I

as to prevent the investigators from fastening on you and your associates the more desperate crimes that have been committed in the past—the 150 to 200 millions stolen and diverted or used in corruption. You know as I do that only the very edges of this national cesspool have yet been uncovered. You know that not only have the ballot-box and the Legislature at Albany been tampered with, but the law-making and administering machinery of other States corrupted, the Federal Government surrounded, and certain of the judiciary of America "educated."

You believe you can keep the evidence of these crimes from the American people by the same kind of bluff and effrontery with which you met my first charges. But you have mistaken the tempers of your countrymen.

I have been authorized in writing by over 16,000 policy-holders, carrying over fifty-four millions of insurance, to act for them.

I had intended to await the finish of the New York investigation before proceeding, but as I have had placed in my hands during the past few days evidences of the determination of yourself and your accomplices and fellow-conspirators to face it out regardless of consequences, and as I believe men capable of committing the acts that have been proved during the past few days are fully capable of taking the transportable part of the billion and a quarter funds to foreign countries, and of using them to keep themselves from their justly deserved punishments, I have decided to act now.

In sending you this open letter, I am actuated only by a desire to bring you and your associates to such a sense of the seriousness of your position that you will see it is useless longer to attempt to defy the American people.

Yours, for the Exposure