Dear Sir: I deem it my duty to say to you, as a shareholder of the Lamson Store-Service Company, that your Mr. Lamson and his agents have opened up on my company, and with their usual criminal methods are endeavoring to ruin us. This circular is to inform you that I have this day given notice to each of your officers and directors that, in three days from to-day, if they have not stopped their dirty work and taken their hands off my company, they will take the consequences. I do not pretend to be able to meet them on the fighting grounds of the courts, for I know too well their power of corruption and jury-buying, but I assure you I have other ways by which I can stop them, etc., etc.
If Donohoe had desired to deal with facts, he could not have missed the details of this story, of which the papers at the time were full. It was a fight which would have warmed the heart-cockles of an embalmed warrior of the catacombs. Lamson stock was selling at 62, the highest price it ever attained, not 122, as this numskull states. When I began operations I slaughtered it and the reputation of Lamson and his associates; and in the midst of the fight, when the shares were down to 18, or perhaps 14, a great public meeting of stockholders—there were a whole lot of them—was called in the city of Lowell, and, amid fiery speeches, Lamson was told to choose between refuting my charges of fraud and being deposed from the presidency of the institution. Lamson attempted explanations, but the hard-headed stockholders did what the Amalgamated stockholders will some time do, passed resolutions that Lamson must punish me for libel or that they would punish him. The gathering then adjourned to a future date, at which Lamson was to report what action he had taken to punish me for my crimes. The next step was interesting, and bears on an accusation I have seen mentioned frequently of late. I had, when I began my fight, laid before Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, the dastardly crimes of which the company had been guilty, and was even then engaged in committing, and he had said: "Damnable! I will aid you in exposing them." And he did. Day after day there were broadsides in the World relentlessly denouncing the rascalities of the Lamson outfit. These finally stirred them to action. One day I received word that some trickery was being put up in the district attorney's office in New York. A few days later there appeared at my office in Boston a police officer from New York and three of our head Boston police officers. They said to me: "We regret, Mr. Lawson, but we must take your secretary, Mr. William L. Vinal, back to New York, as he has been indicted for spreading false reports."
"Has any one else been indicted?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," they replied, "you and some of the World people."
"Mr. Vinal has done nothing but obey my orders," I said. "Why don't you take me?"
"We have no orders to," was the reply.
I saw the game and sent word to the Governor of Massachusetts, who promptly told the combination: "Go slow, gentlemen. Remember you are not in New York now, but in Massachusetts." He ordered a public trial. Within two hours from the time they laid hands on my secretary I brought suit in his name for false arrest against the officers who were trying to arrest him, and grabbed the New York official before he could skip out of town. Then I went to see the Lamson crowd and we had it out. They begged that I allow Vinal to go to New York, just to vindicate them, in which circumstances he would be allowed to return on the next train, and the case would never be heard of again. If I would consent, they would agree to a reorganization of the company and the dropping out of Lamson. I showed them that they had gone too far, that I had damaging information as to how they had secured the indictment, and that now they must take the consequences.
I took the "midnight" for New York, and in the morning was at District-Attorney Fellows's office. I dared him to arrest me or the officers of the World. He replied: "I don't want you, Lawson. I cannot and won't help you advertise your fight." It proving impossible to get up any excitement in New York, I returned to Boston, and the extradition proceedings furnished a most sensational trial. The cause was bitterly fought. The lawyers even came to blows in the governor's chamber. Finally, when Governor Brackett had all the facts before him, he said: "You cannot work your dirty tricks on me," and he entered a vigorous refusal of the application for Mr. Vinal's extradition. This case established precedents for all such proceedings since.
The fight won, pressure was brought to bear on me to let up on the Lamson outfit and call off further proceedings. For some time I persistently refused to do so, as I was determined to contest the constitutionality of the law. Finally, however, on condition that Lamson should be thrown out, the management of the company reorganized, its criminal methods abandoned, and all records and trace of the indictment against myself and the others removed from the district attorney's books, I consented.
This is the history of how I "Lawsonized" the Lamson Store-Service Company, and if there is anything I have ever done that was good to do and well worth doing, this was it. I am just as proud of my work here as of what I did in the General Electric fight upon which I have already touched. In the Lamson reorganization I was offered all sorts of good things, but I refused, as I always have in such affairs, to benefit in any way but the open and fair one where I go into the open market and stake my money against that of my opponents on my ability to prove I am right. The facts here are of legal record. Following is the Donohoe-Rogers version. The mendacity is obvious: