rter that number, and make the
play peal truth for a single hour to the audience who will read this
book, or to one-thousandth part the audience that has already read it in
_Everybody's Magazine_.

Such as the story is, it is before you. If in its perusal you fathom my
intentions, my hopes, my desires, I shall have been repaid for the pain
its writing has brought me. At least you will find the history of a
colossal business affair involving millions of dollars and manned by the
financial leaders of the moment. It is a fair representation of
financial methods and commercial morals as they exist in America at the
beginning of the twentieth century. As a contemporary document the
narrative should have value; as history it is not, I believe, without
interest. As a message it has had its influence. Indeed, it is not an
exaggeration to say that no man in his own generation has seen such a
crop come forth from seed of his own sowing since the long bygone days
when the wandering king planted dragons' teeth on the Phoenician plain
and raised up an army of warriors.

Yours very truly
Thomas W. Lawson

FOREWORD

There will be set down in this book, in as simple and direct a fashion
as I can write it, the story of Amalgamated Copper and of the "System"
of which it is the most flagrant example. This "System" is a process or
a device for the incubation of wealth from the people's savings in the
banks, trust, and insurance companies, and the public funds. Through its
workings during the last twenty years there has grown up in this country
a set of colossal corporations in which unmeasured success and continued
immunity from punishment have bred an insolent disregard of law, of
common morality, and of public and private right, together with a grim
determination to hold on to, at all hazards, the great possessions they
have gulped or captured. It is the same "System" which has taken from
the millions of our people billions of dollars, and given them over to a
score or two of men with power to use and enjoy them as absolutely as
though these billions had been earned dollar by dollar by the labor of
their bodies and minds. Yet in telling the story of Amalgamated, the
most brazen and voracious maw of this "System," I desire it understood
that I take no issue with men; it is with a principle I am concerned.
With the men I have had close and intimate intercourse, and from my
knowledge of the means they have used, and the man