p. 16 | Frenzied Finance

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 10, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 32.

Frenzied Finance

“Frenzied Finance.”—In his second article under the above heading, in Everybody’s, for August, Mr. Thomas W. Lawson begins his story of the formation of the Amalgamated Copper Trust, of which he himself was the originator on a different basis. In the first he tells us that there had been, to his personal knowledge, losses to individuals aggregating over one hundred million dollars, thirty suicides and twenty reputable citizens who became convicts, all because of the gigantic scheme and system of the Amalgamated. In the August issue we are informed that Amalgamated Copper “is a corporation with $155,000,000 capital, 1,500,000 shares of the par value of $100 each. Its entire stock was sold to the public at an average of $115 per share ($100 to $130), and in 1903, [four years from its birth] the price had declined to $33 per share.” “It has, from its birth to present writing, been responsible for more hell than any other trust or financial thing since the world began. Because of it the people have sustained incalculable losses, and have suffered untold miseries.” Yet Mr. Lawson tells us that the men who have wrought all this are the finest men socially, clean and honorable in all their domestic and social relations, but as cruel, as relentless, as the grave when dollars are concerned. It is the system which is at fault, Mr. Lawson argues. But the men made the system, and God will hold them responsible for its evil working. The Amalgamated is a child or protégé of the Standard Oil Company, of whom the managers are Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, and John D. Rockefeller, the chief of whom, which will be news to many, is Mr. Rogers. The articles are one of many revelations of overwhelming last-day lawlessness so abundantly foretold in the prophets. In this connection read the article by Professor Rine, on page 4.