| + − | Yale R. 15: 463. F. ’07. 710w. |
Howe, Frederic Clemson. Confessions of a monopolist. *$1. Public pub.
6–32427.
An autobiography “showing how easily a man of medium capacity and no scruples can accumulate a fortune by exploiting public franchises and ‘playing Wall street.’” (N. Y. Times.) “Never before has a work appeared in which the methods of the high financiers and political bosses have been more clearly exposed. Here the reader is made to see how certain feats that appear from before the footlights as little short of miraculous are performed. Here he sees how by learning the rules of the game a modern high financier is able to divert the wealth of thousands into the till of the crafty monopolists; how, in short, the thousands are made to labor for the few just as actually as in the days of the feudal lords the serfs slaved for the barons. And here he sees how politics are made the handmaid of the modern plutocracy in its attempt to enslave labor while destroying the soul of democracy.” (Arena.)
“It is far and away the finest political satire on present-day American politics,—a book that every thinking patriotic citizen should read.”
| + + | Arena. 36: 680. D. ’06. 950w. |
“It is not pleasant reading—it is too true to life, though possibly somewhat exaggerated or unnaturally concentrated either for artistic effect or for the sake of argument.” Max West.
| + − | Dial. 43: 121. S. 1, ’07. 310w. | |
| J. Pol. Econ. 15: 125. F. ’07. 120w. |
“The little volume is both interesting and instructive, whether regarded as a vade mecum for those desirous of practising the new high finance, or as an addition to the horrors which our professional purifiers have revealed in order to reform them.”