The first step toward "moulding public opinion" is taken when the "System's" votaries send for the dishonest chief of a news bureau, a man usually up in every trick of the trade. I will later describe one of them, a scoundrel so able and experienced that, to use the vernacular of the gutter of "the Street," he can give cards and spades to the frenziedest of frenzied financiers. To this man the "System's" votary will say something like this: "We are going to work off blank millions of blank stock; it costs us thus and so, and we want to sell for so and so many millions." Nothing is kept back from this head panderer and procurer, for it would be useless to attempt to deceive him, and, to quote his always picturesque language: "Never send a sucker to fish for suckers or he'll lose your bait, so spread out your bricks and I'll get the 'gang' to polish up their gildings." After the quality and amount the "System" intends to work off in exchange for the people's savings are explained, that part of the plunder which is to come to the head news-bureau man is settled upon. The amount varies with the size and quality of the robbery to be perpetrated. In some cases as high as a million dollars in cash or stock or their equivalent has been paid to a "moulder of opinion" for simply so shaping up a game that the people might be deceived into thinking one dollar of worth was four, six, or eight dollars. The head of the news bureau, having taken the contract to lay out and carry through the deceptive part of the scheme by which the people are to be buncoed, now begins operations. First, bargains are made with conscienceless financial editors of the daily and weekly newspapers, whereby for so much stock or for "puts" or "calls" or both,[17] they agree to insert in their paper's financial column whatever yarns are fed them by the bureau man, regardless of their truth or falsehood. To justify the attention paid the subject by each editor, a certain amount of money is spent in advertising, in the newspaper that employs him, the merits of the enterprise. The financial journals are dealt with about on the same basis. In return for straight advertising or for "puts" or "calls" they agree to insert the manufactured news. The news-bureau man then puts his entire staff to work inventing fairy tales of one kind or another to excite the interest and attention of the people, and these tales must be so concocted that the public is drawn into believing that the statements disseminated represent actual conditions. I shall, later, give real instances of the working of this nefarious game of "moulding public opinion," and present it in the lime-light necessary for its appreciation. To show the extent to which this "moulding" process is carried, I know in one instance of a high-priced financial scribe being sent to live in St. Petersburg for no other purpose than to send certain "news items" to a confederate located in Germany, who would get these