B. H. Scheftels & Company were accused by the New York _Times_ of clearing up nearly $600,000 in three months on the promotion of the South Quincy Copper Company. The facts were that, after receiving $30,000 in subscriptions and returning every subscription on demand because of the slump in metallic copper, the Scheftels company abandoned the promotion and never even applied for listing of the stock in any market. A large sum was lost by the Scheftels company here. Even in stating the penalty for misuse of the mails, which was the crime charged by the Government agent who afterwards resigned as a consequence of conduct objectionable to the Government, the New York _Times_ stated that the punishment was five years in prison, which was more hop-skip-and-go-merry mistaking. The crime is a misdemeanor and the maximum penalty for an offense is eighteen months. I have counted not less than five hundred unfounded and misleading statements of this kind regarding myself and associates that have been made in the past year by newspapers and press associations. The shadow has been taken for the substance. Now, the Scheftels raid, I shall prove in due time, was the culmination of as bitterly waged a campaign of misrepresentation and financial brigandage as has ever been recorded. Chronologically an introduction of the subject is out of place here. The effect, however, of the press-agenting which formed a part of the campaign of destruction is pertinent to the topic under consideration. The immediate result was that thousands of stockholders in the various mining companies that had been sponsored by the Scheftels company were robbed of an aggregate sum amounting into millions, which represented the ensuing decline in market value of the stocks. The newspaper campaign of misrepresentation and villification was essential to the plans and purposes of the men who sicked the Government on to me. The final destruction of public confidence in the securities with which I was identified became necessary to justify the whole proceeding in the public mind. On the surface of the play it was made to appear that the Government of the United States had reached out righteously for the suppression of a dangerous band of criminals. The story in the New York _Times_ and other newspapers on the day after the raid was justification made to this end. The fact that tens of thousands of innocent stockholders might lose their all, as a result of the foul use of powerful maladroit publicity-machinery, did not stop the conspirators for a moment. I had a youthful past and, therefore, the newspapers took little chance in publishing anything without investigation and proof that might be offered. And they went the limit, particularly those newspapers that are in the habit of permitting the use of their news columns from time to time to help along the publicity measures of powerful interests.