investigation of the newspaper files, particularly in Osgood vs. Lamson, and The New York Store-Service Company vs. Lamson, will show a state of corporation assassination equal to that of the "Standard Oil," only on a smaller scale, of course. Perjury, bribery, and even murder will be found openly charged and in some cases proved. At the height of the sensational career of the Lamson Company it ran into one of my corporations, The Lawson Manufacturing Company, and started in to "do me up" or compel a consolidation, and—well, I gave it battle. The following circular to the stockholders will show how the battle started:
Dear Sir: I deem it my duty to say to you, as a shareholder of the Lamson Store-Service Company, that your Mr. Lamson and his agents have opened up on my company, and with their usual criminal methods are endeavoring to ruin us. This circular is to inform you that I have this day given notice to each of your officers and directors that, in three days from to-day, if they have not stopped their dirty work and taken their hands off my company, they will take the consequences. I do not pretend to be able to meet them on the fighting grounds of the courts, for I know too well their power of corruption and jury-buying, but I assure you I have other ways by which I can stop them, etc., etc.
If Donohoe had desired to deal with facts, he could not have missed the details of this story, of which the papers at the time were full. It was a fight which would have warmed the heart-cockles of an embalmed warrior of the catacombs. Lamson stock was selling at 62, the highest price it ever attained, not 122, as this numskull states. When I began operations I slaughtered it and the reputation of Lamson and his associates; and in the midst of the fight, when the