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
The enormous losses, millions upon millions--to my personal knowledge
over a hundred millions of dollars--which were made because of
Amalgamated; the large number of suicides--to my personal knowledge over
thirty--which were directly caused by Amalgamated; the large number of
previously reputable citizens who were made prison convicts--to my
personal knowledge over twenty--directly because of Amalgamated, were
caused by acts of this "System" of which Henry H. Rogers and his
immediate associates were the direct administrators; and yet Mr. Rogers
and his immediate associates, while these great wrongs were occurring,
led social lives which, measured by the most rigid yardstick of mental
or moral rectitude, were as near perfect as it is possible for human
lives to be. As husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, friends, they were
ideal, cleanly of body and of mind, with heads filled with sentiment and
hearts filled with sympathies; their personal lives were like their
homes and their gardens--revealing only the brightest things of this
world, the singing, humming, sweet-smelling things which so strongly
speak to us of the other world we are yet to know. As workers in the
world's vineyards, they labored six days and rested upon the Sabbath,
and gave thanks to Him from whom all blessings flow that He allowed
them, His humble creatures, to have their earthly being. And yet these
men, to whose eyes I have seen come the tears for others' sufferings,
and whose voices I have heard grow husky in recounting the woes of their
less fortunate brothers--these men under the spell of the brutal code of
modern dollar-making are converted into beasts of prey, and put to shame
the denizens of the deep which devour their kind that they may live.
In the harness of the "System" these men knew no Sabbath, no Him; they
had no time to offer thanks, no care for earthly or celestial being;
from their eyes no human power could squeeze a tear, no suffering wring
a pang from their hearts. They were immune to every feeling known to God
or man. They knew only dollars. Their relatives of a moment since, their
friends of yesterday and long, long ago, they regarded only as lumps of
matter with which to feed the whirring, grinding, gnashing mill which
poured forth into their bins--dollars.
In telling the story of Amalgamated I hope to have profited by my long
and intimate study of this cruel, tigerishly cruel "System," so as to be
able to deaden myself to all those human sympathies which I have heard
its votaries so many times subordinate to "It's business." I shall try
only to keep before me how the Indians of the forest, as our forefathers
drove them farther and farther into the unknown West, got bitter
consolation out of the oft-chanted precept of their white brethren of
civilization, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," reminding myself
that whatever of misery or unhappiness my story may bring to the few, it
will be as nothing to that which they have brought to the many.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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