AMERICAN HIGH FINANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 12874, 25 July 1906, Page 8

AMERICAN HIGH FINANCE.

One reads Mr Lawson’s ‘Frenzied Finance’ with alternating feelings. At one moment the sensational story grips the imagination, but then, after reading some tale of rascality, one feels inclined to throw down the book wearied and disgusted with contemplation of the sordid picture; yet. again,, if one, : perseveies r the attention is riveted once more upon the combination of dare-devilry and cunning, playing with millions, with which the book is replete. The final impression upon the mind, in a time such as this, when the capitalistic organisation of society is threatened, is that the enemies of that organisation have, in this survey .of unrestrained capitalism'in its extreme form, an object-lesson to place before the' public which is calculated to inspire "dangerous detestation of the system. The moral seems so obvious. In no country in the world has capitalism freer play than in the United States; in no country has profitmaking out of industry been worshipped with such fervor; in no country has the capitalistic organisation been developed with such complex and such wide-reaching ramifications—and the result is an exhibition of, wild gambling in the necessaries of life, of conscienceless exploitation, and of selfishness and wickedness, which do not stay at the commission even of offences punishable by the criminal law of every civilised country. Mr Lawson’s is not au easy book to quote from, for it is so packed with sensational passages that one is inclined to mark down every page for quotation, and here we can find room for onlv one or two. The chapter that will, perhaps, interest most deeply the general reader in England is that in which Mr Lawson lays bare the astonishing corruption which exists in American legislation. It is not uncommon to hear talk of bribery in American legislative circles, though'such talk is usually of a vague character. There is no vagueness about Mr Lawson’s description of what went on in the Massachusetts State Legislature when “the Whitney machine for the manufacture and moulding of legislation” Was seme ten years ago engineering the Whitney Pipe Line Charter through the Legislature. We cannot, of course, vouch for the truth of Mr Lawson’s account, and we can only hone that it is highly colored in some of its details; but thosq details are set out with such circumstance, and make so complete and connected a story-—one, too, which, so far as w© know, has passed into publicity in America without refutation—that there seems little reason to question the general accuracy of the narrative. Here are a few passages from : t;

“If an outrider could possibly Lave obtained the entry to the headquarters of iue Whitney Massachusetts Pipe Line, say at nine o’clock any evening during the session, he might easily have imagined himself at the Madison square Garden, or at Tattersail’s, on the evening of the first day of an international horse sale. This is what he •would have seen:—ln parlor 10, seated at a long table, a dozen of Mr Towle’s chiefs, all in their shirt sleeves, smoking voluminously; before each a sheet of paper, on which is printed a list of th© members of tho Legislator®; against every name a blank space for memoranda; at the head of the table, Towle him.'elf, frowning severely over a similar sheet, having broader memoranda spaces. One after another the chiefs call off the names of the legislators, reporting as they go along:— ‘ . . . from . , , not my man; . . . from . . . my man and . . ’s man; seen to-day; stood same as yesterday; . . . from . . . raised price 20dol, making it l&Gdol; agreed; 18dol paid on account, total of SOdol due; raised because . , , told him he had got 20dol more from . . . “All reports at last in, Towle retires to room 11, and speedily returns with the ‘ stuff,’ consisting of cash, stocks, puts, calls, or transportation tickets, which lie deals out to the chiefs to make good their promises for the day. It would have been obvious to the outsider, as soon as he had learned what was being dealt in, that a large proportion of the members of the Groat and General Court of Massachusetts had bargained with the different members 01 ‘the machine’ to sell their votes, not only in committee, but in full session of the Legislature, and that the price was to be paid when the votes were cast, though something was invariably exacted on account to tie the bargain.” By these patriotic means the charter was engineered through the House, public meetings and citizens’ agitations notwithstanding ; but there came a check—the charter required the Governor’s signature. “In the midst of a strenuous forenoon of trading, suddenly, without the slightest warning, both stocks began to sink in price like pigs of lead from a capsized boat. . . “As I cam© out of parlor 11 to rush back to my office‘l said to the despairing men who crowded the corridor outside th© headquarters, and who had in their desperation thrown all caution or thought of concealment to the winds: ‘ Goal and gas look to me like good buys.’ Th© sudden revulsion of feeling was pathetic. In a minute the news had spread by way of them to their brokers and their suffering friends: ‘ It’s all right; Whitney and Lawson are buying stocks.’ It got to the Exchange almost as soon as I did. “We turned the market- . . . Then, sharp and quick as a bolt of lightning, Fate ... let fly another of her quiver’s contents. ... In an hour there came to Young’s Hotel a trusty messenger who delivered to Towle himself the ultimatum of the Great and General Court of tho dear old Commonwealth; ‘ Money in advance or no b : ll!’ . . _ “ 'lbis was the real moment of panic. Even Whitney and Towle were at their wits’ end. Finally, in desperation, and as ia last resort, Whitney msued to the Governor, threw up his hands, and asked for mercy. ‘What would the Governor sign?’ Massachusetts’ able and fearless Governor Woqlcott, who seemed to have been expecting some such outcome of the battle, gave his answer, clear as an 1 anvil blow: ‘ You have told the people your company would give them cheap gas. Bind your, elf to' do it by amending the charter so that the highest price your gas can be sold at will be 60c. Then I will sign.’ “There was nothing else to do. At the last minute the amendment was inserted. The Governor’s representative gave the word that it was satisfactory, and it passed. Both stocks started to jump; then a halt, then— I didn’t try to stop the decline, for I saw something terrible had happened. In a few minutes the news was on the street. The charter was not worth the parchment upon which it was engrossed- The biter had been fatally bitten.” us find room for the denouement:—

“ A few days after, a vessel dropped anchor olf the island of Jamaica; George Towle’s body was carried ashore and buried, and Mr Patch was escorted back to the ship. A few days later, with weights of lead to carry it to its last rest-ing-place at the ocean’s bottom, the latter’s dead body was dropped over the vessel’s side. And somewhere floating the higu seas are a venturesome sailor captain and a crew, who, when in their cups, tell, ’tis said, strange tales of bags of gold and mysterious documents.”

This is but one instance of how the vast industries and interests of a great country have been exploited by a group of men who have thereby enriched themselves with fabulous wealth. What will be the end of it? The United States contain eighty millions of people, the majority of whom have intelligence and some education, who have already begun to realise that they are under the heels of tyrants wielding a power unknown to the oppressors of earlier ages. The country contains millions of working men, mostly without great respect for lav or order when th.'ir passions are aroused. What will be the outcome when such men confront <uch developments of capitalism? That is the problem which the Americans, if they are who, will handle in earnest without delay; and though it is a problem winch does not exist in the same acute form in England, the subject may well be considered by us also, that we may avoid the peril into which America is drifting—the peril of upheaval, in which the good and the bad in the.existing form of,society are like to be indiscriminately engulfed.-—* Standard.'