Frenzied Finance Part 58

Another correspondent had even greater difficulties with the problem:

May 29, 1905.

MR. THOMAS W. LAWSON, Boston, Ma.s.s.

_Dear Sir_: The writer of this letter has had much experience in literary matters, but does not remember ever reading after any one who could hold his interest as you can. He is an author himself (though not so well known as you), and feels some little ability to measure and appreciate not only literary worth, but the intentions of the author in hand. From the "internal evidences" alone he has a settled conviction that you are perfectly honest in this crusade, and from the bottom of his heart wishes you G.o.dspeed.

A few points are certainly not clear to the ordinary reader.

Closely as I have followed you I cannot see some things as you think they should be seen. For instance:

1. Just why were you so fearfully wrought up at the thought of the public's getting ten millions instead of five? If you had such confidence in the gigantic possibilities of Amalgamated, why should you not have been glad to let the poor suffering public have ten millions, or twenty millions, instead of a paltry five millions? Was this hydrophobia of yours at the mere suggestion prompted by a perfectly pure or by a selfish motive? At the first did _you_ not plan to let the public have very much more than this? Was it not your thought, I mean, that the public should be in the thing about equally with you promoters? Then why not welcome the suggestion of Rogers? I do not understand this at all.

2. About that "bogus subscription." Did you not all plan to do about the same thing? Did you not intend to have Rogers put in a towering subscription, large enough to cover the situation, and to permit the bank to reject all above the five millions to be allowed the public? I believe _you_ expected Rogers to make it "genuine" by really putting it in in time, and by laying down his check for the five per cent.; but, as you fully expected to realize on the thing so quickly, did you not understand that the whole of this "subscription" would not have to be paid at all, and that your "check" was after all only technical? If I am right, how did this differ so greatly from what Rogers did? Was not your avowed object to cheat the public into thinking they were to be allowed to subscribe to seventy-five millions, when actually you were only going to let them subscribe to five? And if, on that last day, you knew the subscriptions were pouring in in such a flood, and knew that offers of a big premium were then being made, how in the world did the idea of letting the outside public have twenty millions or so (on which to immediately realize this premium) seem so abhorrent to you, when you professed to be looking after their interests?

The more I think of these points, the more mixed I become, and I think many, very many of your readers are in the same boat. Your ill.u.s.tration of the horse-race does not clear the matter a particle. It certainly does appear on the face of the facts you present that the people who did not get any stock were the lucky ones, whether Rogers's precise action was criminal or not. You say yourself that it would have been good all round if you had p.r.i.c.ked the bubble that night--that is, if you had then and there prevented anybody from getting any premiums, from buying or selling a share.

Then in the name of reason, why was it not really good for those who were rejected, that they were left out?

3. Now, in plain language, brief and straight, what would you have deemed the right thing, that night at the bank?

With hundreds of millions subscribed, how many shares would you have thought the public should have? How many do you think now? And how should the balance have been kept for you promoters? Perhaps in answering this you will make it plain.

Sincerely yours, (Signed) ----

In answer to Question 1, I said: All my dealings had been conducted on the basis of selling to the public a fair amount of the first section of the consolidation and I had no tremors as to consequences. I knew that whatever allotment was made them would be worth all they were to pay for it, for I was personally familiar with the value of the properties of which the section was to be composed. When Mr. Rogers, as I have explained in my story, subst.i.tuted, under circ.u.mstances that rendered me defenceless, an entirely new set of mines for those programmed for the first section--properties about which I knew only what he told me--from that time on my only guarantee against the jugglery and fraud I feared was to keep in the hands of Rogers and Rockefeller so large a part of this stock that they could play no tricks on the public without themselves suffering much more severely. If they regarded the stock as so valuable a possession that it was a security to be held as "Standard Oil," then their att.i.tude to it guaranteed its value, and no harm could come to any one. When, however, they showed a readiness to part with more shares than the number they had promised me they would not go beyond, my fears were aroused, for all the contingencies I dreaded at once became imminent. Besides, such action was proof positive that in their opinion the mines were not worth the price at which they were selling them. Later on, when I had practical evidence that they were unloading and proof positive that they were juggling the stock, I felt certain that these facts const.i.tuted proof positive that they had lied to me about the cost and worth of the Amalgamated mines.

My answer to Question 1 practically disposes of part of Question 2, and my replies to the other inquiries above take care of another part.

I did expect Mr. Rogers to make an honest subscription for that part of the stock which we were to retain and which I was doing all in my power to have him retain, not because I desired to hold all of the good thing and so cheat the public, but because I did not think it safe for the public to hold so many shares that it would be to Rogers's and Rockefeller's interest to "bear" prices later and take shares away from the holders at slaughter prices. In one sense it was not fair to lead people to imagine that they were being offered $75,000,000 of an issue when as a matter of fact they were really offered only $5,000,000, but if only $5,000,000 were offered no harm could come to them, because every one who got some of it would make a profit, and those who received none would not suffer.

STEEL COMMON AND PREFERRED

A definite accusation of misrepresentation was presented in a letter that came to me early in the year in criticism of Steel facts and figures I had used in ill.u.s.trating the artificial advance and depression of stocks:

CINCINNATI, O., January 24, 1905.

THOMAS W. LAWSON.

_Sir_: Lawson, you are both a fakir and a fool. A fakir because you misrepresent, and a fool because you do not begin to understand the people.

When you said the stockholders of the Steel Corporation lost $500,000,000, you knew that you lied. Because the difference in price of the stock to-day and when it was quoted on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time in 1901 does not approach that amount. I say that you knew this when you made that statement, but you thought and hoped that the general public would not be posted in the matter.

The whole substance of your magazine articles has been nothing but half-truths, and a half-truth is worse than a lie. You know that it is to gratify your personal spite, and not to help the general public, that you have engaged in your frenzied writings. The public is wiser than you think, although your conceit has blinded you to that fact.

Respectfully, F. F. METHVEN.

This frenzied nincomp.o.o.p is evidently ignorant of the fact that 360,281,000 shares of Steel Preferred were sold to the public at over $100 per share, and that 5,500,000 shares of Steel Common were sold at over $50 per share, or nearly $300,000,000, and that months later, when the people were compelled to resell to the "System," they could get only $50 for this preferred stock and $10 for the common, while the $551,000,000 of bonds depreciated in value over $100,000,000 more. What this critic desired to say was that, at the present price of Steel stocks, no such loss as $500,000,000 is shown, which proves my oft-repeated contention--the "System," having "shaken out" the public and acquired their holdings at fifty and ten respectively, is now engaged in putting the price back to the old figure, intending to repeat the robbery process later. A votary of the "System," whom I know quite well, said to me a few weeks ago:

"Lawson, you keep chasing 'Frenzied Finance' will-o'-the-wisps while the rest of us are pulling in the dollars, and see where you will come out in the end. Look what I've done: I sold 200,000 shares of Steel Common for $8,000,000. It cost me $3,000,000. I made $5,000,000. I then 'shorted' 100,000 at $50 and bought it back at $12. I made $3,800,000. I then bought 300,000 at 10. It's now 30. When I sell out at 40, I shall have $9,000,000 more, making $18,000,000, without turning a hair or risking a dollar. With prizes such as these a man can stand a lot of frenzied hard names, can't he?"

THE REMEDY

As I have explained on another page of the "Critics," my Remedy cannot be dealt with save at considerable length and with living, tangible ill.u.s.trations. I have purposely abstained from starting it until I have the American public educated to the point of comprehending its value and appreciating its practicability so far as to be ready to put it into operation. During the year I have had thousands of letters in regard to it, the following being a fair example:

TOPEKA, KAN., January 5, 1905.

_Dear Sirs_: I have followed Mr. Lawson's article very closely and, as I understand it, he intimates that he has a remedy for the rotten condition of affairs now prevailing.

What I, and many more of your readers, would like to know is, whether Mr. Lawson, in offering a remedy, is taking into consideration the 22,000,000 people of the country who neither invest in stocks nor hold any amount of insurance, or is his remedy meant merely to protect the four million small capitalists from being eaten up by what he terms the "System."

It is very evident to some of us that if he cannot show us how to protect the great majority of the people who, although they are not even small capitalists, are the ones who are really footing the bills, his remedy will not be the grand success he antic.i.p.ates.

J. P. FERRITER.

My Remedy will benefit the whole American people. It will help most the man who nowadays in America deserves most to be helped--the producer, who to-day is exchanging the efforts of all his working hours for the bare necessities of himself and family; not those bare necessities which the white slaves of Europe are ground down to believe are their only requirements, but those which the free and enlightened American believes, and has taught his family to believe, should be his necessities.

It is intended to benefit most the man who has nothing left over after paying his bills Sat.u.r.day night but the terrors of not being able to meet them the coming week. It would indeed be a parody on a Remedy if it did not bring relief to this cla.s.s.

Next, my Remedy will benefit that great middle cla.s.s whose savings go to make up the billions in the savings-banks, national banks, trust and insurance companies, which are used by the "System" to secure for themselves a hundred, a thousand, and ten thousand per cent. interest on _their_ capital, while the owners of these billions must be content with two and a half to four per cent. per annum; and

Next, it will benefit that cla.s.s which possesses large fortunes honestly acquired, inasmuch as it will enable them to know what there is behind their investments. None but those who have plundered the people--acquired overnight fortunes many times larger than any honest lifetime efforts could possibly bring--can possibly be hurt by the application of my Remedy.

You are right--any remedy which would do other than what mine proposes to do would be a farce.