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[Illustration: THOMAS W. LAWSON AFTER TWELVE MONTHS OF "FRENZIED
FINANCE"]

FRENZIED FINANCE

BY

THOMAS W. LAWSON

OF BOSTON

VOLUME I

THE CRIME OF AMALGAMATED


NEW YORK
THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY
1905


_Copyright, 1905, by_
THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY

_These articles are reprinted from "Everybody's Magazine"_

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE RIDGWAY-THAYER COMPANY

_All rights reserved_

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK




TO

PENITENCE AND PUNISHMENT

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO PENITENCE: that those whose deviltry is exposed within its pages may
see in a true light the wrongs they have wrought--and repent.

TO PUNISHMENT: that the unpenalized crimes of which it is the chronicle
may appear in such hideousness to the world as forever to disgrace their
perpetrators.

TO PENITENCE: that the transgressors, learning the error of their ways,
may reform.

TO PUNISHMENT: that the sins of the century crying to heaven for
vengeance may on earth be visited with condemnation stern enough to halt
greed at the kill.

TO PUNISHMENT: 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 to-day to counterfeit and
steal.

TO PENITENCE: 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.




TO MY AUDIENCE

SAINTS, SINNERS, AND IN-BETWEENS


Before you enter the confines of "Frenzied Finance," here spread
out--for your inspection, at least; enlightenment, perhaps--halt one
brief moment. If the men and things to be encountered within are
real--did live or live now--you must deal with them one way. If these
embodiments are but figments of my mind and pen, you must regard them
from a different view-point. Therefore, before turning the page, it
behooves you to find for yourself an answer to the grave question:

Is it the truth that is dealt with here? In weighing the evidence
remember:

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. The
men who move within the book's pages are still on the turf. A period of
twelve years is covered. So far, eighteen instalments, in all some
400,000 words, have been published. The spigot is still running. I have
written from memory, necessarily. While it is true that fiction is
expressed in the same forms and phrases as truth, no man ever lived who
could shape 400,000 words into the kinds of pictures I have painted and
pass them off for aught but what they were. The character of my palette
made it mechanically impossible to shade or temper the pigments, for the
story was written in instalments, and circumstances were such that often
one month's issue was out to the public before the next instalment was
on paper. Considering all this, the consistency of the chronicle as it
stands is the best evidence of its truth. In submitting it to my readers
I desire to reiterate:

It _is_ truth--of the kind that carries its own bell and candle. Within
the narrative itself are the reagents required to test and prove its
genuineness. Were man endowed with the propensity of a Muenchhausen, the
cunning of a Machiavelli, the imagination of Scheherezade, the ability
of a Shakespeare, and the hellishness of his Satanic Majesty, he could
not play upon 400,000 words, or one-quarter that number, and make the
play peal truth for a single hour to the audience who will read this
book, or to one-thousandth part the audience that