To Punishment: that the sins of the century crying to heaven for vengeance may on earth be visited with condemnation stern enough to halt greed at the kill.
To Punishment: that public indignation may be so aroused against the practices of high finance that it shall come to be as culpable to graft and cozen within the law as it is lawless to-day to counterfeit and steal.
To Penitence: that in the minds of all who read this eventful history there may grow up a knowledge and a conviction that the gaining of vast wealth is not worth the sacrifice of manhood, and that poverty and abstinence with honor are better worth having than millions and luxury at the cost of candor and rectitude.
TO MY AUDIENCE
SAINTS, SINNERS, AND IN-BETWEENS
Before you enter the confines of "Frenzied Finance," here spread out—for your inspection, at least; enlightenment, perhaps—halt one brief moment. If the men and things to be encountered within are real—did live or live now—you must deal with them one way. If these embodiments are but figments of my mind and pen, you must regard them from a different view-point. Therefore, before turning the page, it behooves you to find for yourself an answer to the grave question:
Is it the truth that is dealt with here? In weighing the evidence remember:
My profession is business. My writing is an incident. "Frenzied Finance" was set down during the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth hours of busy days. I pass it up as the history of affairs of which I was a part. The men who move within the book's pages are still on the turf. A period of twelve years is covered. So far, eighteen instalments, in all some 400,000 words, have been published. The spigot is still running. I have written from memory, necessarily. While it is true that fiction is expressed in the same forms and phrases as truth, no man ever lived who could shape 400,000 words into the kinds of pictures I have painted and pass them off for aught but what they were. The character of my palette made it mechanically impossible to shade or temper the pigments, for the story was written in instalments, and circumstances were such that often one month's issue was out to the public before the next instalment was on paper. Considering all this, the consistency of the chronicle as it stands is the best evidence of its truth. In submitting it to my readers I desire to reiterate: