What Donohoe says of my Trinity Copper is not only absolutely false, but has over and over again been demonstrated to be so. The actual facts regarding that property have been printed time and again in reputable Boston newspapers, and casual inquiry will obtain you the full details. In addition, practically everything which Donohoe, the hired mouthpiece of "Standard Oil" and the "System," has said is absolutely untrue and made from whole cloth. When I say this I cover all criticism which has been made upon me or my work by "Standard Oil" or the "System," for this character thug has utilized every dirty slander which my enemies ever invented and put into circulation.
Did I make my fortune honestly, you ask? and I answer: In thirty-six years of active business life, very active, embracing transactions through which I have passed from poverty to wealth and back again from riches to poverty, and in which I might easily have retained the riches by sacrificing a principle, I have never once in all these years and in all these transactions done a wrong to man, woman, or child, nor taken from man, woman, or child a dollar unfairly, much less dishonestly. Rather a remarkable record, you will say, for one who has made millions in the stock business. But I should not be broadly honest if I did not add the modification that these millions of dollars were made in the open stock-market, by methods which in the open stock-market are called fair and honest; that is, I have played the game according to the rules, and the "other fellow" has had equal chance with me and might have done anything I ever did. If, however, business were conducted as it should be and as it will be after my "Remedy" has reformed present conditions, such methods will net those using them only thousands where I have gained millions.
You add that you are inclined to think I am a "grafter." In reply I can only say you would not dare—and I don't know your size, color, or length of trigger-finger—to say it in my presence, though of course, it is absolutely immaterial what you or your kind think of me or my work.
THE LAWSON PANIC
During the eighteen months in which "Frenzied Finance" has been before the public, history has been made at a stiff pace. Next to the insurance revelations which are still in process of deliverance, the most striking demonstration of the period has been the flurry in stocks which was spoken of as the Lawson panic. In the February, 1905, issue of Everybody's Magazine I dealt with the performance and its attendant phenomena.
Without undue vaunting, I may say that my explanation of the mysteries of modern finance has not been without immediate profit to the public. The people, accustomed to invest their money in the legitimate securities of the country, had time and again lost hundreds of millions without dreaming that they had been as ruthlessly robbed as though held up at a pistol-point by a highwayman. They imagined that the great capitalists whose names were emblazoned in the press throughout the land, and who managed the banks and trust companies and insurance corporations to which their savings were intrusted, were noble and public-spirited gentlemen of the highest moral principles and of absolute integrity. They know to-day that many of them are reckless and greedy stock gamblers, incessantly dickering with the machinery of finance for their own private enrichment.
I have stripped the veil from these hypocrites and exposed to all the world their soulless rapacity. I have let the light of heaven into the dim recesses of Wall Street in which these buccaneers of commerce concocted their plots. I have done more than this: I have nipped in the bud the newest conspiracy for the entanglement of the public—the great "bull" market which was organized late in 1904 by the chief votaries of the "System," to harvest a new crop of profits on the securities they had laid in during their last raid. In other words, I have treated Wall Street to a dose of its own medicine.
During the month of December the newspapers devoted considerable space to the doings of the stock-market in connection with the episode to which I refer. I use the word "episode" purposely, for I warn my readers that it was but one of a series of disturbances which must occur before the grasp of the pirates on the great financial interests of this country can be shaken off. David slew Goliath with one pebble from his sling, but the giant "System," intrenched in the stoutest citadel ever constructed, and armored in gold and riven steel, will yield to no mere call for surrender. My own part I have cheerfully taken with no delusions as to the difficulties of the contest. He who interferes between the lamb and the wolf is likely to provoke the wrath of the wolf, and I have done worse, for have I not come between the lions of finance and their willing prey?
It is worth while here to rehearse the steps of this first disturbance, because it constitutes part of a movement destined to wield a tremendous influence in this country's history. While my revelations of the methods of the "System" were circulating throughout these United States, the "System" was engaged at its old trick of inflating the prices of its favorite stocks and bonds and spreading its nets for another gigantic plundering of the people. In the stock-market and in the highways and by-ways and resting-places of finance nothing was heard for months but fairy tales of great earnings of railroads and industrials, fairy tales of new ore in old mines, fairy tales of great financial forces converging toward colossal combinations.
These are the lures of the "System's" hirelings, the decoy calls of the market tout and the financial tipster whose part it is to mould opinion and urge the people to the shambles. Before my eyes, with a blind and audacious defiance of my warnings, the old, old game was rigged in full view of the audience and the old players began their venerable antics. In the meantime the "System" attended to its own rôle in the conspiracy—supplying out of its banks and trust companies the public's money for the gamblers to make the game with. Then began the artful process of working up the market; stocks gradually climbed higher and higher. Amalgamated ascended from the forties into the fifties and the sixties and even into the eighties; steel assumed the appearance of life and grew from ten slowly upward into the twenties and thirties. Every day in the Stock Exchange hundreds of thousands of shares changed hands back and forth among the professionals who lustily played their parts in this financial melodrama. The good old myths of great fortunes made by lucky investors began to reappear in the papers. Sales increased; values jumped rather than climbed. The trap was set; the market made. The wily manipulators rubbed their hands gleefully. The public began to bite, to buy. It was then only a matter of sizing up the wool crop before beginning the shearing.