 
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 11  Num. 09
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                     ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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FRENZIED FINANCE -- I
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             -+- *Frenzied Finance* Is Announced -+-

"In the great financial happenings  of recent years story tellers
have given their version; political  economists  their  theories;
reformers  their pictures; and historians their tablets.  For the
first time in the history of High Finance we have the High Priest
tell it as it happened..."   --  New  York Evening Post, June 21,
1904 

"Personally I know that one hundred million  dollars  were  lost,
thirty  men  committed  suicide,  and twenty previously reputable
citizens  went   to   the   penitentiary,   directly  because  of
Amalgamated...  [Amalgamated] was created because of  my  work...
the  plain  people  invested two hundred million dollars of their
savings, and it was because  of trickery and broken promises that
the public lost the enormous sums they did." -- Thomas W. Lawson

                -+- Mr. Lawson's Dedication -+-

"...that  public  indignation  may  be  so  aroused  against  the
practices of high finance that it shall come to be as culpable to
graft and cozen  within  the  law  as  it  is  lawless  today  to
counterfeit and steal."

"...that in the minds of all who read this eventful history there
may grow up a knowledge and a conviction that the gaining of vast
wealth  is  not  worth the sacrifice of manhood, and that poverty
and abstinence with honor  are  better worth having than millions
and luxury at the cost of candor and rectitude."

"My  profession  is  business.   My  writing  is   an   incident.
'Frenzied  Finance'  was  set  down  during  the twenty-fifth and
twenty-sixth hours of busy days.  I  pass it up as the history of
affairs of which I was a part."

                        -+- Foreword -+-

[Synopsis of *Frenzied Finance* by Thomas W. Lawson.   New  York:
Ridgway-Thayer, 1905]

Herein is the story of Amalgamated  Copper and of the "System" of
which it is the  most  flagrant  example.   This  "System"  is  a
process  or  a  device  for  the  incubation  of  wealth from the
people's savings in  the  banks,  trust, and insurance companies,
and the public funds.   Through  its  workings  during  the  last
twenty years there has grown up in this country a set of colossal
corporations  in  which unmeasured success and continued immunity
from punishment have bred an insolent disregard of law, of common
morality, and of public and  private  right, together with a grim
determination  to  hold  on  to,  at  all  hazards,   the   great
possessions  they  have  gulped  or  captured.   It  is  the same
"System" which has taken from the millions of our people billions
of dollars, and given them  over  to  a  score or two of men with
power to use  and  enjoy  them  as  absolutely  as  though  these
billions  had  been earned dollar by dollar by the labor of their
bodies and minds.

For thirty-four years I have been actively connected with matters
financial.  As banker, broker, and  corporation man, I have, from
the vantage point of one  who  actually  handled  the  things  he
studied,  studied  the  causes which created the conditions which
made possible the "System" which produced the Amalgamated affair.
In my thirty-four years  of  business  experience I have seen the
great fortunes, which  are  the  motive  power  of  the  "System"
referred  to,  come  out  of  the  far  West  as  specks upon the
financial horizon and grow  and  grow as they travelled Eastward,
until in their length, breadth, and thickness they  obscured  the
rising  sun.   At short range I have seen the giant money machine
put together.

In the course of this  book,  I  shall describe such parts of the
general financial structure as will place my readers,  especially
those  unfamiliar  with  its  more  complicated  conditions, in a
mental state to comprehend the  methods by which the savings they
think are safely  guarded  in  the  banks,  trust  and  insurance
companies, are so manipulated by the votaries of frenzied finance
as  to be in constant jeopardy.  I shall show them that while the
press, the books, the stump,  and  our halls of statesmanship are
full to overflowing with the whys, wherefores, and  what-nots  of
"tariff,"  "currency,"  "silver,"  "gold," and "labor"; while our
market   systems   are   perfected   educational   machines   for
disseminating  accurate  statistics  about  the  necessaries  and
luxuries of life, the water  and  land carriers, real estate, and
other material things  which  the  people  have  been  taught  to
believe  are  the  only things that vitally affect their savings;
that while  they  imagine  they  understand  the  system by which
speculation and investments are controlled and worked,  and  that
the   causes  and  effects  of  this  system  are  at  all  times
get-at-able by  them  through  their  bankers  and their brokers;
there is a tangible, complicated, yet simple trick  of  financial
legerdemain,  operated twenty-four hours in each day in the year,
and which the  press,  the  politicians,  and the statesmen never
touch upon -- a trick by means of which the savings of the people
and the public  funds  of  the  Government,  are  always  at  the
absolute service and mercy of the votaries of frenzied finance.

 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

For related stories, visit:
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
http://feustel.mixi.net

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