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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 11 Num. 13
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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FRENZIED FINANCE -- V
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[Synopsis of *Frenzied Finance* by Thomas
W. Lawson. New York: Ridgway-Thayer, 1905]
-+- How The "System" Does Business -+-
Readers should know how the securities of a corporation are
manufactured, how "put upon the market," how admitted to the
Stock Exchange, how prices are made in the Stock Exchange, how
fictitious and fraudulent quotations are created and
disseminated, until the very shrewdest members of the Stock
Exchange cannot distinguish those which are real from the
fictitious in cases outside their own manufacturing. Then there
is an elaborate and ingenious procedure by which public opinion
is moulded, that is, by which people are made to believe that the
prices at which they buy and sell the stocks and securities are
bona fide; and this is a procedure as compact and as well
understood by the "System's" votaries as are the methods of the
bank-breaker or burglar -- who sends his "pals" ahead to "pipe"
the lay of the land -- by felony's votaries.
The underlying principle of the several organisms through which
the commerce of the country is conducted is the protection at
once of the interests of the individuals composing them and of
the public with which they do business. Provided this principle
is adhered to, no harm can be wrought to either. Most of the
contemporaneous swindles through which the people have been
plundered were perpetrated through the agency of corporations,
and this organism has become a sort of synonym for corrupt
practice. Yet the original corporation invention as I have
described it was devised to meet a real want of the people, and
it has merely been diverted from its proper use by the lawless
votaries of the "System."
Honest men in forming a corporation make publicly known the
character and worth of the properties or enterprises they are
organizing, what they have cost, what their profits are, and what
may reasonably be expected by investors. The tricksters and the
"System," with whom incorporation is generally but the first step
in a conspiracy for plunder, surround the proceeding with an air
of mystery and refuse information usually with: "We do our
business quietly and in silence, and those who do not like our
ways may keep out of this scheme." Their whole procedure is of
that high and mighty order which impresses the ordinary mortal
with a sense of confidence in the independence of its users and a
conviction that their scheme must be so good that they do not
care whether they sell or not. This is just the effect it is
intended to produce.
The next step is to lead the people toward the shambles. This is
done by "moulding public opinion," and for this interesting
function the "System" and Wall Street have an equipment of
magical potency. Public opinion is made through the daily press,
through financial publications of various kinds, and through
"news bureaus."
The first step toward "moulding public opinion" is taken when the
"System's" votaries send for the dishonest chief of a news
bureau, a man usually up in every trick of the trade. To this
man the "System's" votary will say something like this: "We are
going to work off blank millions of blank stock; it costs us thus
and so, and we want to sell for so and so many millions."
Nothing is kept back from this head panderer and procurer, for it
would be useless to attempt to deceive him. After the quality
and amount the "System" intends to work off in exchange for the
people's savings are explained, that part of the plunder which is
to come to the head news-bureau man is settled upon. The amount
varies with the size and quality of the robbery to be
perpetrated. In some cases as high as a million dollars in cash
or stock or their equivalent has been paid to a "moulder of
opinion" for simply so shaping up a game that the people might be
deceived into thinking one dollar of actual worth was four, six,
or eight dollars.
The head of the news bureau, having taken the contract to lay out
and carry through the deceptive part of the scheme by which the
people are to be buncoed, now begins operations. First, bargains
are made with conscience-less financial editors of the daily and
weekly newspapers, whereby for so much stock or for "puts" [1] or
"calls" [2] or both, they agree to insert in their paper's
financial column whatever yarns are fed them by the bureau man,
regardless of their truth or falsehood. To justify the attention
paid the subject by each editor, a certain amount of money is
spent in advertising, in the newspaper that employs him, the
merits of the enterprise. The financial journals are dealt with
on the same basis. 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.
(To show the extent to which this "moulding of public opinion" is
carried, I know in one instance of a high-priced financial scribe
being sent to live in St. Petersburg [Russia] 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 (1905) engaged in
this, one of the lowest forms of swindling, for such is not the
case.
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
[1] A "put" is the right to sell to a certain firm or individual
shares of stock at a stated price for a stated period.
[2] A "call" is the right to buy from a certain firm or
individual shares of stock at a stated price for a stated period.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
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http://feustel.mixi.net
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