as deadly as a man can have for anything human. I have also reiterated that at such stage of this revelation as is possible I shall secure from the "System" every dollar I can wring from it to be used in my fight against it, provided always I can get its dollars in legal, fair, and above-board fighting ways—I mean, in the open market.
Mr. Lawson appears before the bar of public opinion as a volunteer witness for the commonwealth—"state's evidence"—as the lawyers phrase it—and hence his reputation, his motives, his character, his every act, become at once fit subjects for the closest scrutiny and examination.
Whoever says that in telling my story I am revealing anything which it is not fair or just to tell, or that I have not a perfect right to state, says that which is false. I am confining myself to explaining how the "System" gets its money. I do not touch upon how it spends it. If in an honorable way I could write the things that have come to me confidentially, the "System" might well tremble. I confess that at times I have been tempted to depart from my code—when, for instance, soon after the first Donohoe chapter, a man came to me and showed that he had been offered $5,000 to vouch for the statement—which Denis Donohoe, H. H. Rogers's right-hand man, had printed, and the insurance companies had spread broadcast—that the first ten years of Thomas W. Lawson's business life were spent as an employee of Richard Canfield, the Providence and New York gambler, and afterward as his partner. "Give us an affidavit to that effect and we will pay you $5,000." To this man I said: "I have never in my life been connected with any gambling-place in any way, nor had to do with gambling in any form, and only once in my life have I set eyes on Richard Canfield. He