-market, but of manipulating these trust funds for the
benefit of your own pockets. To-day the world is aghast at your perfidy
and amazed at your temerity.

Notwithstanding the turpitude already exposed to the people, you still
imagine you can so conduct yourself as to prevent the investigators from
fastening on you and your associates the more desperate crimes that have
been committed in the past--the 150 to 200 millions stolen and diverted
or used in corruption. You know as I do that only the very edges of this
national cesspool have yet been uncovered. You know that not only have
the ballot-box and the Legislature at Albany been tampered with, but
the law-making and administering machinery of other States corrupted,
the Federal Government surrounded, and certain of the judiciary of
America "educated."

You believe you can keep the evidence of these crimes from the American
people by the same kind of bluff and effrontery with which you met my
first charges. But you have mistaken the tempers of your countrymen.

I have been authorized in writing by over 16,000 policy-holders,
carrying over fifty-four millions of insurance, to act for them.

I had intended to await the finish of the New York investigation before
proceeding, but as I have had placed in my hands during the past few
days evidences of the determination of yourself and your accomplices and
fellow-conspirators to face it out regardless of consequences, and as I
believe men capable of committing the acts that have been proved during
the past few days are fully capable of taking the transportable part of
the billion and a quarter funds to foreign countries, and of using them
to keep themselves from their justly deserved punishments, I have
decided to act now.

In sending you this open letter, I am actuated only by a desire to bring
you and your associates to such a sense of the seriousness of your
position that you will see it is useless longer to attempt to defy the
American people.

Yours, for the Exposure of Corporation Sneak Thieves,
THOMAS W. LAWSON.

TO LIFE-INSURANCE POLICY-HOLDERS

At the beginning of my story, in 1904, I made certain accusations
against the management of the three big life-insurance companies.

I knew, when I began my story, that the big life-insurance companies
were in the hands of grafters and thieves, just as are the great banks,
trust companies, railroad companies, and big corporations and trusts.

_This I knew_ a