Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

Question 1. I know economics and finance, money, banking, credits, corporations, and business in their broad relations to the people, the American Government, and natural laws, and the relation each holds to the other—not so well as I should like to know them, but as well as any member of the "Standard Oil," of the "System," or any one of their hirelings knows them. You have been brutally blunt in putting your questions, so don't accuse me of egotism if I bluntly answer: I know them all, top, sides, and bottom, from thirty-six years' book study of them and thirty-six years' actual experience in the nine-pin alleys where they are daily and nightly set up for the express purpose of being knocked down. I know the relation of each of these important life factors to each of the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't jokers of the "System." Make no mistake, Mr. Banker, my knowledge is not "a skimming and smattering such as any alert and bright stock speculator would naturally pick up in years of experience as a broker and manipulator," but the straight brand which the "Standard Oil" and the "System" so like to impress into their service when they run up against it in their continuous robbing excursions. You may judge that my knowledge is not of the smattering kind when I say that for years, in spite of my refusal to join the band and wear the collar, whenever Rogers and Rockefeller had a particularly hard nut to crack they called me in to try it on my "knows."

2. Yes, I am aware that there have always been, and that there will always continue to be, very rich men, and that there cannot be many of them, and that where they are there must be very poor ones. And I also know that no honest man, rich or poor, objects to the necessarily few very rich ones who have honestly acquired great fortunes as the reward of their own or their ancestors' labors of body or brain in the interest of all the people. Don't misunderstand me—no honest man or woman can object to the necessary great fortunes, but all honest American men and women do object, and are getting ready to make their objection heard, to all unnecessary great fortunes, "made dollar" fortunes gained by trick of finance or evasion of law, or the brutal and ruthless stock manipulation of recent years. The sooner the "System" and the other possessors of these "unnecessaries" realize that their doom is sealed and dig for the cyclone cellars, the quicker the American people will get through with the strenuous house-cleaning job for which they are just rolling up their sleeves.

3. I do know there must be billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds in America. I also know that among these legitimate billions of dollars are now mixed other billions of dollars that have no proper title to being, save the greed of the "System." That while the existence of certain billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds is proof positive of the great prosperity of the whole country and the whole people, it does not follow that their existence is proof that the hands they are found in are the hands they should rest in. Further, I assert that the existence of other billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds is proof positive that the laws have been violated and that the great prosperity of the whole country has been used as the excuse and motive of this violation, and declare that, in my opinion, it is the duty of honest men and women to do all in their power to shrink fictitious securities and to destroy them; and, further, that it is the duty of all honest men to lend a hand so that the legitimate billions of dollars of stocks and bonds may be returned to the hands of those who are legally entitled to them.

4. I am aware that the people owned billions of these stocks and bonds three years ago, and also that if they had then sold them back to the "System," even at the price they had paid for them, and had kept their money in the banks without interest, or had even buried it in the ground or kept it in their stockings for a year, they would have been able to buy back for fifty cents on the dollar what they had sold the "System," thereby making for themselves billions of dollars and impoverishing the "System" by just as many billions as they had made. You know that the "System," after it had loaded up the people with its stocks, "shook them out," and thereby gathered in half the billions of money the people had paid for what they bought.

Let me illustrate. The people bought of the "System" for 760 millions of dollars the Steel Trust stocks and bonds, and after the people had the "System's" chromos and the "System" had the people's 760 millions of savings, the "System" caused the price to be cut in two. Then it bought back the Steel Trust's chromos for 380 millions, thereby transferring from the people to the "System," in this one instance alone, 380 millions. And, further, after the people had been shaken out of their stocks and bonds and the millions of their savings—in the Steel Trust alone 380 millions—the "System," having these securities in its possession, began to inflate prices for the purpose of again selling to the people; in December last they had inflated the prices of billions of stocks and bonds to their old false figures, and were then preparing to unload them on to the people; in the case of the Steel Trust stocks and bonds the price had again mounted to 760 millions. In compliance with my warnings the people began in December last to unload upon the "System" the billions they then held at these inflated prices, and they have continued to do so ever since, and have suffered no hardship by the forced selling into which I have frightened them. I further know that they will find good use for this money at a later period in buying back from the "System" these same securities at their true worth; in other words, that before I am through with my work they will be able to repurchase from the "System" for 380 millions or less the Steel stocks and bonds now selling for 760 millions.

5. I do know that one of the most colossal impositions ever perpetrated on the whole people of any nation is that formula which the "System" has so insidiously instilled into the minds of the American people during the last century, to wit: that they must do nothing which might disturb the "System" in its use at two to four per cent. per annum of all the people's savings, deposited in banks and trust companies throughout the country; that if they do, there will be a Wall Street panic, and thereby all the people will be made to suffer great hardships. On the contrary, I know that if the people do what is necessary to shake off the "System's" strangling grip upon their savings, the "System" will suffer death, and everlasting profit and advantage will accrue to the nation. Though it be necessary for the people to withdraw from the banks and trust and insurance companies their billions of savings, and even though such withdrawal must cause a temporary business crash and the failure of many of the financial institutions of the country, the sacrifice would be many thousand times compensated for by the benefits that would follow in its train. I will go further and state that if such radical action should become necessary, the people should willingly face the failure and destruction of one-half the banking institutions of New York if by doing so they could absolutely destroy the "System." But do not misunderstand me—the simultaneous withdrawal of the people's savings from the banks and trust companies throughout the United States would be such a terrible temporary hardship that nothing could justify it but the absolute necessity for uprooting and eradicating the "System"; I should not hesitate, however, to face the full responsibility for such a move if the "System" cannot be destroyed in any other way, even though I were sure I should be lynched or torn limb from limb by those people who have been crazed and deluded, not by my teachings, but by the damnable doctrines and acts of the "System" and its votaries.

6. I am well aware that the result of the people's selling their stocks and bonds in concert and the withdrawal of their savings would bring a tremendous drop in the price of stocks and bonds. This is what I am working for, but I am proceeding in such a way that I believe when the crash comes the people will be free from their stocks and bonds. Your proposition that the bears will be the only beneficiaries I regard as rot; on the contrary, I know that the people will benefit a dollar where the combined bears will benefit a cent. Pardon my giving you here an A B C lesson in finance—I know a bear is no more dishonest than a bull. When a man tries to put up the price of stocks and bonds, he is a bull. When he tries to put them down, he is a bear. If a bull tries to put prices to a point of fair worth, he is an honest bull. When he tries to put them any higher than fair worth, he is a dishonest bull, for he does so for the purpose of obtaining from the one to whom the stocks are sold a greater gain than he is entitled to, and always by false pretences. When a bear tries to put stocks from an artificially high price to their fair worth, he is an honest bear. When he tries to put them any lower, he is a dishonest bear, because he does so for the purpose of purchasing from their owners stocks or bonds at less than their fair price, that he may pocket the difference between the artificially low price he makes and the higher price at which he has sold, and this profit is procured by false pretence. You, and thousands like you, should get out of your heads the false notion that a bear is necessarily less honest than a bull.

7. Life insurance is a great institution, and should be a sacred institution—provided it is honest life insurance. He who would, for any dishonest reason, disturb the people's confidence in honest life insurance I consider a criminal; but I am sure that one who, having the power to awaken the people to their peril, yet stands silently by and suffers them to be bled and plundered in the name of life insurance is even a greater scoundrel.

What is life insurance—honest life insurance? A contract between two parties by which the first agrees, in return for a certain fixed charge per year, to pay to the family or other beneficiary of the second party a stipulated sum in case of said second party's death; but it is plainly understood between them that the annual charge exacted by the first party shall be only such an amount as will insure the carrying out of the contract, plus whatever is the legitimate expense of conducting the business connected therewith. Under no circumstances would I say aught in disparagement of such a contract, but if I did not lift my voice against such life insurance as is carried on by the Mutual, New York Life, and Equitable companies, knowing what I do know, I should be a deep-dyed scoundrel.

Life insurance as it has been conducted in the past and as it is being conducted at present by these three companies, I regard as the most damnable imposition ever practised upon the people of any nation. Under the pretence that it is necessary to enable life-insurance companies to carry out their contracts, two million policy-holders are annually tricked into contributing from their savings sums which not only insure the performance of these contracts but enable the officers and trustees—mere servants of the policy-holders—to maintain the most gigantic stock-gambling machine the world has ever known. Through its operation the companies themselves not only make and lose millions at single throws of the dice, but the bands of schemers whose services it is pretended are essential for the transaction of the life-insurance business filch for themselves huge individual fortunes. Piled on to these excessive charges are additional amounts which enable these tricksters to maintain palaces, hotels, bars, and every conceivable kind of business, to pay for armies of lackeys and employees and private servants of officers and trustees, and for debauches and banquets which vie with any given by the kings and queens of the most extravagant and profligate nations on earth; in addition, enough more to accumulate huge and unnecessary funds—which are juggled with for the enrichment of individuals. Such wicked exactions and shameful extravagances constitute an imposition of the most wanton and criminal character, and those responsible should be sent to State prison for life, as too vicious and dangerous to be allowed freedom among an honest people.