most striking
demonstration of the period has been the flurry in stocks which was
spoken of as the Lawson panic. In the February, 1905, issue of
_Everybody's Magazine_ I dealt with the performance and its attendant
phenomena.

Without undue vaunting, I may say that my explanation of the mysteries
of modern finance has not been without immediate profit to the public.
The people, accustomed to invest their money in the legitimate
securities of the country, had time and again lost hundreds of millions
without dreaming that they had been as ruthlessly robbed as though held
up at a pistol-point by a highwayman. They imagined that the great
capitalists whose names were emblazoned in the press throughout the
land, and who managed the banks and trust companies and insurance
corporations to which their savings were intrusted, were noble and
public-spirited gentlemen of the highest moral principles and of
absolute integrity. They know to-day that many of them are reckless and
greedy stock gamblers, incessantly dickering with the machinery of
finance for their own private enrichment.

I have stripped the veil from these hypocrites and exposed to all the
world their soulless rapacity. I have let the light of heaven into the
dim recesses of Wall Street in which these buccaneers of commerce
concocted their plots. I have done more than this: I have nipped in the
bud the newest conspiracy for the entanglement of the public--the great
"bull" market which was organized late in 1904 by the chief votaries of
the "System," to harvest a new crop of profits on the securities they
had laid in during their last raid. In other words, I have treated Wall
Street to a dose of its own medicine.

During the month of December the newspapers devoted considerable space
to the doings of the stock-market in connection with the episode to
which I refer. I use the word "episode" purposely, for I warn my readers
that it was but one of a series of disturbances which must occur before
the grasp of the pirates on the great financial interests of this
country can be shaken off. David slew Goliath with one pebble from his
sling, but the giant "System," intrenched in the stoutest citadel ever
constructed, and armored in gold and riven steel, will yield to no mere
call for surrender. My own part I have cheerfully taken with no
delusions as to the difficulties of the contest. He who interferes
between the lamb and the wolf is likely to provoke the wrath of the