Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

Among the unfortunate Lamson-Service stockholders were numbered several aggressive people of the old-fashioned kind, who resented Mr. Lawson's peculiar way of doing things. These submitted, in 1892, to the grand jury of the city of New York a sheaf of Lawsonian literature, comprising his scandalous attacks on the company's securities. The grand jury indicted Thomas W. Lawson, and Colonel John R. Fellows, the district attorney, and his assistants, Francis L. Wellman and Mr. Lindsay, went to Boston to try to have Lawson extradited. The Governor of Massachusetts came to Lawson's rescue in the nick of time and declined to honor the request of the Governor of New York for his extradition; but for years thereafter the future author of "Frenzied Finance" made his trips to this money-centre incognito.

THE GRAND RIVERS ENTERPRISE

In 1890 the entire country rang with the fame of Grand Rivers, and it was Thomas W. Lawson, of Boston, who pulled the bell-rope.... The scheme, as may be deduced herefrom, was a most comprehensive one. The development of the "marvellous deposit of coal and iron," which had been discovered upon the property by Mr. Lawson, one day while seated in his revolving chair in his State Street office, furnished the basis for the incorporation of the Furnaces Company. After $2,000,000 had been "expended," the clamor of the stockholders caused the company actually to build several furnaces. They were erected and stood idle, with nothing to feed them. The whole scheme collapsed in 1892. The stockholders lost every dollar of their investment....

In this, his fourth financial venture, Mr. Lawson did but repeat his former experiences—except, in this case, the loss sustained by those who reposed confidence in his promises was heavier than in any of his prior undertakings.

The Kentucky experience is one of the pleasantest memories of my life. Measured by dollars and cents it was expensive but was well worth it, as the young man remarked who broke his arm by being thrown from his horse into the lap of his future wife. It makes a long story, and I shall only touch on the leading facts concerning it by way of showing the desperate straits my enemies are put to in their efforts to discredit my career.

My present brokers, Messrs. Brown, Riley & Co., one of the oldest and largest Boston and New York Stock Exchange houses, had floated the Grand Rivers enterprise for some of their wealthy clients. It was an iron, coal, and furnace proposition, and before I ever heard of it, it had been bought and paid for, and enormous furnaces were under way. It was a close corporation. After a very large amount of money—in the millions—had gone into the property, I was induced to take the executive management, and also I put in a very large amount of my own money. My work was to be that of business director, for I did not know an iron or a coal mine from an alabaster ledge in the lunar spheres, and not half as much about an iron smelter as I did about converting whiskers into mermaid's tresses. However, one of the greatest iron men in New England, Aretas Blood, president of the Manchester Locomotive Works, and of the Nashua Steel and Iron Company, was at the head of the enterprise, which apparently safeguarded it. Well, it turned out that there was no iron in the mines—at least not enough to pay for extraction, and the investment simply disappeared. I lost a very large amount—at least, a very large amount for me—but I had to show for it the love and friendship and respect of the inhabitants of one of the fairest places on the earth—a place where brave men and lovely women live in peace and comfort in the knowledge of their own fearless, simple honesty, and their hatred of shams and trickery—in absolute ignorance of frenzied financiers and the "System's" votaries.

The history of Grand Rivers is an open book. There is no secret about my connection with the enterprise. It was a straight and proper venture. The men who are my brokers of to-day fathered it, and they are men of honor, probity, and responsibility, who since my first year in business in 1870 have been my close business associates and personal friends. Why do not Donohoe and his breed of gutter-rooters, when seeking information about me, ask such men as these for facts about my life?—they know what every hour of it has been. Strange as it may seem to such vampires, the men I began to do business with when I was a boy I am doing business with to-day, and they are my associates and friends.

I postponed until the last moment writing this article in order that I might be able to diagnose the "System's" attack on me. The first of the widely advertised series was such a foolish and asinine thing as to be unworthy of notice, and I desired to see how much further the second would go. In the former it was charged that I was writing my articles solely for the purpose of securing stock-market profits and compelling the "System" to settle; in other words, that I was attempting to blackmail them; that I had no honorable motives in writing my story, and had no remedy of any kind in mind; that in the recent panic I had made a million and a quarter of dollars; that I had secured President Roosevelt's message eight days before it was published; that I had advertised on November 29th, unqualifiedly advising all to purchase Amalgamated, and that on December 6th I had advertised advising all to sell. It is true that I did advise the public to sell, but that in my advertisement of November 29th I advised the people to buy Amalgamated I positively deny. I carefully avoided doing so. The other statements are equally false, and were made with a full knowledge of their falsity.

The incidents in my career about which I have here set forth the facts are not secret. All the things I have stated are fully susceptible of proof. For another instant let me take the assertion that my motive in this crusade is personal gain through stock-jobbery, and that I have no aim or end in view other than that. Well, I can to-day show the Remedy to which I have alluded so often, and which when I worked it out in 1893 I had printed with full detail. It is in my vault now under lock and key. In the year 1894, in London, I laid a copy of this document before Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. Remember, this was a year before I met H. H. Rogers or any of the "Standard Oil" party.

Since Donohoe began his latest series of attacks I have had scores of letters commenting on them. A significant verdict on what the man is accomplishing is the following: