Mr. Lawson's smile was sunny and confident. He is fearless.
LAWSON, THE MAN
By JAMES CREELMAN
From the New York World, December 12, 1904.
Boston, December 10th.
All through the critical business hours of Friday, when Thomas W. Lawson, master spirit in the present extraordinary war against Standard Oil finance in Wall Street, was reported to be locked up with H. H. Rogers, generalissimo of Standard Oil, perfecting the details of a settlement for $6,000,000—all through that anxious time, when the stock-tickers and newspapers of the country were trying to guess the meaning of Mr. Lawson's sudden silence and inaccessibility, he was standing in his quiet room in Young's Hotel, explaining the situation to the public through the World.
Although I sat in the room with him almost from the time that the stock-market opened until long after it closed, not once did Mr. Lawson show the slightest sign of excitement over market affairs. Strong as an ox, clear-eyed, tranquil, smiling, the man who had moved the financial market downward against the will of the greatest combination of capital the world has ever seen, bore himself like one absolutely confident of success. The bunch of blue corn-flowers in his button-hole was not fresher than he, although on the previous day he had fought through one of the greatest battles in the history of speculation, had made an hour-and-a-half speech at a night banquet, had gone to bed after midnight, and risen before five in the morning.
In that one day he had forced nearly 3,000,000 shares of stock into the market in New York.
"My one instrument is publicity," he said. "It is the most powerful weapon in the world. With it I have been able to strike with some of the power which eighty millions of Americans possess when they are wide-awake and in earnest.