Since then I have noted your every move with an acute interest, for I became convinced that you were going to work considerable mischief before you got through. Of late you have been so bold—and I believe I voice the opinions of the large majority of men connected with financial affairs when I say dangerous—that I cannot resist writing you as I do herewith.
You advertise through the daily press and in your "Critics" pages that you are doing all in your power to create unrest and fear among the people for the purpose of frightening them into selling their stocks and bonds, and you go further and openly make the most astounding of statements, the most dangerous and vicious—that you will endeavor to have all the people owning deposits in banks, trusts, and insurance companies withdraw them in concert.
I will be frank and state that if I did not know your business career, and had not read your writings, I should dismiss this latter statement of yours by calling on the proper authorities to take cognizance of you as a most dangerous lunatic, but as your business career and your writings show you to be an able financier, a successful business man, an advanced thinker and brilliant writer, I feel that mental derangement cannot be the cause of this remarkable proceeding.
Therefore I challenge you, as one who professes to be an honest man, to answer at once the inclosed list of questions fully and unqualifiedly in your magazine before you make any more extraordinary and, I believe, perilous public requests; and I warn you that if you do not do so, I shall consider it my duty to make public through the press of this country, and in other places where you have been advertising your vicious theories, that you have not dared to make answer. In other words, I shall, after the next issue of Everybody's Magazine, if it does not contain your answers, publish broadcast a copy of this letter, and in all fairness and sincerity, I warn you I shall not be deterred from doing this by any excuse you may make that my letter was received too late for the July number of the magazine, or that more important matters take up your space. I have, by diligent research, ascertained that you will have at least forty-eight hours from the time this letter is placed in your hands before the section containing your "Lawson and His Critics" pages is sent to press; or, to be plainer, I can have advertisements inserted in the same section as that containing your "Critics" pages if I hand in my copy forty-eight hours after you will have received my letter.
Therefore you have sufficient time to formulate your answer, and you know as well as I that, in the present excited condition of the public mind, which has been created largely by your public statements, there can be nothing more deserving of space in Everybody's Magazine than the answers to my questions. You must realize, sir, that in all sections of the country small holders of stocks are not only selling their holdings, but that small depositors in banks and trust companies are already beginning to withdraw their deposits, that already many small banks have failed because of this feeling of apprehension. So far as Wall Street is concerned, legitimate business is practically dead, and you have, for the time being at least, killed it. I will not add what ill your attacks have worked in the large insurance companies, for it is, I am sorry to say, patent to all that there is but little life-insurance business being done at present by the very large companies, and at best it will require years to live down the unsettlement you have wrought in the people's confidence in this worthy and time-proven institution.
These are the questions I want answers to, and answers in keeping with those broad professions of honesty and keen regard for the best interests of the people which you have been making.
Earnestly and respectfully yours,
——
1. Do you know economics and finance, money, banking, credits, corporations, and business in their broad relations to the people, the American Government, and natural law, and the relation each holds to the other, or is your knowledge confined to the skimming and smattering such as any alert and bright stock speculator would naturally pick up in years of experience as a broker and manipulator?
2. Do you not know that in all times there have been, and must naturally be, very rich men, and that necessarily there can be but very few of these, and that where they are there must be very many times as many poorer ones, very poor ones?