Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

New York, December 12, 1904.

Thomas W. Lawson, Boston, Mass.

For six months I have read with close attention your story of "Frenzied Finance," in Everybody's Magazine, and have paid close attention to the manner in which, by pandering to the worst prejudices of the American people, you have endeavored by misstatement of facts to distort the conditions actually existing through what you call the workings of the "System."

What is the conclusion to be deducted from your own statements? What is the "System" to which you have so often referred?

From the standpoint of honest, unprejudiced men no other conclusion can be derived but from your own statements you have endeavored personally and through subornation of others to debauch legislation, to distort facts, to create in the minds of investors a lack of confidence in men whom the public for many years have looked up to as the leaders in the industrial world.

By every foul vilification and every statement which distorted imagination is capable of producing, you have endeavored to show that the so-called leaders of finance of the United States are in league to rob and defraud the investing public.

Taking all your statements and analyzing them, what do they amount to? That certain men, amongst whom you yourself was one of the leaders, have bought out certain corporations which were capitalized at a price which you state was far above their cost.

Not one single new fact has been brought to the attention of the public. If men, by their brains, their capital, and their energy, acquire properties that have not been appreciated by the public, put them forth under whatsoever name, so that the statements made in connection with those properties are true, and capable of verification, what is it but a business proposition that cannot be criticised?

What is the "System" which you denounce as the very personification of evil? Is it not the "System" of which you have been the leading advocate, votary, and exponent for many years? Is not the "System," when analyzed and reduced to its root, a stock-brokerage of which you are and have been for many years one of the shining lights; not the system of honest, legitimate brokerage, but the system of endeavoring by false statements and by exciting the fears of the multitude to depress and destroy values in order that its votaries may reap their ill-gotten gains?

Is there one thing in connection with all that you have written in your articles on "Frenzied Finance" in which you have not been from start to finish one of the prime movers? Who is the man that, from the inception of the enterprise which you most severely criticise, has been most prominently before the public? Who is the man that, from your own words, originated the idea and carried it to its completion? Is it not Thomas W. Lawson? Who is the man that, in the various schemes which you hold up to the condemnation of the public, has taken from start to finish the leading part? Is it not Thomas W. Lawson?