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.

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).

THE END