Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of AmalgamatedLawson, Thomas William
History
Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated
Lawson, Thomas William
Amalgamated Copper Co.; Gas companies -- Massachusetts -- Boston; Insurance -- United States; Speculation; Standard Oil Company
One sees a certain man openly displaying five hundred millions of
dollars, a sum which represents the life earnings of 150,000 of our
population, and knows that this man has secured this incredible amount
during forty years of his life. One sees the second highest and most
honorable office in the nation, a United States Senatorship, openly
bought for a few stolen dollars by a man who up to the very day of its
purchase was a watch repairer in a small country town, and who had never
done a single meritorious deed or been possessed of worldly goods to the
extent of $5,000. One sees a wily adventuress secure from the banks,
which exist only to safeguard the people's deposited savings, hundreds
of thousands of dollars on her bare story that she was the possessor of
some mysterious documents. One sees a $6-a-week office-boy of one of the
"System's" votaries able to borrow for the "System," on his bare note,
four millions of dollars from a New York institution which only exists
to safeguard the people's savings--although the law says that such
institutions shall not loan to any man on any kind of collateral, even
Government bonds, one-tenth that sum. One sees two men, drunk with their
success, gouging and tearing at each other's hearts in Wall Street, and
sees their gouging and tearing bring about a panic which takes from the
people in an hour over a billion dollars and drives scores to suicide,
murder, and defalcation--the two men continuing meanwhile as ornamental
pillars of society instead of wearing prison stripes. One sees a great
railroad corporation, in which are millions of the trust funds of
widows, orphans, and charitable institutions, caught "short" (having
sold something it did not own) in the stock-gambling game and held up to
the tune of ten million dollars by a reckless stock gambler, who says
"If you don't settle to-night it will be twenty millions to-morrow"; and
the toll is paid, while the great banker who conducts the release of the
hold-up charges the further tribute of twelve million dollars for his
services. And then one sees this twenty-two millions of "commission"
tacked on to the capital stock of the great railroad which is
subsequently capitalized into a "bond" and sold to great life-insurance
companies as a first-class investment for their trust funds.
When one sees these things and a hundred other as rankly fraudulent, one
should not wonder at anything American connected with dollars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account