I shall spare my readers the enclosures. They were newspaper slips, printed on fairly thick paper, reproduced from unknown publications, and obviously put forth to discredit me by implication. One, headed "A Frenzied Financial Blackmailer," from the Vigilant, New York City, September 30, 1904, presented the confession, previously referred to, made by the editor of the United States Investors' Guardian, and an editorial denouncing the blackmail of financial corporations. Another slip was "Stamp out the Fake Financial Newspaper Publisher" from the Fourth Estate, New York City, October 1, 1904, in which the wickedness of the aforesaid editor came in for further moral castigation.
At once, as I read these letters and ran over the printed slips pinned to Mr. McCall's, I realized the purpose of the blackmail editor's confession and just how so much space came to be given it in the daily papers. Insurance corporations are large advertisers1 and enjoy great popularity in the business offices of great newspapers. It is not said in these clippings that either Mr. Lawson or Everybody's Magazine belongs to that lowest order of criminal, the self-confessed black-mailer, but the suggestion is obvious. Every policy-holder throughout the world who received these enclosures attached to letters from the greatest insurance president in America would instantly supply the connection—"'Frenzied finance black-mailer'—that's intended for Lawson, surely; 'Frenzied financial journal'—Everybody's Magazine, beyond question."
Will my readers weigh carefully this awful charge:
"Thomas W. Lawson, in addition to being a frenzied financial black-mailer, is attacking the New York Life Insurance Company because he tried to secure insurance from that company, and that company would not give it to him. His attack is made in the interest of some competing company."
Again, I ask that it be kept in mind that all