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The swing in momentum could be read in several of the city’s other newspapers, which seemed to delight in the possibility that the Post had been wrong and Ponzi was on the level. The Boston Traveler ran a sports column that compared Ponzi to Babe Ruth, written as a letter to the Home Run King. “Give half that pedestal to Charlie Ponzi. Great pair, Ruth and Ponzi,” it read. “Ponzi is a lot like you, Babe. The bankers are said to be trying to retire him with the banks full. Just like trying to retire you with the bases full, hey Babe?” Even better for Ponzi, the afternoon Boston American quoted a North End banker as saying that Ponzi’s business “is honorable and it certainly presents no legal objections.” A separate story allowed a New York importer to expound at length about how he had figured out Ponzi’s secret formula for wealth. “For an expert in foreign exchange, there is not the slightest mystery about the operation by Mr. Ponzi,” said the self-proclaimed authority, E. H. Newfield of the importing firm E. Luca Manoussa.

But the Post did have at least one important ally: Clarence Barron. In the Friday edition of his Boston News Bureau circular and in several public statements, Barron intensified his attack, strongly suggesting that Ponzi was engaged in a Peter-to-Paul scheme. He also criticized the authorities for the slow pace of their investigations. But what burned Ponzi most was Barron’s suggestion that Ponzi was exploiting his own people, Italian immigrants. Ponzi was certain he had been libeled. He immediately ordered his lawyers to file a $5 million lawsuit against Barron that included attachments against his home in Boston and his beloved farm on the South Shore. “I tied him up so thoroughly,” Ponzi boasted, “even his cows couldn’t give milk.”

Barron would not back down. Late in the day he intensified his criticism while leaving himself open to charges of condescending bigotry. “If there is anybody in this country requiring protection at the present time it is the humble Italian immigrant,” he said. “These poor people from Italy, who are children in finance, come to this country, and many of them take out citizenship papers. They can then be put into the trenches and made to give up their lives in defence of this country. Are we to do nothing to protect their savings and their hard-earned dollars?” He repeated his challenges to prosecutors and scoffed at Ponzi’s lawsuit: “Ponzi or anyone else in his class may pile their attachments on me as high as Bunker Hill Monument and I shall still be found answering to the best of my ability the financial problems that are properly put to me.”

Ponzi immediately shot back with a measured yet biting response: “From the several articles published by Mr. Barron, I derive that he considers himself an authority on international finance, also that he is prejudiced, and that he is openly hostile to me,” Ponzi said in a statement handed to reporters. “His allusion implies a decided contempt toward the Italian race, which is uncalled for and unjustifiable.” After scolding Barron for forgetting, or never learning, the rules of polite society, Ponzi raised the banner of immigrant pride, borrowing from Curley’s playbook on ethnic politics. “If his allusion did not offend millions of my countrymen I would never even have noticed it, but since the allusion is plainly offensive and misleading, I wish to remind him that banking had its origin in Italy and that the bill of exchange was devised by Italians. It is not surprising, therefore, that I, an Italian by birth and educated in Italy, should have come from Italy with perhaps a deeper knowledge of foreign exchange, foreign customs, and foreign commerce far superior than the knowledge Mr. Barron has, ever did have, or ever will have.” To demonstrate that his interest was principle rather than principal, Ponzi promised that if he won the suit, the $5 million would go to charity.

Proof that Ponzi’s man-of-the-people pose