruthless stock manipulation of recent years. The sooner the "System" and the other possessors of these "unnecessaries" realize that their doom is sealed and dig for the cyclone cellars, the quicker the American people will get through with the strenuous house-cleaning job for which they are just rolling up their sleeves.

3. I do know there must be billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds in America. I also know that among these legitimate billions of dollars are now mixed other billions of dollars that have no proper title to being, save the greed of the "System." That while the existence of certain billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds is proof positive of the great prosperity of the whole country and the whole people, it does not follow that their existence is proof that the hands they are found in are the hands they should rest in. Further, I assert that the existence of other billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds is proof positive that the laws have been violated and that the great prosperity of the whole country has been used as the excuse and motive of this violation, and declare that, in my opinion, it is the duty of honest men and women to do all in their power to shrink fictitious securities and to destroy them; and, further, that it is the duty of all honest men to lend a hand so that the legitimate billions of dollars of stocks and bonds may be returned to the hands of those who are legally entitled to them.

4. I am aware that the people owned billions of these stocks and bonds three years ago, and also that if they had then sold them back to the "System," even at the price they had paid for them, and had kept their money in the banks without interest, or had even buried it in the ground or kept it in their stockings for a year, they would have been able to buy back for fifty cents on the dollar what they had sold the "System," thereby making for themselves billions of dollars and impoverishing the "System" by just as many billions as they had made. You know that the "System," after it had loaded up the people with its stocks, "shook them out," and thereby gathered in half the billions of money the people had paid for what they bought.

Let me illustrate. The people bought of the "System" for 760 millions of dollars the Steel Trust stocks and bonds, and after the people had the "System's" chromos and the "System" had the people's 760 millions of savings, the "System" caused the price to be cut in two. Then it bought back the Steel Trust's chromos for 380 millions, thereby transferring from the people to the "System," in this one instance alone, 380 millions. And, further, after the people had been shaken out of their stocks and bonds and the millions of their savings--in the Steel Trust alone 380 millions--the "System," having these securities in its possession, began to inflate prices for the purpose of again selling to the people; in December last they had inflated the prices of billions of stocks and bonds to their old false figures, and were then preparing to unload them on to the people; in the case of the Steel Trust stocks and bonds the price had again mounted to 760 millions. In compliance with my warnings the people began in December last to unload upon the "System" the billions they then held at these inflated prices, and they have continued to do so ever since, and have suffered no hardship by the forced selling into which I have frightened them. I further know that they will find good use for this money at a later period in buying back from the "System" these same securities at their true worth; in other words, that before I am through with my work they will be able to repurchase from the "System" for 380 millions or less the Steel stocks and bonds now selling for 760 millions.

5. I do know that one of the most colossal impositions ever perpetrated on the whole people of any nation is that formula which the "System" has so insidiously instilled into the minds of the American people during the last century, to wit: that they must do nothing which might disturb the "System" in its use at two to four per cent. per annum of all the people's savings, deposited in banks and trust companies throughout the country; that if they do, there will be a Wall Street panic, and thereby all the people will be made to suffer great hardships. On the contrary, I know that if the people do what is necessary to shake off the "System's" strangling grip upon their savings, the "System" will suffer death, and everlasting profit and advantage will accrue to the nation. Though it be necessary for the people to withdraw from the banks and trust and insurance companies their billions of savings, and even though such withdrawal must cause a temporary business crash and the failure of many of the financial institutions of the country, the sacrifice would be many thousand times compensated for by the benefits that would follow in its train. I will go further and state that if such radical action should become necessary, the people should willingly face the failure and destruction of one-half the banking institutions of New York if by doing so they could absolutely destroy the "System." But do not misunderstand me--the simultaneous withdrawal of the people's savings from the banks and trust companies throughout the United States would be such a terrible temporary hardship that nothing could justify it but the absolute necessity for uprooting and eradicating the "System"; I should not hesitate, however, to face the full responsibility for such a move if the "System" cannot be destroyed in any other way, even though I were sure I should be lynched or torn limb from limb by those people who have been crazed and deluded, not by my teachings, but by the damnable doctrines and acts of the "System" and its votaries.

6. I am well aware that the result of the people's selling their stocks and bonds in concert and the withdrawal of their savings would bring a tremendous drop in the price of stocks and bonds. _This is what I am working for_, but I am proceeding in such a way that I believe when the crash comes the people will be free from their stocks and bonds. Your proposition that the bears will be the only beneficiaries I regard as rot; on the contrary, I know that the people will benefit a dollar where the combined bears will benefit a cent. Pardon my giving you here an A B C lesson in finance--I know a bear is no more dishonest than a bull. When a man tries to put up the price of stocks and bonds, he is a bull. When he tries to put them down, he is a bear. If a bull tries to put prices to a point of fair worth, he is an honest bull. When he tries to put them any higher than fair worth, he is a dishonest bull, for he does so for the purpose of obtaining from the one to whom the stocks are sold a greater gain than he is entitled to, and always by false pretences. When a bear tries to put stocks from an artificially high price to their fair worth, he is an honest bear. When he tries to put them any lower, he is a dishonest bear, because he does so for the purpose of purchasing from their owners stocks or bonds at less than their fair price, that he may pocket the difference between the artificially low price he makes and the higher price at which he has sold, and this profit is procured by false pretence. You, and thousands like you, should get out of your heads the false notion that a bear is necessarily less honest than a bull.

7. Life insurance is a great institution, and should be a sacred institution--_provided_ it is honest life insurance. He who would, for any dishonest reason, disturb the people's confidence in honest life insurance I consider a criminal; but I am sure that one who, having the power to awaken the people to their peril, yet stands silently by and suffers them to be bled and plundered in the name of life insurance is even a greater scoundrel.

_What is life insurance--honest life insurance?_ A contract between two parties by which the first agrees, in return for a certain fixed charge per year, to pay to the family or other beneficiary of the second party a stipulated sum in case of said second party's death; but it is plainly understood between them that the annual charge exacted by the first party shall be only such an amount as will insure the carrying out of the contract, plus whatever is the legitimate expense of conducting the business connected therewith. Under no circumstances would I say aught in disparagement of such a contract, but if I did not lift my voice against such life insurance as is carried on by the Mutual, New York Life, and Equitable companies, knowing what I do know, I should be a deep-dyed scoundrel.

Life insurance as it has been conducted in the past and as it is being conducted at present by these three companies, I regard as the most damnable imposition ever practised upon the people of any nation. Under the pretence that it is necessary to enable life-insurance companies to carry out their contracts, two million policy-holders are annually tricked into contributing from their savings sums which not only insure the performance of these contracts but enable the officers and trustees--mere servants of the policy-holders--to maintain the most gigantic stock-gambling machine the world has ever known. Through its operation the companies themselves not only make and lose millions at single throws of the dice, but the bands of schemers whose services it is pretended are essential for the transaction of the life-insurance business filch for themselves huge individual fortunes. Piled on to these excessive charges are additional amounts which enable these tricksters to maintain palaces, hotels, bars, and every conceivable kind of business, to pay for armies of lackeys and employees and private servants of officers and trustees, and for debauches and banquets which vie with any given by the kings and queens of the most extravagant and profligate nations on earth; in addition, enough more to accumulate huge and unnecessary funds--which are juggled with for the enrichment of individuals. Such wicked exactions and shameful extravagances constitute an imposition of the most wanton and criminal character, and those responsible should be sent to State prison for life, as too vicious and dangerous to be allowed freedom among an honest people.

I would say further that the trickery and frauds that have been practised by the New York Life and the Mutual companies are fully as bad as, if not worse than, those of the Equitable, now publicly confessed.

8. It is difficult for me to answer such a question--just as difficult as it is for the mature man to answer the question of the child, "If the moon is made of green cheese, what kind of rat-traps do they use in heaven?" The "System" for forty years has taught the people that it is impossible for them to improve upon the conditions which the "System" has moulded for its own plundering purposes, yet I have a simple Remedy, readily understood, which I believe the people will eagerly embrace as soon as it is given them. This Remedy is adjusted to laws now in force; and when it is put into operation those who have acquired enormous fortunes by trickery and fraud will find themselves deprived of their ill-gotten gains by the simple application of natural laws to which the said Remedy affords leverage and action. All honest people, the richest as well as the poorest, will be benefited in fair and just proportion. Once the Remedy is in force, it will be out of the power of the trickster and the thief to accumulate overnight scores of millions, although the Edisons, the Stephensons, the Morses, or any man who by brain or body does those things for his fellows which they cannot do for themselves, will continue to receive that great reward which the whole people in their wisdom and generosity decide is fair for exceptional services; the common miner, too, when he discovers the hidden gold, silver, or copper in the earth will obtain the same return that he is entitled to under to-day's laws, or even better.

9. This story is written, as I have explained so many times before, simply and solely in performance of my duty toward my country and its people and without hope or desire for reward of any kind.

10. I do not own any part of _Everybody's Magazine_, nor have I any money interest in it, directly or indirectly. I have not made a dollar from _Everybody's Magazine_ directly or indirectly, but, on the contrary, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist in getting my story into the hands of the people.

11. Before my first advertisement in December, at a time when I did not know how the people would take it, and when I did not know whether stocks would go up or down, I took my chance in the open of making loss or profit and did sell large amounts of stock short, making some hundreds of thousands of dollars profit; but when in the middle of the disturbance I saw how seriously the people took my message and that there might be a great panic, I began to buy, and thereby sacrificed a million of profits. And, since then, that is, after I realized that the people would respond to my warnings, I have refrained from going short in advance of these advertisements, because I desire to keep strictly apart transactions conducted for my own personal account and operations I am directing for the benefit and safeguarding of the public. I am determined to use every means in my power to keep the people out of a dangerous market and to concentrate the billions of stocks in the hands of the "System," and am not actuated by any desire or necessity for gain. Already the "System's" votaries are tottering under their load and it is certain that in the coming months they will employ every possible means to persuade the public back into their trap. More than ever, then, is it necessary to be firm against their blandishments, for when the crash comes it will be a terrific one, and those who have great holdings of speculative securities will surely find their values cut in half. Since my first public announcement I have not made enough out of market operations to pay even the expenses of any particular advertisement.

12. I shall not commit any crime; I have too much veneration for the laws of our country; although let it be understood that I may, at any time, commit what some hireling judge of the "System" may call a crime, _for I am going to call upon the American people to withdraw their deposited savings at the proper time; and the proper time will be that time when I am absolutely sure they will withdraw them. But I shall not resort to this last move unless it is certain that the "System" cannot be crushed in any other way_.

13. I will first thank God and then proceed to assist in burying the corpse of the "System."

14. The "System" will be brought to its knees; stocks will fall to figures representing their legitimate values and the public will reinvest its money therein, and thus regain control of the great transportation and industrial interests of the country which the "System" has filched from them.

15. I say unqualifiedly to the American people that this Remedy of mine will, when adopted, correct the greatest evil in the financial system of this country. That while it is simple it is absolutely new, and that neither I nor any one else can possibly benefit moneywise from it except in the some proportion as all other people in the country benefit.

16. My Remedy was worked out before 1894, and in that year, one year before I had met any of the "Standard Oil" people, it was so far perfected that in London I laid before Joseph Pulitzer, then and now owner of the New York _World_, the identical first printed plan that I will print in _Everybody's Magazine_ when I judge the people are ready to receive it.

17. I unqualifiedly say to you and to the American people that I lost millions of dollars more in what you call the Amalgamated swindle than I made, and that I lost trying to make good my word to the Amalgamated subscribers.

18. I have spent much more money, hundreds of thousands of dollars more, in getting this work, "Frenzied Finance," into the hands of the people than I have made through anything in any way connected with it.

THE CRIME OF AMALGAMATED

Many of my readers had difficulty in following the intricacies of the great crime of Amalgamated and I had many letters desiring further explanation of that act.

PEAKE'S ISLAND, ME., May 31, 1905.

T. W. LAWSON, ESQ.

_Dear Sir_: Have just finished June number of "Frenzied
Finance."

You are running a "primary class" of High Finance for
millions; have been able to follow you up to this number,
and my apology in writing to you is to state that I don't
understand this lesson and I believe I am of the average
intelligence of your readers.

I am not clear on the following points, and if you can take
the time and have the desire to do so, I should be glad to
have you set my gray matter moving in the right direction.

1. Why should subscribers think that a company, who had as
good a thing as advertised, would sell the entire stock,
thus giving an opportunity to any financier to gather in
fifty-one per cent. and practically take away its good
thing?

2. How would it have been possible for you with the
$5,000,000 from the shares it was originally the plan to
sell to protect those 50,000 shares on a bear market with
700,000 shares in Messrs. Rogers and Rockefeller's
possession?

3. Why would it not have been a crime to dispose of only
50,000 shares when the whole 750,000 were advertised?

4. Messrs. Rogers and Rockefeller were the Amalgamated
Company after purchasing the capital stock from the
office-boys, were they not?

5. If Rogers and Rockefeller paid for their shares, what
became of the Amalgamated Company's $75,000,000 secured by
sale of stock?

These may sound foolish to you, but I'm interested and
should like to understand.

Permit me to state that I admire your pluck and ability and
wish you success in your remedy, whatever it may be.

Respectfully yours,
(Signed) ----

I replied:

Your first question is a hard one to answer, as it goes to the very foundation of "the stock-market." In the ideal operation of stock-markets, owners of valuable properties should always allow the public to join in their "good things" at fair prices, because all who thus participated would make money and would be ready for the next "good thing," and so on to the end. On the other hand, if the public were only invited into the "bad things," in time they would not come in on anything, good or bad, and there would be no stock-market. The foundation of stock-markets, like all other kinds of markets, is the public interest therein--for it is the people who own the great bulk of the money in the country, and its aggregate is far beyond the amount that the very few rich men possess. Stock-markets are no different, at least should be no different, from horse-markets, boot and shoe markets, or mowing-machine markets. The horse-markets whose dealers sell to their patrons good horses at fair prices, succeed; those whose dealers offer only the "culls" and "no goods," fail.