Full of his project, he cast about for an intermediary. No sly chemist or muscular wharf-rat would do for this delicate task of anesthetizing men with the gas of German propaganda while it tied their hands and amputated their centres of right and wrong; the candidate must be a man of affairs, intimate with the chiefs of labor, skillful in execution, and the abler the better. Von Rintelen would pay handsomely for the right man. Whereupon David Lamar, the "Wolf of Wall Street," appeared on the scene and applied for the job--an entrance auspicious for the United States, for the newcomer's philosophy (if one could judge from his previous career) was "Me First." In an attempt to defraud J. P. Morgan & Co., and the United States Steel Corporation Lamar had once impersonated Representative A. Mitchell Palmer in certain telephone interviews. (Palmer became custodian of alien property after the United States entered the war.) He was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Atlanta Penitentiary. He appealed the case, and while he was out on bail pending the appeal, he fell in with Rintelen. In April, 1915, a New Yorker who dealt in publicity was introduced to Rintelen, or "Hansen," by Dr. Schimmel. Rintelen offered the publicity man $25,000 to conduct a campaign of propaganda for more friendly relations with Germany, to offset the commercial power Great Britain bade fair to have at the end of the war, and assured him that he would go to any extreme to prevent shipments of munitions to the Allies. The war, he said, would be decided not in Europe but in America. There must be strikes in the munitions factories. When the publicity man heard also that Rintelen was trying to stir up trouble with Mexico, he wrote on May 13 to Joseph Tumulty, President Wilson's secretary, informing him of the German's intentions. He was referred to the Department of Justice, and at their dictation continued in contact with Rintelen. Shortly thereafter David Lamar and his friend Henry Martin took a trip to Minneapolis, where they met Congressman Frank Buchanan and Ex-Congressman Robert Fowler, both of Illinois. Out of that conference grew a plan for forming a labor organization the object of which was ostensibly peace, and actually an embargo upon the shipment of munitions abroad, but whether Buchanan and Fowler knew of von Rintelen's connection with the scheme remains to be proved. It can be readily seen that such a labor organization, if it had actually represented organized labor, could have forced such a stoppage, either by its collective potential voting power and influence, or by fostering a nation-wide strike of munitions workers.