13. If you make such a call, and it is answered, and there is a destructive panic and a number of the big New York banks and trust companies fail, what will you do?
14. If the masses should sell their stocks and bonds and get their money, what would then happen?
15. Do you dare say to your readers now and unqualifiedly, that you have a real remedy for the present financial evils, and that it will show when it is given that it is anything more than some new scheme by which you personally are to get the people's money?
16. Do you dare to say now to your readers unqualifiedly that this remedy will show conclusively that it has not been invented since you began your story of "Frenzied Finance"?
17. Do you dare tell your readers now and unqualifiedly that you personally did not make money out of what you call the "Amalgamated swindle"?
18. Do you dare tell your readers now and unqualifiedly that you have not made money, and an enormous amount of it—very much more than all you have spent in connection with your work of "Frenzied Finance"—out of the people since your story began?
I will state in fairness to you before you make answer to the above questions that it is now my intention to take your answers into court in a suit which will be brought, and that if you have made answers different from those you make under oath you will be held up to the scorn of the whole American people.
I replied:
I admire your smartness. Of the thousands of letters I have recently received yours is the cunningest. If I do not answer your shrewd and adroitly put questions in the brief space at my disposal, you will discredit my work. If I take offence at your way of putting your questions, you will have the pretext you are evidently looking for. Then, your closing warning is so manly and generous! I must not lie, because, if I do, you will expose me in court! You thought that would make good reading after I had refused to make reply in this issue, and you had advertised your letter. Again, you probably figured that as my June chapter was all taken up with my story and there was no room for the insurance article I had promised, I should need all my "Critics" space this month for it; so, all in all, I guess you were pretty sure I could not answer your apparently fair and honest questions.
I'll disappoint you. If my "Critics" pages had actually been on the press at the moment your questions came in, I should have telegraphed the publishers to yank off the plates and hold up the edition at my own expense until I should have had time to polish off your interrogations. Before starting in let me say to you that if you will find a way of getting my answers out into the open under oath, I shall consider that you have done me and my work a good turn.