Thomas William Lawson

“ On earth there is no more pitiable sight than the panic of a herd of novice stock-speculators suddenly awakened to a realization of their ruin. The ticker clicks a sort of death-watch as the merciless tape, without hitch or let up, reels off destruction. To such desperate beings the stock operator—the market-maker—is the straw to save them from drowning, and to him they turn as the one possible source of aid and hope. ”

“ On the surface there is nothing to suggest that a set of vampires have captured the high places of finance and are sucking away the life-blood of the nation. Our banks and trust companies all present a fair exterior and apparently are the same safe and honorable institutions they were before the canker fastened on them. Only its votaries know what the "System" is, and their way is the way of silence and darkness. A tie, stronger and more effective than the oath of the Mafia, binds them to its service, and woe be to him who dares divulge its methods. ”

“ There are in every American community honest, sturdy souls who can be depended on to come forward in emergencies and cry out aloud against a threatened political crime. Above the brute hubbub of a city's roar their voices are heard like the voice of conscience, and the hurrying throng pauses a second in its mad rush after dollars to listen to their tale of the Commonwealth's wrong. ”

“ Because the wise men of the "System" know human nature, know that most men and women accept unquestioningly the conditions they find surrounding them. Each day it is pounded into the heads of the people through a hundred agencies that it is the greatest and most flourishing of peoples and that the laws and customs which regulate its lives and rights are the best in all the world. How shall the people know that these glowing rumors, these propitious tidings, are but the siren songs of the "System" under the spell of which it is despoiled of its savings? ”

“ Do you believe that there is one man in all this wide world to-day who honestly believes one single statement that you have made, or who believes that you have ever turned your hand to, or aided in the slightest degree in, any honest enterprise? You criticise the copper corporations who have placed their stock before the public as a legitimate investment. Can you point to one single instance in which a misrepresentation of fact or figure has ever been made in anything connected with the Amalgamated Company? ”

“ But if the gains are great, the road is muddy. If those who covet the golden rewards will participate in a deal or two, wallow in the filthy double-dealing which is an inevitable part of the cost price of success, they will quickly realize the dark side of the glittering game, and that the sacrifices are in proportion to the winnings. If I had been asked that night what price would recompense me for the hell Addicks' shabby deceit had stirred up in me, I should have said—that night—that no number of millions would pay for the bitterness of the experience. ”

“ Not only have the people been deprived of the profits of their labor, but this capitalized prosperity is the stern instrument by which new burdens are laid on their shoulders and new tithes are exacted from their wages. But for the plundering "System" the great mass of our people would be able to sit in their tents in the shade of their husbanded harvests and laugh to scorn the frowns of fortune. Now, I say, God help the nation when Nature, tired from her great work, rests, and the people, too, are compelled to rest—for then will come an awful awakening. ”

“ Although I sat in the room with him almost from the time that the stock-market opened until long after it closed, not once did Mr. Lawson show the slightest sign of excitement over market affairs. Strong as an ox, clear-eyed, tranquil, smiling, the man who had moved the financial market downward against the will of the greatest combination of capital the world has ever seen, bore himself like one absolutely confident of success. ”

“ Not one man in a million, Lawson, will agree with you that you are justified in bringing about all this disaster simply because you think that we are taking too much of the cash that has been voluntarily paid in by people well able to attend to their own affairs. You must remember once this scandal and trouble are public they never can be smothered. There can be no more consolidation, no more copper boom in your lifetime and mine, and when the collapse comes every one will look for the victim, and that victim will be you. ”

“ A better, a higher, and a more expensive standard of living—that is all. That this prosperity which is our national boast will last forever is incredible. Sooner or later will come one of the times when Nature frowns and sends her floods, her droughts, and her epidemics of disease. Is the American people prepared by its long-sustained prosperity to bridge over that period of want and suffering?
The truth is that the mass of our population has not sufficient surplus laid by to last over thirty days of such a calamitous interval. ”

“ What is your idea as to how we shall control the selling end?"
"I had given that little thought, Mr. Rogers," I replied. "I believe that easily takes care of itself. The demand is always greater than the supply. We shall have the metal to sell, the world will be more anxious to buy than we to sell: what more can be necessary?"
"Lawson," said the master brain of the greatest and most successful commercial enterprise in the world, "you know the stock-market, but you don't know the first principle of working to advantage a great business in which you absolutely control the production. ”

“ Within the fairy realm of finance the laws of nature apparently are suspended, and, overnight, wonders are worked. The ordinary mortal, wise in all other walks of life, sees the man who yesterday stood beside him at the plough or at the bench emerging from the mysterious portals bearing the fruits of the endeavors of a hundred or a thousand lives, although a moment ago he passed through them with nothing. ”

“ Any alliance between life insurance and this modern speculative frenzy cannot be too deeply deprecated, nor too strongly reprobated. Every true friend of honest life insurance among insurance journals will demand that this great business, of all businesses, must be kept free from the contagion of corruption that has shamed finance, is covering commerce with a blighting mildew, and threatens our whole land with disaster as well as dishonor. ”

“ It would be as easy to convince the masses that their playing-cards are all wrong and that the ace is really of lower value than the two-spot as it is to awaken them to the terrors of the conditions that are confronting them; to compel them to realize that a despotism of dollars is being organized among them; that the cherished institutions of generations are the instruments by which a few daring schemers are concentrating into their own hands the money of the nation, and that this concentration can have no other result than the abject slavery of the American people. ”

“ When the world is ladling out honors to the "Standard Oil" kings, and spouting of their wondrous riches, how often is Henry H. Rogers mentioned? Not often, for he is never where the public can get a glimpse of him—he is too busy pulling the wires and playing the buttons in the shadows just behind the throne. Had it not been that that divinity which disposes of men's purposes compelled this man, as he neared the end of his remarkable career, to come into the open on Amalgamated, he might never have been known as the real master of "Standard Oil." ”

“ I shall devote a chapter to the doings of certain financial reputation sandbaggers and blackmailers; show how through their agencies they hold up corporations and their managers for large sums, which upon being paid start into motion a perfected system for the false moulding of public opinion for the purpose of making more easy the plundering of the people. I shall photograph the men and draw accurate diagrams of the machinery through which their nefarious trade is carried on. ”

“ The acute sensitiveness of a body of investors to extraneous influence, however slight, is familiar to any one who has had to do with market manipulation. In a theatre or church one strenuous spirit can quell a tumult with some ringing assurance, but long before the leader of a financial movement has got word to his following, wide-spread over the country, it has taken alarm, the rout has begun, and the field is strewn with corpses. A great financial excitement, like a rocket, should soar triumphantly into the air, leaving behind it a comet-like trail of glory, climaxing in a shower of gold ”

“ The flutter of an eyelash, a hair-breadth of hesitation, a mumbled word and there may be born in the mind of the investor that instinctive distrust which is the beginning of panic. In a stock market as in a powder magazine there are always dread possibilities of explosion, and he who would survive must have incombustible nerves and an ice-packed brain; asbestos assurances and an unblushing swagger have averted many money conflagrations and set prices hill-climbing. ”

“ The duty of the American people is to unloosen the thraldom of the "System" on our financial mechanism; to pluck out of their high places the dishonest usurpers who have degraded the purposes of our financial institutions, and to restore those institutions to their legitimate functions. When the people are fully awakened to the condition I describe, surely they will arise in their wrath and sweep the money-changers from the temple. ”

“ At this juncture any accident to our venture might affect the whole American business fabric, and no one realized the danger of the situation better than Mr. Rogers and myself. During the anxious days that were passing we canvassed the dire possibilities that the situation contained, just as children tell each other ghost stories when left alone in the darkness of the night. The great catastrophes of finance, we remembered, had all been born of the unexpected—of unforeseen contingencies—far beyond the range of human foresight. ”

“ This being the fact, for how long will the people allow such a monstrous wrong to be done? How long will they suffer a few men to siphon automatically the money of the many into their own pockets?
It is only a matter of simple mathematics to ascertain the day, and that only a few years away, when ten men will be as absolutely and completely the legal owners of the entire United States and all there is of value in it, as John D. Rockefeller is the absolute legal owner of the large section of it of which he is to-day possessed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If this is so—and it is as surely so as it is that the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees to every man, woman, and child who is a part of it perpetual freedom—it is so because the legal interest alone to which the ten men will be entitled and which they must receive (or our entire structure will fall) will of itself bring to their coffers all the wealth in existence within a given time. If this is so, then why have the American people allowed themselves to reach this condition? ”

“ There cannot possibly be any loss to any one; in fact, success is so assured that William Rockefeller, Daly, Stillman, and all the others who will be associated with us, do not propose to sell a share of their stock, but, on the contrary, will go along with us to the finish. So good does it look to us that I feel it will really beat out Standard Oil itself as a money-maker, and you must remember that whatever else they may say about Standard Oil, no one who has ever owned a share has lost money; on the contrary, every one has made large profits. ”

“ Throughout this broad country of ours are good Americans who have slaved and toiled to gather up the hundreds of dollars which you have exacted from them yearly as the price of the future livelihood of their wives and children, or as the provision for their own old age. You have made yourself the custodian of these funds under sacred pledge of square dealing and safe and honest administration. ”

“ Millions of dollars of legitimate investments have been lost to the people who have made them. Why? Because you, in your selfish egotism, have looked to nothing but your personal gain, thinking nothing, caring less for the woe that you might work to thousands, pandering to the worst prejudices, and by means of such words as "Standard Oil," "Amalgamated," "Frenzied Finance," etc., and making statements which investors have not the means or the time to dispute, you have endeavored to destroy values that have been created by the works of a lifetime. ”

“ There should be nothing in finance that any man or woman of ordinary intelligence and experience cannot understand, and I purpose to explain here the machinery of the "System" so that every one will exactly understand it from headlight to rear-end lantern. Many intelligent people have no clear idea of what a certificate of stock or a bond really is, and the words "money," "stock-exchange," and "finance" are mere terms which they glibly use without knowledge of their meaning. ”

“ Rogers' part in the very early days of Standard Oil was that of clerk and bookkeeper. He makes no secret that when he had risen to the height of $8 a week wages he felt as proud and confident as ever in after-life when for the same number of days' labor it was no uncommon occurrence to find himself credited with a hundred thousand times that amount.
All able men have some of God's indelible imprints of greatness. This man's every feature bespeaks strength and distinction. When he walks, the active swing of his figure expresses power—realized, confident power. ”

“ As time went on new "trust" possibilities were discovered and other institutions linked up—corporations of all kinds, insurance companies and national banks and savings-banks, were brought together for the benefit of the "System" and the detriment of the public. The end of the trustification of the institutions of the nation is not yet, but the people are to be shown a way by which the plundering process can be reversed and through which they can make their freedom complete and absolute by the complete and absolute enslavement of the "System" itself. ”

“ I watched you before you hitched up with Addicks, and always thought that if the opportunity arose, we might do business together. We, or as you and others like to call us, 'Standard Oil,' have money enough to carry through whatever business we embark on and we know where there is all the business to be had that we care to engage in. We have everything, in fact, but men. We are always short of men to carry out our projects—young men, who are honest, therefore loyal; men to whom work is a pleasure; above all, men who have no price but our price. ”