FOOTNOTES:
[20] In the course of the legislative investigation of the great insurance companies in New York, it developed that the Mutual Life Insurance Company conducts a publicity bureau, organized to discredit any one who dares criticise its methods. This bureau is conducted by one Charles J. Smith, on a salary of $8,000 per annum, and he works through Allan Forman, editor of the Journalist. Forman maintains a "telegraphic news bureau" and secures publication in various newspapers or periodicals of matter sent him for dissemination by the Mutual Life, and he is paid $1.00 per line of the policy-holders' money on all matter for which he obtains publicity. The whitewash paragraphs recently published throughout the country in regard to President McCurdy and the Mutual Life were all paid for on this basis.
II
THE ENEMIES I HAVE MADE
When a man discovers that a public building full of men, women, and children is infested with rats and that these vicious rodents have undermined its foundations and honeycombed its structure, it becomes his duty, first, to warn the occupants of the presence of the rats, next, to show them the damage that has been wrought and how the rats can be trapped and killed—and then he may take a hand in the rat-hunt himself.
That is about what I have been doing, and if proof were needed that the "System" suffered under my exposure of its villainies, I should have it in plenty in the showers of mud bullets it has fired at me. From scores of quarters these volleys came. A regular army of the "System's" votaries must have been out working like Trojans to stop my work, to discredit me, to bespatter me with its dirt.
The manner in which the "System" writhed under my attacks showed how seriously it was hurt. What surprises me was that so little intelligence was exhibited in defaming me. Such wanton, foolish attacks those that were made on me personally! As though it mattered who or what I am in comparison with the accusations I have made. Americans are not fools. To say that Lawson is this or that does not minimize or detract from his charge of robbery and conspiracy.