This was the formal declaration of war. State and Wall streets, familiar with my style of fighting, at once lined up and took sides. The papers entered the controversy. According to what one read, Butte & Boston was either the greatest mine in the world or a hole in the ground. Feeling intensified; Geneva and Queensberry conventions were forgotten; it became a go-as-you-please scramble; mud batteries filled the air with liquid dirt, and both sides used Gatling guns to fire off their libels. It was altogether a lusty and vociferous contest, which meant destruction and death for the lame, the halt, and the slow-footed who got between the fighting lines. I was naturally the chief mark for the enemy, and was deluged with vilification. In the Bay State campaign I had learned the personal cost of antagonizing the "System"; the copper magnates showed me that they had terrors at command which might make even "Standard Oil" jealous. In those days I don't believe my bank account varied thirty-five cents without the news being passed around before the ink on the bank-book was dry, and my family, down to my ten-year-old, received daily or weekly through the mails pictorial representations of their parent being hustled along to the realms where sulphur is the standard of all values. Here is a sample of my usual breakfast-table reading: C. W. Barron, the proprietor of the "Boston News Bureau," feels it his duty to inform his readers, the banks and bankers and brokers and representative investors of New England, that that faking ass of State Street, that knave of knaves, Tom Lawson, is braying again, and such braying!--"Butte is to sell at 50, and going to be worth 50." It would be such a joke that this conservative paper would be only too happy to circulate this scoundrel's vaporings, if it were not for the sad part of such schemer's work--if it were not that the poor and ignorant unfortunates who are unacquainted with this knave, may buy Butte because of his advertised lies at $14 or $15 a share and thereby be robbed of what they can ill afford to lose. There is no more chance of Butte & Boston stock selling at $50, or even $25, than there is of Tom Lawson telling the truth; and this paper does not hesitate to say that if Butte stock ever does sell at 50, we will upon that day close up our office and forever leave Boston and our lucrative business of guarding investors against such knaves as this lying thief; for any man who would do what he is doing to fleece investors is a thief and should wear stripes, and it is surprising to us he has so long escaped.