stock still held them.
The people sold them.
To-day every scheme known to frenzied financiering is being
worked to make the world believe last week's panic was the
result of stock speculators, bears, "Standard Oil," and the
"System."
Throughout this country and Europe is being spread the story
that I was in league with "Standard Oil" and the "System,"
that they had sold out their stocks and got me to raid the
market to shake out the public.
That another great rise is coming.
* * * * *
This is clever, smart, the only thing possible under the
circumstances.
But it is a lie.
I ask the people to watch the desperate efforts that are
being made to get this lie to pass for a truth.
The "System" must unload on the public, but above all else
the "System" must convince the people that the awful
destruction of last week could not have been brought about
merely by the people's own doings.
If the people are not so convinced they will know their
power, and that they have in their own hands, to use at any
time, a weapon which can stand the "System" on its head.
There is no reason why the people cannot reverse the old
process and always sell at the top to the frenzied
financiers and buy from them at the bottom.
* * * * *
This is my warning:
I ask the people and Wall Street and the "System" to give it
weight or their loss will be on their own heads.
I am going to strike again, suddenly, sharply,
sensationally, and in a way that will produce effects upon
prices and upon markets, so much more destructive, that the
effects and the destruction of last week will appear by
comparison as milk to vitriol.
Every owner of an active stock in which the "System" has any
interest owes it to himself to weigh my warning.
The result must be terrible for Wall Street and the
"System," and nothing can avert it.
It matters not how much preparation is made, as it will come
in a way not possible to guard against.
I want all to know now, so they will not blame me when the
slaughter is on.
My first and only warning will come in the form of a public
notice that certain named stocks should be sold the day my
advertisement appears.
Three days afterward I will publish why, but with the why it
will be too late for holders of stock to save themselves.
I now say to all, if you decide after reading this that I am
only talking, well and good, but when it is too late,
remember what I did say.
While waiting for me to speak, again think it over.
* * * * *
When "Frenzied Finance" first appeared, only six months ago,
the wise heads of the "System" said:
"The public will tire of it in sixty days."
At the end of six months the people, the press, and the
pulpit are lashing themselves into a fury over its
revelations, and it is impossible to print magazines enough
to meet the demand.
When I first touched on the life-insurance companies they
laughed.
To-day policy-holders are panic-stricken, and the big
companies are falling behind millions a week.
When I said my story would affect Wall Street, Wall Street
laughed; last week it yelled, cursed, and begged.
And I am only in the mild, preliminary stages yet.
While waiting for the next move, make no mistake.
When real work begins Wall Street and the "System" will look
like a last year's straw hat in the swirls of Niagara.
AMALGAMATED
Last Tuesday morning I publicly said:
"The men who control Amalgamated told me it is not worth
half the price it was floated at. If they told the truth it
will go back to 33. If they have lied they will smash it
back to 33 as they did before. Sell it."
All that day (Tuesday) holders could have sold at an average
of 79.
Holders of over 200,000 shares did.
The following day all holders could have sold at an average
of 74--300,000 did.
The third day all holders could have sold at an average of
66--200,000 did.
Then the Wall Street powers got desperate and stopped the
decline.
During these days I did not sell a share nor do anything in
the market to assist the decline, but did buy enormous
amounts to prevent it from breaking below 60.
Every scheme known to frenzied financiers is being worked to
make it appear now that this stock is going to sell much
higher.
It is advertised broadcast that I was working with the bear
raiders and "Standard Oil."
This is a lie.
My brokers were requested by another client to publish a
statement that a prominent copper company president stated
there was $33 in the Amalgamated treasury.
Instantly the rumors were sent broadcast that I had settled
with "Standard Oil" and was bulling the stock.
This, too.
I know the man who made the statement and the high officer
of the Amalgamated who got him to make it.
And it shows the desperate position of the Amalgamated
"Insiders."
They are loaded with the stock.
I dare any officer of the Amalgamated Company to publish the
above statement over his signature.
If he does court proceedings will be begun at once.
I also dare Mr. Rogers or Mr. Rockefeller to deny the
statement made by me that they have said the stock is not
worth 50, and that Marcus Daly deceived them. I dare them.
I repeat what I have said to holders of Amalgamated:
Sell your stock now, before it is too late.
Bear in mind when Amalgamated sells at 33 that I have warned
you.
And in the meantime watch for sharp breaks in Amalgamated. I
will give no further warning on this stock, and under no
circumstances will change my now advertised position on it.
Thomas W. Lawson.</sc>
BOSTON, December 12, 1904.
The second test brought a stronger demonstration than the first. This
time the "System's" votaries were drawn up in solid phalanx; behind them
uncounted millions and unmeasured power braced to meet attack. All day
Monday the people hurled their securities at the gamesters, and with
every onslaught prices crumbled until, when the Stock Exchange closed,
the "System's" losses were represented by hundreds of millions of
dollars. The people had learned a lesson, and a hundred years more of
the "System's" trickery and falsehood will not efface its impression.
VILIFICATION NO REPLY TO FACTS
The attacks I made on the "System" were frank and direct statements of
facts. The destruction they wrought upon the cherished plans of the
gamesters was due to their truth. If the things I stated about
Amalgamated were not true, how easy to prove them false, and how
completely then should I have been discredited. But what has the
"System" in its blind rage done? Well may the American people who read
what is printed below say to themselves, "'Whom the gods would slay,
they first make mad.' What is Thomas W. Lawson in this transaction that
his personality need enter into a controversy wherein the issue is of
facts alone?" Suppose I were all that my enemies say of me, the question
is not of my guilt, but of the truth of my charges. I was not surprised
to read on the morning of Tuesday, the 13th of December, the diatribe
printed below. It was published in the leading papers of the country in
the form of an advertisement, in great type covering half a page.
THOMAS W. LAWSON--READ THIS PICTURE
NEW YORK, December 12, 1904.
THOMAS W. LAWSON, Boston, Mass.
For six months I have read with close attention your story
of "Frenzied Finance," in _Everybody's Magazine_, and have
paid close attention to the manner in which, by pandering to
the worst prejudices of the American people, you have
endeavored by misstatement of facts to distort the
conditions actually existing through what you call the
workings of the "System."
What is the conclusion to be deducted from your own
statements? What is the "System" to which you have so often
referred?
From the standpoint of honest, unprejudiced men no other
conclusion can be derived but from your own statements you
have endeavored personally and through subornation of others
to debauch legislation, to distort facts, to create in the
minds of investors a lack of confidence in men whom the
public for many years have looked up to as the leaders in
the industrial world.
By every foul vilification and every statement which
distorted imagination is capable of producing, you have
endeavored to show that the so-called leaders of finance of
the United States are in league to rob and defraud the
investing public.
Taking all your statements and analyzing them, what do they
amount to? That certain men, amongst whom you yourself was
one of the leaders, have bought out certain corporations
which were capitalized at a price which you state was far
above their cost.
Not one single new fact has been brought to the attention of
the public. If men, by their brains, their capital, and
their energy, acquire properties that have not been
appreciated by the public, put them forth under whatsoever
name, so that the statements made in connection with those
properties are true, and capable of verification, what is it
but a business proposition that cannot be criticised?
What is the "System" which you denounce as the very
personification of evil? Is it not the "System" of which you
have been the leading advocate, votary, and exponent for
many years? Is not the "System," when analyzed and reduced
to its root, a stock-brokerage of which you are and have
been for many years one of the shining lights; not the
system of honest, legitimate brokerage, but the system of
endeavoring by false statements and by exciting the fears of
the multitude to depress and destroy values in order that
its votaries may reap their ill-gotten gains?
Is there one thing in connection with all that you have
written in your articles on "Frenzied Finance" in which you
have not been from start to finish one of the prime movers?
Who is the man that, from the inception of the enterprise
which you most severely criticise, has been most prominently
before the public? Who is the man that, from your own words,
originated the idea and carried it to its completion? Is it
not Thomas W. Lawson? Who is the man that, in the various
schemes which you hold up to the condemnation of the public,
has taken from start to finish the leading part? Is it not
Thomas W. Lawson?
Is there one honest man in the United States who to-night
believes that, in spending the thousands and thousands of
dollars that you have spent in advocating your views and in
posing as the friend of the people, that you have not acted
for your own selfish ends? Do you believe that there is one
man in all this wide world to-day who honestly believes one
single statement that you have made, or who believes that
you have ever turned your hand to, or aided in the slightest
degree in, any honest enterprise? You criticise the copper
corporations who have placed their stock before the public
as a legitimate investment. Can you point to one single
instance in which a misrepresentation of fact or figure has
ever been made in anything connected with the Amalgamated
Company?
Who are you, who should say in relation to a copper mine
whether it is good or bad? Did you ever see a copper mine?
Did you ever put a pick into ore? Did you ever reduce one
ton of metal so that it would yield up its wealth for the
benefit of mankind. Have you ever done anything excepting to
act as a parasite upon honest labor and, by chicanery and by
misrepresentation, endeavor to rob the people of their hard
earnings? I speak to you plainly, knowing you yourself for
what you are. Can you show one man that can point to any
honest industry in which you ever took part; to one single
act of yourself that ever contributed to the welfare or the
advancement of the working people? Can you point to one
single act in your career that was ever based on any other
motive than absolute egotism and selfishness; to one single
utterance, act, word, or deed of yourself that was not based
on selfishness and a desire to rob or misrepresent or, in
some other manner, attach the earnings of the people to your
coffers without effort on your part?
I address this communication to you knowing you for what you
are; as a man who, throughout his many years of active life
on the Stock Exchange, came to be generally considered as
the synonym of chicanery and of misrepresentation. To-day,
through your perversion of truth and partial misstatement of
fact, which, through many years in pursuance of your
calling, you have become an adept in, you can destroy the
confidence of the people who make the money and the wealth
of the country. Do you for one moment suppose that there is
one honest person in this country to-day who believes that
you are actuated by a sincere desire to aid them?
Do you not know that your only motive is, by destroying
confidence, to endeavor to make a large profit for yourself,
by the methods which you have pursued of advertising to the
public? The men who do things, the men who created wealth,
the men who are known throughout the world for integrity and
for their business qualifications, will unanimously say that
your motive is selfish from start to finish.
Do you remember the dealings that you had with me, how they
were based on falsehood and misrepresentation from start to
finish? How, by the use of names that are well known in the
financial and business world, you endeavored to rob and
convert to your own use what you thought was one of the
greatest properties in the world? What has been the result
of your advertisements of the last few days? Has it not been
to destroy confidence, to create a panic among people who
had invested their earnings in what they have considered as
legitimate propositions? Have you ever paused and thought
for one moment about what the results of your selfish and
distorted statements might be?
In your articles you have spoken of the loss that has been
entailed upon widows and orphans, of disgrace and suicide
and other ills that have come through what you are pleased
to call the workings of the "System," the "System" of which
you have been and are to-day the exponent, the system of
misrepresentation and of spreading false statements; in
other words, of stealing Heaven's livery to serve the devil
in. Millions of dollars of legitimate investments have been
lost to the people who have made them. Why? Because you, in
your selfish egotism, have looked to nothing but your
personal gain, thinking nothing, caring less for the woe
that you might work to thousands, pandering to the worst
prejudices, and by means of such words as "Standard Oil,"
"Amalgamated," "Frenzied Finance," etc., and making
statements which investors have not the means or the time to
dispute, you have endeavored to destroy values that have
been created by the works of a lifetime.
To-morrow, in Boston, I shall call upon you. I for many
years have stood as a worker, as a man who has built up and
who has created, and I know that the savings of a lifetime
of many honest investors have been swept away by the
falsehoods that you have spread abroad through the public
press.
To-morrow, at your office, I shall denounce you for what you
are. The Master long ago said: "By your works ye shall be
judged."
Personally I shall call upon you for your answer to-morrow.
W. C. GREENE.
This is the rejoinder of the "System." No denial of my facts. No defence
against my charges, but a volley of mud and a threat of assassination. I
had dared tell the people how they had been robbed.
All remember the panic of 1901, the famous Northern Pacific corner, in
which values shrank hundreds of millions in a few hours and tens of
thousands of the people lost their entire savings. Who precipitated that
terrific slaughter? Certain great railroad magnates and bankers were at
each other's throats; two greedy corporations had quarrelled ferociously
over the control of a railway line. No man in all our broad land dared
to hint at the assassination of a Morgan or a Perkins or a Harriman or
any of the "Standard Oil" votaries who were parties to the bitter
contest that left Wall Street strewn with the mangled and bleeding
carcasses of the ruined and bankrupt. That time, however, the "System"
had both money and stocks--the people had lost both.
I am not going to enter into a defence of myself against Colonel
Greene's charges. In the newspapers of the country that matter was fully
ventilated at the time. I simply republish his vituperation to show how
the "System" sets about silencing those who dare protest against its
villainous methods. In the first six months of the publication of my
story the sole defence the "System" entered against my specific and
terrible charges of plunder and debauching of the people was to attack
me personally. It inaugurated a war of mud-slinging and vilification
directed by the New York _Commercial_, Henry H. Rogers's own paper,
which printed the ridiculous statement that I was crazy. This editorial
made splendid ammunition for the big insurance corporations, which
caused it to be distributed among their policy-holders, and for the
yelping pack of insurance papers which may be depended on to bark, and
bite the legs of any one who dares attack their master, the "System's,"
most profitable institutions. I find I have not space here to reproduce
these several mud broadsides, which really are more valuable as evidence
of the doddering imbecility and fatuous weakness of the so-called great
men of finance than interesting or informative. Since my personality is
the issue, I propose to give my readers some testimony of a different
character, gathered by experts[22] in the heat of battle.
THOMAS W. LAWSON AT CLOSE RANGE
AN INTIMATE TALK WITH THE FINANCIER AND FIGHTER
BY ARTHUR McEWEN
From the _New York American_, November 27, 1904.
Thomas W. Lawson of Boston, who is making it so interesting
for Standard Oil financiers and other able gentlemen that
add your money to their corpulent millions while you wait,
is himself an interesting man and a very puzzling one to a
great many people.
One day last week I spent several hours with him at his
rooms in Young's Hotel, and it surely was a stimulating and
enjoyable time. Everybody now knows how exceedingly well Mr.
Lawson can write, and he talks as he writes--boldly,
vividly, audaciously. He thinks out loud, pouring forth a
flood of speech, breaking off in the middle of sentences,
going into long parentheses, touching on a dozen incidental
things by way of illustration as he goes, but always coming
back to the main point. He may confuse you, but he does not
confuse himself. And notwithstanding the rapidity of his
utterance and his copiousness he is not carried away into
saying what he would rather not have said.
He is handsome--tall, broad-shouldered, strong, well-knit,
and graceful--still almost youthful physically, despite his
forty-five years and the beginning of grayness in the dark,
wavy hair which covers his large, finely arched, and
well-proportioned head. His forehead is high and broad, his
gray eyes deep set under brows that come together and give
intentness and fierceness to his gaze when he is aroused.
And when Lawson is aroused you see a fighter with all his
wits about him and of utter fearlessness. He would have made
a first-class soldier, with his quickness and dash and the
pluck that was born in him, and has not to be summoned by
thinking and resolving.
THE BOSTON VIEW OF LAWSON
The Boston view of Lawson is illuminating. They are afraid
of him on State Street. He thinks so rapidly and does things
with such instant decision that he bewilders the
conventional plodders. They admit that he is brilliant, that
he has a genius for gathering in the dollars, but he shocks
the financial Mrs. Grundy. They tell you that he is
"irregular," "sensational," "bizarre," and the rest of
it--all of which means simply that he is a man of original
mind, who follows his own methods, succeeds with them, and
doesn't care a snap of his fingers about being out of the
fashion.
He has a hundred ideas and impulses where the "safe and
steady-going" business man has one--and as the safe and
steady-going State-Streeter doesn't understand the
ninety-nine Lawson ideas and impulses which do not come to
him, he charges them up to "eccentricity" and
"charlatanism."
Boston says Lawson is vain. He certainly does hold a good
opinion of himself, and he has a right to. A boy who goes
into a bank at twelve as he did and before he is seventeen
cleans up $60,000 is hardly to be rebuked for considering
that he is better fitted for the financial game than most.
He knows life, he knows men. He has made and lost fortunes
and is not afraid of being "broke."
That experience has been his repeatedly, but always he rose
again. His brains, energy, and daring would cause him to
rise anywhere. Had he been given birth in a South American
republic, the dictatorship would have been his inevitably.
Lawson was born a money-maker, but he is a great deal more
than that. He is a many-sided man, interested ardently in
lots of things to which the ordinary money-maker is
oblivious. He is very, very human. He has a soul.
Although he is raining blows on important men, who are not
accustomed to being treated with disrespect--although he is
charging them with crimes, and hopes, I should say, to drive
them out of the country or into the penitentiary, he speaks
of some of them with the greatest kindness, thoroughly
understanding their good personal qualities.
THE WONDERFUL ROGERS
He denounces H. H. Rogers, for example, as a robber, a
criminal, and he said to me:
"Rogers is a marvellously able man and one of the best
fellows living. If you knew him only on the social side, and
knew him for years, you couldn't help loving him. He is
considerate, kindly, generous, helpful, and everything a man
should be to his friends. But when it comes to business--his
kind of business--when he turns away from his better self
and goes aboard his pirate brig and hoists the _Jolly
Rover_, God help you! And, then, as a buccaneer you have to
admire him, for he is a master among pirates, and you have
to salute him, even when he has the point of his cutlass at
the small of your back and you're walking the plank at his
order. Rogers is wonderful. He is one of the most prolific
human creatures I have ever met; prolific in thought, in
devices--and I've been at the game a long time now and ought
to know.
"Don't think me egotistical, but I can't help looking under
the surface and going to the bottom of things. So I learn
more about men in Wall Street and what they are at than
most. This is my thirty-fourth year of sixteen and seventeen
hours a day and three hundred and sixty-five days in the
year, and I have seen them all come and go. I _am_ with the
third generation of my time now. In such matters I feel
somehow that I'm about three hundred years old.
"Men like Rogers are all very good fellows. They are genial
and tolerant in their judgment of others. Yes, they are
mighty good fellows, until you turn them around and look at
their other side. Rogers is lovable enough until he touches
the other button. Then he goes with perfect ruthlessness for
what he wants. And yet, though you are his victim, you can't
bring yourself to hate him. After he has thrown you down and
taken all you have and you turn yourself over and find the
dark lantern has disappeared, and you hear him going up the
lane, you pick yourself out of the gutter and admire the
skill with which he did the job. If you could stand it, you
would almost whistle to have him come back and do it over."
"It is easy to see," I said, "by what you write of Mr.
Rogers in your magazine story, that you were fond of him and
gave him the highest rank for ability, but just the same you
said you had to go on the stand in the gas suit and swear
exactly opposite to his testimony. Do you charge him flatly
with perjury?"
"I have put it fifty times in black and white," answered Mr.
Lawson, "that he committed perjury. There isn't any question
about it. I produced my secretary's minutes, delivered over
the telephone, received by his secretary and afterward
confirmed. He confirmed the message to me, called me up and
talked it over and did business on that agreement. Two men,
Rogers and myself, followed each other on the stand and made
diametrically opposite statements; and neither one of them
reserved himself in stating that it was knowledge at first
hand. Therefore there was perjury."
LEGISLATIVE CORRUPTION
"Mr. Lawson, the whole country is familiar enough with
legislative corruption, so there's nothing new in your
charge that the Legislature of Massachusetts was bought up.
But what will attract national notice is the definiteness of
your accusation. You charge H.M. Whitney, brother of the
late W. C. Whitney, and one of the foremost business men of
your State, with having done the corrupting in order to get
through a complete charter for a gas company. Now, when you
pillory a person of Whitney's standing and prominence, as
you have done, he has got to do one of two things--either
force you to come to the front and compel you to prove the
truth of what you say or stand before the public morally
convicted."
"That's right," agreed Lawson heartily.
"Do you stand ready to prove your charge if he challenges
you to do it?"
"What else can I do? Of course I can prove it. I'm sorry for
Whitney. He is a good fellow on his personal side, like
Rogers, but truth is truth."
"However used we may have become to buying Legislatures,
however commonplace it may be, still, when a financially
responsible man like yourself gives concrete instance, and
is prepared with proofs, the fact is horribly startling to
everybody that cares for his country. What is to be the end
of this sort of thing--the purchase of the people's
representatives by the criminal rich?"
"Well, you can ask me a question even broader than that.
What is going to be the end, not only of such things as I
have stated in regard to the corruption of the Legislature
of Massachusetts--and we all admit that the same thing is
being done in other States--what is going to be the outcome
of this rottenness in connection with the practices in Wall
Street that I am telling about in my magazine narrative in
'Frenzied Finance'? To answer would be to disclose my
remedy--the climax to my whole story. At present I can only
say that I make no charges loosely, on insufficient
evidence. I state only what I know. I have seen the
iniquities worked out. I know that these crimes are being
committed every day; that these great financial schemes are
carried through, not only by the commission of moral crimes,
but legal crimes--crimes for which those participating in
them can be held responsible if they are gone after in the
right way, and I am going to show the right way.
THE REMEDY
"I believe that I have a remedy. That, of course, is a
tremendous thing to say. I have spent my life on it. I have
been waiting for the opportunity."
"I may not ask you what your remedy is?"
"No, I shall propose that myself when I have laid all my
facts about these crimes before the people. I am going to
tell them about some startling crimes. All that I have told
so far, including the systematic corruption of the
Massachusetts Legislature, relates to the past. That is, the
deeds are dead, so to speak. But the crimes of Amalgamated,
though in one sense they are now past, are yet connected
with the present, because Amalgamated is alive. The man who
was robbed in 1899, in 1900, and 1901 has his claim
unsettled. That man is alive and Amalgamated is a big,
living corporation. When I get to that I shall be talking in
the present and something is going to be done.
"I have the remedy for the whole thing. You will appreciate
the largeness of that statement, but I have thought and
advised and worked it out. My remedy is based on common
sense."
"Does it aim at any real change in our political system? Is
it socialistic?"
"Oh, no; it doesn't mean a turning over in politics. You and
I know that the dollar is what is running things in this
country to-day, and if you come along with an ideal
proposition--a proposition that carries with it a change in
our laws or a proposition to have some new laws passed--you
might as well say good-by to it, because the fellow whose
hundred millions you want to take away is going to say: 'How
many dollars does it need to turn that upside down?' and he
is going to supply the dollars."
LAWSON'S VERSATILITY
Mr. Lawson gave me nearly three hours of his time, and
during those three hours he was interrupted every five
minutes or so by telephone calls. He conducted his business
right along, ordering the selling and buying of stocks,
making or declining appointments, talking with his
publishers, his lawyers, his family, his friends. It would
have goaded almost any man into excitement and irritability,
but it was all in a day's work with Lawson. Yet he is not
phlegmatic; indeed, he is extraordinarily animated. But it
is animation with composure. In a business way there is not
a busier man in the country, but he finds leisure for other
interests--books, pictures, bronzes, horses. He has a
beautiful country home, where he goes daily by special
train, and then puts up the bars against business, bores,
and all intruders.
In his talk with me he ran a remarkable gamut. He spoke of
business like the shrewdest and readiest of practical men.
Then in the midst of some story of stock-market guile, such
as he is exposing in _Everybody's Magazine_, his face,
voice, and hands conveyed amusement, anger, disgust. With
his good looks and gift of expression he would have made his
way to the top of the stage. I do not know if he has done
any public speaking. But when he got into the full tide of
denunciation of the crimes of Amalgamated I regretted that
he was not addressing a great audience, for it was real
oratory--strong talk, ardent, electric, manly. His eyes
flashed, his teeth came together with a snap and he shook
both fists under my nose. He has enthusiasm, capacity for
righteous wrath, and the spirit of battle. But he doesn't
lose poise for a moment.
HIS CONFIDENCE IN HIMSELF
Cheerfulness, gay confidence in his own powers, is his
predominant trait.
"You are firing hot shot into these people," I said. "They
have endless money, and you are in the stock-market, taking
chances every day. Aren't you afraid they will dig pits for
you?"
"Well, what can they do to any of us in this world except to
send us to the poor-house or the grave? I don't fear them. I
know them and all about them. You must remember this is not
a new occupation with me. For twenty-five years or more I
have been in the habit of picking up a brick without looking
to see how many corners it had or whether it was round or
square and hitting the first head I thought I had a good
reason to hit. I have been doing these things regardless of
how they liked it. It's upward of a quarter of a century
since I had my first wrestle with a corporation in the
newspapers. I have tried not to be a common scold and
avoided being vicious when I could. I have only attacked
when I thought some fellow had done me a deliberate wrong.
And when I have felt that way I have started after him. Then
it has been vicious, hard fighting, you know; vicious, but
not malicious.
"With the 'Standard Oil' crowd I have this big advantage--I
am only one man, a small target, and it needs a mighty good
aim to hit me, whereas they present a large surface and I
have only to heave a brick in any direction to break a
window. The contest is unequal. Everything favors me. My
ammunition is the truth."
There is cheerful courage for you--more particularly in the
case of a man who proclaims from the housetop that there is
no limit to the villainy of his adversaries.
"Mr. Lawson," I said, "there are few who would care to be in
your shoes--a rich man waging a war of this sort. The
chances are altogether in favor of their smashing you
financially."
"Let them, if they can. There are worse things in this life
than being smashed financially."
Mr. Lawson's smile was sunny and confident. He is fearless.
* * * * *
LAWSON, THE MAN
BY JAMES CREELMAN
From the New York _World_, December 12, 1904.
BOSTON, December 10th.
All through the critical business hours of Friday, when
Thomas W. Lawson, master spirit in the present extraordinary
war against Standard Oil finance in Wall Street, was
reported to be locked up with H. H. Rogers, generalissimo of
Standard Oil, perfecting the details of a settlement for
$6,000,000--all through that anxious time, when the
stock-tickers and newspapers of the country were trying to
guess the meaning of Mr. Lawson's sudden silence and
inaccessibility, he was standing in his quiet room in
Young's Hotel, explaining the situation to the public
through the _World_.
Although I sat in the room with him almost from the time
that the stock-market opened until long after it closed, not
once did Mr. Lawson show the slightest sign of excitement
over market affairs. Strong as an ox, clear-eyed, tranquil,
smiling, the man who had moved the financial market downward
against the will of the greatest combination of capital the
world has ever seen, bore himself like one absolutely
confident of success. The bunch of blue corn-flowers in his
button-hole was not fresher than he, although on the
previous day he had fought through one of the greatest
battles in the history of speculation, had made an
hour-and-a-half speech at a night banquet, had gone to bed
after midnight, and risen before five in the morning.
In that one day he had forced nearly 3,000,000 shares of
stock into the market in New York.
"My one instrument is publicity," he said. "It is the most
powerful weapon in the world. With it I have been able to
strike with some of the power which eighty millions of
Americans possess when they are wide-awake and in earnest.
"This week's work is only the beginning of a demonstration
that the secrecy of the frenzied finance system--under the
cover of which the savings of the people gathered into
banks, trust institutions, and insurance companies, have
been used by the Standard Oil crowd to rob the people
through the stock-market--cannot succeed against publicity.
The people only need light to save themselves.
"At the beginning of the week I advised the people of the
United States to sell Amalgamated Copper and the other pool
stocks. It was the first step in the final realization of
plans I had been maturing for ten years. Since then, against
the whole force of the billions and billions commanded by
the Standard Oil system, Amalgamated has dropped from 82
into the 60's. I give the people my word, which I have never
yet broken, that not once in that time have I sold a share
of Amalgamated stock. Not only that, but I have actually
bought large blocks of Amalgamated in order to steady the
market and prevent too great and too sudden a panic, so that
my friends everywhere might be able to get out without
complete ruin. But for that I believe we would have had a
panic greater than the Northern Pacific crash.
"I simply went out into the public square and told the
people the truth. I was in a position to tell the truth. I
knew the methods by which they had been robbed. I knew that
ruin was staring them in the face unless they acted quickly.
SPENT $92,000 ADVERTISING
"I advertised the fact over my signature in the newspapers
of New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles. I cabled the
advertisement to London. All this cost, with incidental
expenses, something like $92,000.
"The frightened leaders and agents of the 'System' spread
reports that I was in league with the leading plungers and
manipulators of Wall Street, that I was making a mere stock
raid, that I was trying to 'shake down' Mr. Rogers. The
truth is that I have no partners. Not a soul knew my plans
until my first advertisement appeared. I have no price, for
there can be no peace now until the whole rotten scheme of
frenzied finance is smashed and things are brought back to
their natural honest level. I am in deadly earnest. No man
knows better than I do how great a service I am rendering to
the American people."
Mr. Lawson stood squarely upon his heels, the incarnation of
strength and courage. The square head, high and wide at the
top, the long line of the jaw and broad, fighting chin, big,
blue-gray eyes, the big, flat teeth, the strong nose, large
firm mouth, sinewy neck, hairy hands, broad, deep chest,
powerfully curved thighs, and the steady voice--these were
eloquent of strength, determination, and concentration.
There was a black pearl in his cravat and an almost
priceless canary-colored diamond sparkling on his little
finger. He wore gray, striped trousers and a black coat and
vest, across which was a beaded gold watch-chain. Everywhere
in his room were flowers, roses, lilies, and bunches of the
famous Lawson Pink, the flower for which he once paid
$30,000.
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.
2. Had I been able to keep 700,000 shares in the hands of Rogers and
Rockefeller with but 50,000 in the hands of the public, Rogers and
Rockefeller would never have permitted the stock to go down, because
they would have lost $700,000 at every point drop and by "bearing" they
could make only $50,000 a point drop. Stock schemers never "bear" a
stock of which they own a large majority and the public a small
minority.
3. It would have been no crime if Rogers and Rockefeller had subscribed
honestly--that is, according to the advertised terms--for enough to
secure the stipulated 700,000 shares, because there was nothing in the
conditions which excluded them or any one from subscribing. The crime
was in the way they obtained the amount thus retained and in their
"intentions" subsequently executed, also in the selling of $27,000,000
worth of the stock when they had pledged their word solemnly to me in my
capacity as protector of the people that they would sell but $5,000,000.
4. Yes.
5. The office-boys, equipped with the check of $75,000,000 provided by
the National City Bank, were organized into a corporation and turned
over to the treasurer of the new corporation the $75,000,000 check in
payment for the capital stock of the company. The company then turned
this same check over to Rogers and Rockefeller for the mining properties
comprising the consolidation, for which Rogers and Rockefeller had paid
thirty-nine millions of dollars; then Rogers and Rockefeller paid back
to the office-boys the seventy-five-million check and received from them
the seventy-five-million stock. The check was returned to the bank by
the office-boys, who stood where they stood at the beginning of the
transaction, and canceled. Thus Rogers and Rockefeller at the close of
the transaction had in their possession the entire capital stock of the
Amalgamated Company.
* * * * *
Another correspondent had even greater difficulties with the problem:
May 29, 1905.
MR. THOMAS W. LAWSON,
Boston, Mass.
_Dear Sir_: The writer of this letter has had much
experience in literary matters, but does not remember ever
reading after any one who could hold his interest as you
can. He is an author himself (though not so well known as
you), and feels some little ability to measure and
appreciate not only literary worth, but the intentions of
the author in hand. From the "internal evidences" alone he
has a settled conviction that you are perfectly honest in
this crusade, and from the bottom of his heart wishes you
Godspeed.
A few points are certainly not clear to the ordinary reader.
Closely as I have followed you I cannot see some things as
you think they should be seen. For instance:
1. Just why were you so fearfully wrought up at the thought
of the public's getting ten millions instead of five? If you
had such confidence in the gigantic possibilities of
Amalgamated, why should you not have been glad to let the
poor suffering public have ten millions, or twenty millions,
instead of a paltry five millions? Was this hydrophobia of
yours at the mere suggestion prompted by a perfectly pure or
by a selfish motive? At the first did _you_ not plan to let
the public have very much more than this? Was it not your
thought, I mean, that the public should be in the thing
about equally with you promoters? Then why not welcome the
suggestion of Rogers? I do not understand this at all.
2. About that "bogus subscription." Did you not all plan to
do about the same thing? Did you not intend to have Rogers
put in a towering subscription, large enough to cover the
situation, and to permit the bank to reject all above the
five millions to be allowed the public? I believe _you_
expected Rogers to make it "genuine" by really putting it in
in time, and by laying down his check for the five per
cent.; but, as you fully expected to realize on the thing so
quickly, did you not understand that the whole of this
"subscription" would not have to be paid at all, and that
your "check" was after all only technical? If I am right,
how did this differ so greatly from what Rogers did? Was not
your avowed object to cheat the public into thinking they
were to be allowed to subscribe to seventy-five millions,
when actually you were only going to let them subscribe to
five? And if, on that last day, you knew the subscriptions
were pouring in in such a flood, and knew that offers of a
big premium were then being made, how in the world did the
idea of letting the outside public have twenty millions or
so (on which to immediately realize this premium) seem so
abhorrent to you, when you professed to be looking after
their interests?
The more I think of these points, the more mixed I become,
and I think many, very many of your readers are in the same
boat. Your illustration of the horse-race does not clear the
matter a particle. It certainly does appear on the face of
the facts you present that the people who did not get any
stock were the lucky ones, whether Rogers's precise action
was criminal or not. You say yourself that it would have
been good all round if you had pricked the bubble that
night--that is, if you had then and there prevented anybody
from getting any premiums, from buying or selling a share.
Then in the name of reason, why was it not really good for
those who were rejected, that they were left out?
3. Now, in plain language, brief and straight, what would
you have deemed the right thing, that night at the bank?
With hundreds of millions subscribed, how many shares would
you have thought the public should have? How many do you
think now? And how should the balance have been kept for you
promoters? Perhaps in answering this you will make it plain.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed) ----
In answer to Question 1, I said: All my dealings had been conducted on
the basis of selling to the public a fair amount of the first section of
the consolidation and I had no tremors as to consequences. I knew that
whatever allotment was made them would be worth all they were to pay for
it, for I was personally familiar with the value of the properties of
which the section was to be composed. When Mr. Rogers, as I have
explained in my story, substituted, under circumstances that rendered me
defenceless, an entirely new set of mines for those programmed for the
first section--properties about which I knew only what he told me--from
that time on my only guarantee against the jugglery and fraud I feared
was to keep in the hands of Rogers and Rockefeller so large a part of
this stock that they could play no tricks on the public without
themselves suffering much more severely. If they regarded the stock as
so valuable a possession that it was a security to be held as "Standard
Oil," then their attitude to it guaranteed its value, and no harm could
come to any one. When, however, they showed a readiness to part with
more shares than the number they had promised me they would not go
beyond, my fears were aroused, for all the contingencies I dreaded at
once became imminent. Besides, such action was proof positive that in
their opinion the mines were not worth the price at which they were
selling them. Later on, when I had practical evidence that they were
unloading and proof positive that they were juggling the stock, I felt
certain that these facts constituted proof positive that they had lied
to me about the cost and worth of the Amalgamated mines.
My answer to Question 1 practically disposes of part of Question 2, and
my replies to the other inquiries above take care of another part.
I did expect Mr. Rogers to make an honest subscription for that part of
the stock which we were to retain and which I was doing all in my power
to have him retain, not because I desired to hold all of the good thing
and so cheat the public, but because I did not think it safe for the
public to hold so many shares that it would be to Rogers's and
Rockefeller's interest to "bear" prices later and take shares away from
the holders at slaughter prices. In one sense it was not fair to lead
people to imagine that they were being offered $75,000,000 of an issue
when as a matter of fact they were really offered only $5,000,000, but
if only $5,000,000 were offered no harm could come to them, because
every one who got some of it would make a profit, and those who received
none would not suffer.
STEEL COMMON AND PREFERRED
A definite accusation of misrepresentation was presented in a letter
that came to me early in the year in criticism of Steel facts and
figures I had used in illustrating the artificial advance and depression
of stocks:
CINCINNATI, O., January 24, 1905.
THOMAS W. LAWSON.
_Sir_: Lawson, you are both a fakir and a fool. A fakir
because you misrepresent, and a fool because you do not
begin to understand the people.
When you said the stockholders of the Steel Corporation lost
$500,000,000, you knew that you lied. Because the difference
in price of the stock to-day and when it was quoted on the
New York Stock Exchange for the first time in 1901 does not
approach that amount. I say that you knew this when you made
that statement, but you thought and hoped that the general
public would not be posted in the matter.
The whole substance of your magazine articles has been
nothing but half-truths, and a half-truth is worse than a
lie. You know that it is to gratify your personal spite, and
not to help the general public, that you have engaged in
your frenzied writings. The public is wiser than you think,
although your conceit has blinded you to that fact.
Respectfully,
F. F. METHVEN.
This frenzied nincompoop is evidently ignorant of the fact that
360,281,000 shares of Steel Preferred were sold to the public at over
$100 per share, and that 5,500,000 shares of Steel Common were sold at
over $50 per share, or nearly $300,000,000, and that months later, when
the people were compelled to resell to the "System," they could get only
$50 for this preferred stock and $10 for the common, while the
$551,000,000 of bonds depreciated in value over $100,000,000 more. What
this critic desired to say was that, at the present price of Steel
stocks, no such loss as $500,000,000 is shown, which proves my
oft-repeated contention--the "System," having "shaken out" the public
and acquired their holdings at fifty and ten respectively, is now
engaged in putting the price back to the old figure, intending to repeat
the robbery process later. A votary of the "System," whom I know quite
well, said to me a few weeks ago:
"Lawson, you keep chasing 'Frenzied Finance' will-o'-the-wisps while the
rest of us are pulling in the dollars, and see where you will come out
in the end. Look what I've done: I sold 200,000 shares of Steel Common
for $8,000,000. It cost me $3,000,000. I made $5,000,000. I then
'shorted' 100,000 at $50 and bought it back at $12. I made $3,800,000. I
then bought 300,000 at 10. It's now 30. When I sell out at 40, I shall
have $9,000,000 more, making $18,000,000, without turning a hair or
risking a dollar. With prizes such as these a man can stand a lot of
frenzied hard names, can't he?"
THE REMEDY
As I have explained on another page of the "Critics," my Remedy cannot
be dealt with save at considerable length and with living, tangible
illustrations. I have purposely abstained from starting it until I have
the American public educated to the point of comprehending its value and
appreciating its practicability so far as to be ready to put it into
operation. During the year I have had thousands of letters in regard to
it, the following being a fair example:
TOPEKA, KAN., January 5, 1905.
_Dear Sirs_: I have followed Mr. Lawson's article very
closely and, as I understand it, he intimates that he has a
remedy for the rotten condition of affairs now prevailing.
What I, and many more of your readers, would like to know
is, whether Mr. Lawson, in offering a remedy, is taking into
consideration the 22,000,000 people of the country who
neither invest in stocks nor hold any amount of insurance,
or is his remedy meant merely to protect the four million
small capitalists from being eaten up by what he terms the
"System."
It is very evident to some of us that if he cannot show us
how to protect the great majority of the people who,
although they are not even small capitalists, are the ones
who are really footing the bills, his remedy will not be the
grand success he anticipates.
J. P. FERRITER.
My Remedy will benefit the whole American people. It will help most the
man who nowadays in America deserves most to be helped--the producer,
who to-day is exchanging the efforts of all his working hours for the
bare necessities of himself and family; not those bare necessities which
the white slaves of Europe are ground down to believe are their only
requirements, but those which the free and enlightened American
believes, and has taught his family to believe, should be his
necessities.
It is intended to benefit most the man who has nothing left over after
paying his bills Saturday night but the terrors of not being able to
meet them the coming week. It would indeed be a parody on a Remedy if it
did not bring relief to this class.
Next, my Remedy will benefit that great middle class whose savings go to
make up the billions in the savings-banks, national banks, trust and
insurance companies, which are used by the "System" to secure for
themselves a hundred, a thousand, and ten thousand per cent. interest on
_their_ capital, while the owners of these billions must be content with
two and a half to four per cent. per annum; and
Next, it will benefit that class which possesses large fortunes honestly
acquired, inasmuch as it will enable them to know what there is behind
their investments. None but those who have plundered the
people--acquired overnight fortunes many times larger than any honest
lifetime efforts could possibly bring--can possibly be hurt by the
application of my Remedy.
You are right--any remedy which would do other than what mine proposes
to do would be a farce.
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| Transcriber's Notes: |
| |
| Page vi: Scheheherezade _sic_ |
| Page 40: Missing "l" added to "loser" in Footnote 2 |
| Page 59: guerilla _sic_ |
| Page 62: dumfounded _sic_ |
| Page 64: villany _sic_ |
| Page 99: gayly _sic_ |
| Page 107: Machiavelian _sic_ |
| Page 134: Machiavelian _sic_ |
| Page 154: "slighest" amended to "slightest" |
| Page 175: Comma added after "perjury" in Footnote 12 |
| Page 193: "metres" amended to "meters" |
| Page 277: dumfounded _sic_ |
| Page 289: Opening quotes added to "Every one of us...." |
| Page 348: millionnaire _sic_ |
| Page 352: Comma added after "defalcation" |
| Page 388: milllionnaire's _sic_ |
| Page 447: cohoots _sic_ |
| Page 471: "very rich men" amended to "very rich man" |
| Page 478: haling _sic_ |
| Page 482: Corea and Porto Rico _sic_ |
| Page 490: "managment" amended to "management" |
| Page 548: "insuarnce" amended to "insurance" |
| |
| Hyphenation has generally been standardized. However, when |
| hyphenated and unhyphenated versions of a word each occur |
| an equal number of times, both versions have been retained |
| (baseball/base-ball; blackjack/black-jack; blacklisted/ |
| black-listed; chessboard/chess-board; cooperation/ |
| co-operation; downtown/down-town; handshake/hand-shake; |
| headlight/head-light; headlines/head-lines; setback/ |
| set-back; typewritten/type-written; uptown/up-town; |
| viewpoint/view-point). |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+