Carnegie holds about three hundred million dollars in the bonds of the Steel Trust. Those bonds are as good as gold. They pay Mr. Carnegie a regal income. Why should my land have the value taxed out of it and Carnegie’s bonds go free? There is no justice in this scheme. It does not measure up to the Populist dogma of “Equal rights to all.”
(2) Yes. To cloak insurance rascality with his respected name. The robbers who run those insurance companies simply bought the use of Mr. Cleveland’s name. He consents to play the humble but useful part of decoy duck for $1,000 per month.
Gen. Robert E. Lee, just after the Civil War, was offered $50,000 per year by one of these very companies. He refused to sell the use of his name. He was a poor man, and went to teaching school for a living. In this quiet, modest, but noble way “the greatest soldier that the Anglo-Saxon race ever produced” (see Theodore Roosevelt’s “Life of Thomas H. Benton”) was supporting his family at the time of his death. Mr. Cleveland is not a poor man. His income is $5,000 per year, over and above what silly magazines pay him for occasional articles which are valueless. Therefore Mr. Cleveland need not have sold his name to the life insurance rascals. But the $12,000 tempted him, and he sold out.
(3) Dryden’s Prudential was investigated and very rotten it was shown to be.
(4) No. He is simply stealing the money. Calling it “salary” does not keep it from being loot.
Chicago, Feb. 7, 1906.
Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.
Dear Sir: Will you please give me the information as set forth in the following questions?