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The Commoner.
VOLUME 12, NUMBER 42
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The Commoner.
ISSUED WEEKLY
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STATEMENT OP THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGE
MENT, ETC.,
of Tho Commoner, published weekly at Lincoln,
Nebraska, required by the Act of August 24,'
1912: . '
Name of Postofllce Address
Editor William Jennings Bryan
Lincoln, Nebraska.
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; Lincoln, Nebraska.
Publisher Charles W. Bryan
Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Lincoln, Nebraska.
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CHAS. W. BRYAN, Publisher.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 1st
day of October, 1912.
(Seal) J. R. FARRIS, Notary Public.
My commission expires July 19, 1918.
Six hundred and sixty-seven thousand dol
lars is the amount spent to secure delegations
for Roosevelt in the states that have thus far
reported, and more than half are yet to hear
from. The demand for Roosevelt's nomination
was said to be overwhelming but it was evident
ly held in solution and it cost more than a mil
lion dollars to precipitate it and made it visible
at the primaries. It was the most expensive
chemical experiment ever made.
No progressive republican should be deceived
by the pretense that Mr. Roosevelt has or
ganized a permanent new party. It is only a big
club which he is using to beat the republican
party into insensibility then he will take
chances again.
The republicans are now claiming credit for
good cropB. Did they bring the rains? Hardly
If the republicans could control the rainfall they
would allow some monopoly to put a meter on
.the clouds and sell the showers at so much per
drop. s
And now the republicans are threatening a
panic if the democrats win. The panic of 1873
came under a republican president. So did the
panic of 1907. The panic of 1893 came a year
before the McKinloy high tariff law was repealed.
Just think of Mr. Roosevelt asking to succeed
Mr. Taft! Why, he discovered Mr. Taft; he
patented him, nominated him, guaranteed him
and elected him. And then he went off to Africa
and left him.
If democratic success would jeopardize the
prosperity of the country why did the president
5n dfX-P'eBldent insure democratic success by
dividing the republican party into warring fac-iions.
How Wall Street Engineered the Roose
velt Panic of 1907
The Philadelphia North American is an ardent
supporter of Theodore Roosevelt. During the
month of August, 1911, the North American
printed an editorial, showing how Wall street
brought about the panic of 1907. The Phila
delphia article will bear careful reading at tbis
time. Hero it is:
Back in the early months of 1907, when pros
perity was universal in this country, John D.
Rockefeller gave to the American press a state
ment predicting that financial disaster would
soon overtake the country's industry and com
merce. From time to time, following his
startling announcement, other Wall street
financiers voiced the same view.
So great was the prosperity of the country
that even this sinister warning did not immedi
ately slacken the activities of honest business.
Stranger still, it soon came to be regarded by
men who usually possessed acute business judg
ment as meaningless, save perhaps as a threat
against the Roosevelt administration. With
basic conditions sound, bumper crops and every
forge and mill and factory so busy thajt unem
ployment was practically non-existent, the pessi
mistic prophecy seemed incredible.
Our readers will recall how often then we
asserted our belief that, owing to the vicious
national currency system, Wall street had the
power to turn off the credit essential to legiti
mate business to such an extent that a panic
could be artificially produced.
We reasoned also that Wall street, controlled
by the Standard Oil and Morgan groups of banks
and trust companies, could make great profits
out of a money panic. The history of specula
tive banking gives overwhelming proof that
banks with vast sums of money at command
make their biggest profits when legitimate busi
ness is being threatened or wrecked, for lack of
usual accommodations.
We pointed out then that prosperity had be
come so widely diffused throughout every sec
tion of the country that large profits were going
into too many hands outside of the charmed
Wall street circle to please the men who con
trolled the credit.
If a money panic could be precipitated, in
evitably would the checking of legitimate busi
ness in various communities cause the accumu
lations of the many to come back into the hands
of the few. It seemed to us that, viewed from
tho standpoint of Standard Oil and Wall street
generally, a money panic was by far the most
profitable line of freebooting which could be
indulged in at that particular time.
We recorded the movements of the artificially
made panic as the plot unfolded day by day.
Despite all warnings, the insiders continued to
unload stacks upon the public at only gradually
lessening prices, thus continuing to add to their
war fund, after the death sentence of prosperity
had been read to all the world.
Soon after the Rockefeller prophecy of evil
it became known to the New York inside busi
ness world that war had been declared against
F. Augustus Heinze and Charles W. MorBe.
Heinze was an ancient, picturesque and ex
pensive enemy of Standard Oil's Amalgamated
Copper company. He never had been punctilious
in his financial methods or morals otherwise
he never would have seen New York. In Mon
tana he fought the devil with fire and won The
winning was his offense. Standard Oil was
forced to a compromise that left Heinze with a
dozen millions. Thereupon Standard Oil marked
Heinze for destruction and bided its time Tha
time came in 1907. '
Charles Morse had made tho mistake of fail
ing to content himself with mastery of the ico
market. He had become a possible impediment
to J. P. Morgan. He had made a merger of
Atlantic coastwise steamer lines. Morgan was
juBt about ready to perfect the railroad-trolley-water
monopoly of New England transportation.
Morse s boats provided undesirable competition
Morse became a marked man.
And both Heinze and Morse had come to New
York and were dabbling in finance
. The,U?1Ic was ml8led as to tbo real situation
5? ?k"lfUl P?e8s, asenta keeping alive the fiction
that the old business enmity between the Rocke-
stm rexistrerdman grUP and thG Mrgan Interests
Persistent, secret, united work led only te th
finding that tho intruders from Montana ana
New England were better fortified than tho
masters of Wall street had supposed. After
withstanding months of warfare they still had
at their back financial institutions which were
able to give them protection.
Just when, how or by whom the decision was
reached to wreck the Heinze and Morse banks
we do not know. But it now is history that
those banks were wrecked, the first victim being
the Knickerbocker Trust company, subsequently
proved thoroughly solvent.
Of coirse, it must bo borne in mind that
Heinze and Morse had been conducting their
fight on illegitimate banking lines, although it is
believed they differed little from the general
methods of other Wall street promoter-bankers.
It was not until it was found necessary to
wreck banks, by withholding from them clearing-house
sanction, that the scheme of the steel
tryst to pillage the Tennessee Coal and Iron
company became known.
Tennessee Coal and Tron long had been tho
Naboth's vineyard coveted by the steel trust.
Its property, developed and undeveloped, was
well nigh equal in value to that of the steel
corporation itself. It was better equipped than
its more powerful rival with the modern open
hearth process. It owned a wealth of high
grade ore, almost at the doors of its furnaces,
needing no such long shipments as from the
northern lakes to Pittsburg or Gary. Right at
hand was abundance of coking coal. Labor was
plentiful and conditions of living in tho mild
climate cheap. And there was competition in
transportation. It waB a potentially formidable
competitor of Morgan's pet "billion-dollar trust."
Therefore in the most fevpred period of tho
1907 panic it happened that the powerful New
York banks refused suddenly and utterly to con
tinue loans unless United States Steel bonds were
substituted for Tennessee Coal and Iron securi
ties as collateral.
It was believed that the trust company of
America was a heavy holder of the stock as col
lateral, and was really the strong financial
power which had enabled a Tennessee Coal and
Iron syndicate to withstand so long the subtle
attacks made upon it.
Not until the trust company was forced to ask
for mercy, after a wrecking run which the presi
dent now testifies was started by a statement of
George W. Perkins, then a partner of Morgan,
and after it had disclosed its assets, which in
cluded less than $50,000 worth of Tennessee
coal and iron stock, behind loans otherwise
amply protected, did other banks dare to come
to its assistance.
But the panic was forced harder and harder
until the really vulnerable spot was reached.
And what followed is told by John W. Gates,
who, like Thomas Lawson, has done a public
service, just once In his life by turning state's
evidence against one-time accomplices who
plucked him. Gates testified that the result was
"forced sale, in which the purchasers got all
the best of the bargain."
Not a dollar changed hands in the transac
tion, the absorbed company being paid for by
securities issued by the steel trust, and not a
dollar was added to the funds of the New York
banks to check the progress of the panic. It
was all but so much manipulation for the direct
profit of the financial combination headed by J.
Pierpont Morgan, and the losses were all borne
by the general public, including the legitimate
business men of America, who are still paying
the price.
Meanwhile, in the most acute days of the
panic, Theodore Roosevelt had been deluded into
making the worst mistake of his career, with
the best possible intentions. He trusted Mor
gan's subservient tool, George B. Cortelyou. And
through that 'stenographic taker of Wall street
dictation he was persuaded to listen to the tales
of woe of Frick and Gary, of the steel trust,
and sanction that iniquitous merger, to prevent
a predicted crash of credit and values that be
was warned would wreck or cripple every legiti
mate enterprise in the land.
Once Tennessee Coal and Iron had fallen into
the grasp of the panic-makers, following the
crushing of Heinze and Morse, It was to their
interest to stop the panic. By that time all the
money in Wall street had been absorbed by Mor
gan and Standard Oil. Morgan sent for nw
handy man, George B. Cortelyou, unhappily 'S
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