, the
merits of the enterprise. The financial journals are dealt with about on
the same basis. In return for straight advertising or for "puts" or
"calls" they agree to insert the manufactured news. The news-bureau man
then puts his entire staff to work inventing fairy tales of one kind or
another to excite the interest and attention of the people, and these
tales must be so concocted that the public is drawn into believing that
the statements disseminated represent actual conditions. I shall, later,
give real instances of the working of this nefarious game of "moulding
public opinion," and present it in the lime-light necessary for its
appreciation. To show the extent to which this "moulding" process is
carried, I know in one instance of a high-priced financial scribe being
sent to live in St. Petersburg for no other purpose than to send certain
"news items" to a confederate located in Germany, who would get these
items to a reputable English banking-house through whom they were given
out in London as news: the whole object of this complicated system being
that the news items might be sent back to New York without Wall Street
suspecting they were bogus.

I must not be understood as meaning to say that all financial editors,
news gatherers, or news bureaus are engaged in this, one of the lowest
forms of swindling, for such is not the case. _On the contrary, there
are many of them whom no amount of money or influence could make waver
in their allegiance to the truth and to honest dealings._ With some of
the others I hope to deal specifically later, and I shall not hesitate
to set forth in detail certain transactions in which they have been
engaged.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] A "put" is the right to sell to a certain firm or individual shares of
stock at a stated price for a stated period, and a "call" the right to buy
under the same conditions. The holder of the "put" or "call" is under no
liability, as he can use the "put" as margin to buy stocks, or the "call"
as margin to sell stocks, or he can hold them for the profit there may be
in selling or buying the stock after it has declined or risen below or
above the price named in the "puts" or "calls" he holds.

CHAPTER VI

HOW WALL STREET'S MANIPULATIONS AFFECT THE COUNTRY

What is the connection between the "System" and the minor financial
institutions throughout the country which are owned and controlled by
groups of sturdy men who know not Wall Street and its fr