Chapter XXXIII: A Retrospect and a Moral (3)

Now for the moral, or the iniquity, rather, of the preceding, the wrong to policy-holders, which has been so completely ignored and passed over by the insurance press and all hands: Either the company had, as at least supposedly it has in all such cases, ample security for its advances to agents in the pledges of their renewal contracts, or it had not. On the former hypothesis, that $1,900,000-odd was a sound and valid asset, earning a good rate of interest. On the latter, the company simply squandered this amount of trust funds belonging to its trusting policy-holders in its mad rush for business at whatever cost; or--In either case the money has gone from sight so far as any sign or indication appears to the contrary since.

And before leaving this point, it may be well to ask, "Has the New York Life Insurance Company altogether discontinued these advances to agents?" If not, how and where are they accounted for? An answer may be found, possibly, in the comparatively meagre underwriting profits of the company, growing relatively smaller and beautifully less with each succeeding year. I say it may possibly be found here, because this is the only place the item could be buried; but I am reasonably sure that it is not buried here, and that these advances to agents are being continued on a scale as large as, or larger than ever, for the agents could not have been shut off and the business increased at one and the same time.

Again, during the last two months of 1904, or at a time when my story, "Frenzied Finance," began to get in its work all over the world, I received from many quarters information that the Big Three had instructed their leading agents to get in a great lot of new risks "at any cost," so that the total business for the year would show such increase as to discredit my claim that the policy-holders were getting "scared." I watched the game with much interest, knowing that bunco would out in time, by whomever worked. During these months I read from week to week of this great policy, or that record-breaking risk just landed by this or that agent. One in particular made me chuckle at its transparency. A certain friend of the New York Life, a Wall Street man, "has just taken out a $2,000,000 policy." About the same time I began to receive information of the remarkable offers that were being made to prospective customers, offers which probably meant an indirect rebate of perhaps the full first year's premium; and I got to thinking and reaching back into my memory-box, and I raked out a number of instances of the same kind of offers which had been made to me in the past, and I ruminated to myself how all this was possible; for even if the Big Three were bold enough to get around the law against such practices, it puzzled me how they could pay to their agent the big cash commissions that new business called for. Presently as I waited I read, as did the rest of the world, the big January full-page advertisements of the New York Life to its policy-holders, calling their attention to the increase of $15,000,000 new business over the year before. Then I took another think and did a little work, with the following result:

A JOLT FOR THE NEW YORK LIFE

The "Brown Book of Life Insurance Economics" shows that the sum laid by annually for future tontine or other dividends ranged in the ten years ending with 1903 from $2,936,026 to a minimum of $956,597, these amounts being savings after payment of dividends. In 1904, however, for the first time in the tontine history of the company--also the first year of maturity of non-forfeitable tontine contracts with their largely reduced dividends--the dividends paid and credited, $6,018,202, actually exceeded the year's earnings, as shown by the company's sworn statement, by $76,595.

I want to call policy-holders' attention right here to what this means to those who are now being beguiled into taking policies on the strength of "adjusted" estimates placed by the company in its agents' hands, showing dividend results ranging from fifteen to fifty per cent. higher than those of 1904, with, however, the saving (?) clause that, depending upon future unforeseeable conditions, the same "may be higher or may be lower." It may be added that, but for a profit realized from sale of securities, the company's gross surplus would have shown shrinkage.

In order to realize what such a showing means, let us make a comparison, using the figures of a well-known Western company (partly tontine, but operated on diametrically opposite lines from the New York Life), for the three years 1901-03, this company being barely four-tenths the size of the New York Life as regards outstanding business:

COMPARISON OF TOTALS, THREE YEARS, 1901-03

Dividend Laid by for future
earnings. Dividends. dividends.

New York Life $16,826,289 $13,189,278 $3,636,091
Western Company 17,788,820 12,284,255 5,504,565
----------- ----------- ----------
-$962,531 +$905,023 -$1,867,574

After mulling these over, I dug further in regard to the "prosperity" as shown by the business of 1904. The company boasts of its enormous volume of new business, $345,722,000, which is $15,000,000 in excess of the 1903 business. Here is the story: While this new business was being secured, the

Total terminations were $162,326,114
Less those inevitable terminations by death
or maturity of endowments 26,767,873
------------
Waste by lapse, surrender, etc. $135,558,241
And when we add the lapsed policies which
continued in force, under the "extended-insurance"
provision 89,938,500
------------
We have the total waste of $225,496,741

and this, reduced to its actual significance, means that of the total actual terminations, 83.6 per cent. was _actual waste_ and only 16.4 per cent. legitimate terminations, while the great bulk of the last item of $89,938,500, upon which premium payments have ceased, must run off the books in the near future; and this is what goes on from year to year, more than keeping pace with the boasted increase in volume of new business. The public never sees this side of the question.

When I got to this point in my deductions, I was brought face to face with the tremendous expense of acquiring new business. Then I saw the light--why it was necessary to wipe off the books nearly two millions of what were considered good assets, that is, pledges from agents of their renewal commissions against which advances had been made, and where the new business came from, and how it was possible to make rebates when the law says they shall not be made. An agent induces a friend to have a policy written, for which the agent practically pays the premium out of his commission, and thereupon has advanced to him large sums against the future premiums which are to be paid by the policy-holder, who has no intention of paying them, and allows his policy to lapse. Heavens! What a vista of plundering opportunities the bare thought opens up! Somebody has to pay.

THE MILLION-DOLLAR POLICY

In the May number I inserted the following letter:

FORT WORTH, TEXAS, February 16, 1905.

THOMAS W. LAWSON, ESQ., Boston, Mass.

_Dear Sir_: I have read and will continue to read your
articles on "Frenzied Finance," published in _Everybody's
Magazine_, with a great deal of interest. I have noted
especially your statements in reference to the big
life-insurance companies, as I am a policy-holder in both
the New York Life and the Equitable.

Under the heading of "Lawson and His Critics," in
_Everybody's_ for January, you give your side as to the
assertion on the part of the insurance companies that you
have been refused life insurance, among other things
publishing a fac-simile of a contract of life insurance
between yourself and the Equitable Life Assurance Society
for $1,000,000. On my first reading of your article, I was
certainly impressed with the fact that you had $1,000,000 of
insurance with this company. On a second reading, I note
that you do not say in so many words that this is a policy
in force, but you say: "Well, look at this reproduction of
the document that is now in my possession and always has
been since the date when it was delivered to me by one of
the great representatives of the 'System,' The Equitable
Life Assurance Society." This statement taken in connection
with others, conveys the idea that you are insured in the
company named.

In conversation with a gentleman a few days since, who
claims to know whereof he speaks, having gotten his
information direct from New York, he stated that you had no
policy in the Equitable Life Assurance Society for
$1,000,000, or any other amount, and that the reproduction
referred to above, was of a _sample copy_ of a policy, and
not a real contract.

As your editor states that you will answer any pertinent
question, I will ask the following, trusting that you may
consider it pertinent: Have you a valid subsisting policy in
the Equitable Life Assurance Society for $1,000,000, the
fac-simile of which appears in _Everybody's Magazine_ for
January, 1905?

Trusting you will favor me with a reply, I am,

Very truly, ----

I answered:

Since the chapter which contained the fac-simile of the million-dollar policy was published I have received many letters similar to the above, but have not answered any because I wished to see how far the insurance people would go in this matter. Finding I did not reply to the different attempts they made in their subsidized journals to draw me out, they grew bolder, until the use of this million-dollar policy has become the chief defence of the Big Three companies. I want my readers to think this point over and weigh its significance carefully. In a previous chapter I called attention to the fact that there is nothing to protect the policy-holder from being robbed of the amounts he has invested to insure his family from poverty after his death but the honesty of the men who really control the big insurance companies as absolutely as any of their policy-holders do their personal affairs. If these men are honest, policy-holders in their companies may rest easy for the time being; but if they are dishonest, the policy-holders should call them to account, for these men have it absolutely in their power to make way with the funds of the companies they manage until there will not be a dollar left for policy-holders.

Therefore the one thing for policy-holders to settle, the one vital thing is, Are these men honest, or are they tricksters and liars?

To settle this point they must be weighed in the same way that all other men and women in this world are weighed--by the simple, ordinary standards: Do they lie? Do they trick? Do they cheat?

When I made my charges in my first chapters against the votaries of the "System" who controlled the insurance companies, they met my specific charges as dishonest men would meet them, not as honest men would. They impugned my motives, and specifically charged that my reason for attacking them was that I had been blacklisted by all insurance companies and could not get insurance from any of them.

While it was immaterial so far as my specific charges went whether this was so or not, it had a most decided bearing upon the question whether the officers and controllers of the Big Three insurance companies were honest or dishonest men. Therefore I picked up their accusation and began a line of argument to prove they were tricksters and absolutely devoid of honor.

I showed, by reproducing the personal letters of President McCall, of the New York Life, to my office and to my house, reenforced by his special agent's letter, and these reenforced by his Boston agent's letter, that I had been continuously and urgently importuned to take insurance during the time he said I was blacklisted. The insurance people met this by the excuse that these were not personal letters, but mere advertisements.

I then reproduced the million-dollar policy, hoping to drag from the Big Three a specific charge that this, too, was an advertisement.

Of course, I did not pretend that the policy in question was in force, that is, that I was insured in the Equitable Life Assurance Society for one million dollars. This would have been too childish; first, because every insurance policy, particularly the very large ones, is as much a matter of record, to be got at by any one in the insurance business, as are real-estate records; and, next, because that which I printed had the signature punched out, which made it obvious that it was not in force. My object was to lead the Equitable into the positive statement that it was an ordinary advertisement, when I would have reproduced the proposition that accompanied it and which the Equitable made in probably the most elaborate set of documents ever assembled by an insurance company for the purpose of inducing one of the "best risks" in America to take out a "great big policy." These constitute the complete argument which was made by the Equitable Life Assurance Society to persuade me to take a million dollars' worth of insurance. They are engrossed upon parchment and bound in a specially gotten-up morocco cover, and, I was told, cost the insurance company between four and five hundred dollars. They were presented to me as the result of my demanding that all the inducements they offered to come into their company should be put down on paper, so that there could be no mistaking them. The documents as engrossed and the terms of the contract were carefully copyrighted by the Equitable, and are now on my table before me as I write.

The question which the publication of the million-dollar policy was to settle was whether or not I had been importuned to take out great sums of insurance in the leading insurance company of America, and it proved exactly what I had contended--that I had been so importuned.

Up to and including my April, 1905, instalment I have made specific charges against the great insurance companies, the Mutual, the New York Life, and the Equitable:

1st. That the control of the officers of these great corporations over the billion dollars of their policy-holders' funds is as absolute and unrestricted for all practical purposes, as is their control of their own personal affairs, and is largely exercised for their personal enrichment.

2d. That the policy-holders have absolutely no voice in the management of these companies or the control of their funds, because of the manipulation of proxies in the New York Life and the Mutual and the control of the stock of the Equitable.

3d. That those who do control the big companies are votaries of the "System," and as such are subject to the "System's" orders as absolutely as is James Stillman, president of the "Standard Oil" National City Bank.

4th. That the insiders of these insurance companies, not one but several of them, have accumulated fortunes in the past few years, of from one to twenty millions, while at the same time premium-rates have advanced and dividends decreased.

5th. That under the present methods of conducting these great companies it is as inevitable as it was in the case of 520-per-cent. Miller or Mrs. Howe's Woman's Bank, that as soon as they can get no more insurance, the funds behind the old insurance will be dissipated and a crash take place such as the world has never known before.

6th. That the companies are "milked" in every direction, through the purchase and sale of real estate, through the loaning of their millions, and through the manipulation and investment of their funds.

7th. That they acquire new business at an expense and by methods which alone will in time wreck the companies.

8th. That in a single instance the New York Life sold securities for $5,839,087, but its statement under oath to the State Insurance Departments showed receipts of only $3,075,392.

9th. That the New York Life sold the stock of the New York Security & Trust Company, which it held, to its insiders for over $4,000,000 less then they could have secured for it from others.

I have specifically charged other things, and will, as my story proceeds, make many more specific charges of as serious a nature; but the above suffice for my present argument, which is, that up to and including the April number I have made these accusations and that the only way they have been met is by underhand mud-slinging and by alleging that the incentive for my attack was that I could not secure insurance from any of the American companies; and I have met this with absolute proof, which must stand until it is disproved, that I have been during the past ten years importuned and urged by the large insurance companies of America to take out insurance.

Therefore I will leave the question of this million-dollar policy and other forms of importuning until the insurance companies offer something in rebuttal.

THE WAY OUT

The overhauling of the Equitable Life exposed conditions far worse than I had indicated to the public, and it seemed probable that the usual whitewashing process would be utilized to conceal the guilt of the rapacious criminals who had been untrue to the most sacred trust that can be imposed on man. Since that time, however, the Governor of the State of New York has appointed a committee to investigate the affairs of the Big Three corporations, and the resulting disclosures are the sensation of the hour as this book goes to press. In order to protect the interests of policy-holders, in case the authorities declined to act, I issued the following address in the July, 1905, number of _Everybody's_:

TO THE POLICY-HOLDERS OF THE NEW YORK LIFE, MUTUAL, AND EQUITABLE INSURANCE COMPANIES

The time has come for you to act. When, less than a year ago, I began my story, "Frenzied Finance," I exposed the function of the three great life-insurance companies in the structure of the "System." I explained that they were controlled in the interests of great financiers and that their funds were juggled with to compass the huge plundering operations of Wall Street. At that time the New York Life, the Equitable, and the Mutual Life loomed before the American people as the greatest, most respected, and most venerable institutions in our broad land. To-day they stand for all that is tricky, fraudulent, and oppressive.

A great change to have been accomplished in less than twelve months!

My readers are by this time familiar with the condition of affairs in the Equitable. The greed, juggling, and grafting practised by its officers and controllers have been fully exposed through the press. I hope none of those who have followed the terrific arraignment of rottenness and rascality made through the Frick report are so foolish as to imagine that the evils described are confined to the Equitable. In my own opinion the Equitable is much less reprehensible than the New York Life, and when that institution and the Mutual are thoroughly shaken up, as they will be in the future, indubitable evidence of the same fashion of extravagance, trickery, and fraud will be found in plenty. Conditions in the three institutions are the same; though of late the New York Life has altered the character of most of its securities. Each has piled up an immense surplus which has been used through allied trust companies for stock juggling; each has paid extravagant commissions to agents; the funds of each have been managed to afford to high officials plentiful opportunities of graft; each has its real estate, fire insurance, low rent and loan favor graft; in each will be found the same type of syndicates as President Alexander and Vice-President Hyde used for their personal enrichment in the Equitable. To-day President John A. McCall of the New York Life is credited with possessing a fortune of between ten and fifteen millions--a few brief years ago he was State Superintendent of Insurance in Albany. The chief associate in the management of the same corporation, George W. Perkins, J. Pierpont Morgan's partner, is another very rich man, whose wealth has been accumulated in a few short years. Do you imagine for a moment that such transactions as I set forth last year in connection with the New York Security and Trust Company, in which the interest of the New York Life was sold to a syndicate of its own directors for a sum far below the market value of the shares, were put through without the connivance of President McCall and Vice-President Perkins? Even if the New York Life, as its president explains, did make a large profit on the sale of the trust company's stock, he cannot deny that the syndicate paid far less than the then market value of the shares for the insurance company's holdings.

There is something particularly vile about the crimes of these high officials and distinguished gentlemen who have been waxing fat and luxurious on life-insurance graft. In a recent number of this magazine I drew a parallel between the confidence operator and the burglar to show that the latter despises the former for a sneak thief who takes no chances in his thieving operations. Infinitely more depraved than the sneak thief is the high-placed functionary, presiding over a great institution built up out of the savings of millions of people, paid an immense salary for his important services, trusted with vast funds because of his reputation for integrity and business sagacity--who yet uses his splendid place to line his own pocket. Of all fiduciary institutions, life insurance should be the most sacred. Its chief function is to care for the widow, the orphan, and the helpless. The millions of revenue paid annually into the life-insurance companies of this country represent the blood and tears and sweat of millions of Americans who thus provide for the care of their dear ones for the time when death shall have put an end to their own income-earning abilities. The administrator of a trust so solemn and exalted should devote himself to its safeguarding as a priest dedicates himself to the service of his Maker. The responsibility conferred on him is the highest and holiest man can repose in his fellow-man. Remembering all this, consider again the revelations of greed and plunder in the Equitable; consider that millions upon millions of dollars have been filched and wasted; analyze the Frick report and the letter of President Alexander to the directors of the society, calling for Vice-President Hyde's removal from office. Think, ye farmers and laborers, of personal traveling expenses of $75,000 in a brief period, of salaries of $100,000 annually paid for a few hours of work per day; think of vast sums of your money used to provide expensive safe-deposit institutions with low-priced quarters so that the personal income of men already multimillionaires may wax still greater. Think of the great institution to whose hundreds of millions' income you contribute your hard-earned dollars, being farmed, milked, and squeezed by a pack of dissolute and greedy schemers and robbers more conscienceless and oppressive than any band of thugs in the country.

When I began to discuss in _Everybody's Magazine_ the subject of the three great life-insurance companies, I stated that there is actually nothing between the two million-odd policy-holders and the possibility of their being robbed of the billions of dollars of their accumulated savings but the devotion and the honesty of the men who are in control of these institutions.

You know what happened when I said this to you the first time--less than a year ago. The officers, trustees, and hirelings of these great companies laughed to scorn my statements and called me a liar and a scoundrel. They drew the attention of the whole world to the standing and wealth and honesty of the men who managed these great corporations, and proved by the most positive asseverations that nothing could be more preposterous than that any one of them could do wrong. But the great God, who seldom allows His children to remain long deceived to their undoing, heard these loud-mouthed protestations, and to-day the world is listening to exposures of low, mean thefts and contemptible crimes far worse than any to which I had pointed.

And from whom comes the proof of the treacheries and rascalities perpetrated within the Equitable? From the men who control and manage this great institution and its hundreds of millions of accumulations. When my accusations first appeared, these men saw the handwriting on the wall and some of them, bolder than others, determined to seize these vast hoards of the public's money and at the same time get possession of all evidence of past crimes so that they might be immune forever after from punishment and the necessity of making restitution. In the act of grabbing, however, the robbers fell out with one another, and, presto! they are in the public square where all men, women, and children, cats, dogs, and asses may see and hear as they gouge, bite, and accuse each other of the vilest crimes.

These are the men in whose custody even now are the accumulations on which you, Mr. Policy-holder, are depending to take care of your wife and little ones, should you die. On the honor and responsibility of men who in the past five years have "saved" out of salaries of $20,000 to $100,000, private fortunes of millions, you must absolutely rely for the safety of the billions of dollars of your savings. The future of the helpless beings whom your hard daily labors provide with a livelihood is in the hands of men who admit having expended $100,000 of your money to provide a lordly and regal entertainment for a set of extravagantly paid agents and solicitors who, spurred on by prodigal inducements, have piled up huge amounts of new business on the company's books. I have explained to you before what such business is worth, that the agent gets so large a commission that he is practically in a position to accept risks at far below their cost to the company, and that such business as this is seldom renewed. The same men have been paying personal secretaries, gardeners, and flunkies out of your earnings; they have been feasting and traveling in private cars with large parties of the New York flubstocracy at your expense; every possible extravagance they have been guilty of by means of the revenues some of you have worked fourteen to eighteen hours a day to gather in. Shame, I say, on such contemptible thievery.

I cannot resist the temptation to pull back the slide from one episode of the past. When my strictures on the three great life-insurance companies first appeared, one of the vice-presidents of the Equitable, Gage E. Tarbell, in writing to an inquiring policy-holder, said: "Pay no attention to Lawson; he is only a reckless stock gambler, and every sensible person knows that any man, no matter what his position might be, who would do anything to cause loss to the class of people we insure, must be a rascal." And this is the same man Tarbell, it is now admitted by all the Equitable officers and investigating committees, who, as soon as he saw the crisis coming in the affairs of the Equitable, had his pal, President Alexander, pay to him $135,000, which he claimed was due him for commission renewals, even though he was then in receipt of a salary of $60,000 per annum for his services. It is through the operations of this same Tarbell that the vast system of rebates, one of the chief evils of the present system of life insurance, came into being, and through his prodigality that the immense sum of $2,000,000 stands on the books of the company, representing advance commissions to the pampered agents.

The time has come for all you policy-holders to act, and there is but one way to act.

A thousand and one schemes are afloat to confuse and trick you at this period. The cry is--anything to hush things, to confine the fire to the Equitable, at any cost, even though it totally consumes the $400,000,000 of the people's savings in that institution. I told you at the beginning that the New York Life was worse, if anything, than the Equitable, and the Mutual Life just as bad. Therefore I unqualifiedly advise policy-holders to:

1. Pay up this year's premium--it will be the last to these plunderers.

2. Have nothing to do with any committee or scheme.

3. Write me, at once, your name, address, and the amount and character of your policy. I want nothing more from you, and under no consideration will I divulge your name without your further consent in writing.

I already have the names of thousands of policy-holders, but to make my plan instantly effective I must have scores of thousands.

My plan has for its aim and end, this and only this:

The absolute preservation of the face value of your policy.

The reduction of future premium payments to forty cents on the dollar on what you now pay.

The restitution of millions upon millions looted from the three great companies, or as much as can be collected after a careful examination of the books--and the punishment of the thieves.

Bear in mind _that I will not have any money connection with you in the working out of my plan. I pay my own expenses. I will not ask any reward or profit, money, office, or otherwise, nor will I under any circumstances accept any._

In response to this appeal I received over sixteen thousand proxies, representing over fifty-four millions of insurance. The investigations made by the legislative committee of the State of New York are unearthing in a most thorough manner the iniquities of the directors and managers of the Big Three, and before proceeding further I shall await the results of its work. If there is any way short of criminal proceedings to compel the restitution of the millions diverted or stolen from policy-holders, I shall begin suits which I am satisfied can be fought to a successful conclusion.

THE CALL TO ARMS

The extraordinary disclosures made before the investigating committee of the New York Legislature, which is now conducting inquiries into the methods of the great insurance companies, led me finally to issue the following open letter to John A. McCall, in which I review the controversy between us and contrast his disclosures of corruption and mismanagement with his brazen professions of virtue and probity made last year. In order to wrest the two great mutual companies from the control of men who are obviously unworthy to direct them and with whom the policy-holders' funds are plainly unsafe, I asked for proxies which would make it possible for me to bring about a change in the control of these two great corporations.

This letter and call appeared in the November, 1905, issue of _Everybody's Magazine_.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN A. McCALL, PRESIDENT NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

_Sir_: It is time your attention was called to the moral sense of the American people. It is time some one dragged you out of the Wall Street conservatory and set you in the plain white light of daily life. It is time you were shown yourself as you are to-day seen by the millions of your countrymen who, a month ago, believed you to be a great and honorable man.

In spite of the terrible exposures of the past few weeks, in spite of the pitiless revealment of yourself and your directors as tricksters, in spite of the unveiling of the jugglery, grafting, and corruption of your administration of the most sacred trust that can be confided to man, you remain unconvinced of your fall and unpenetrated by your shame. Fortified by the sympathy of your fellow-sinners, you imagine your audacious bluster and your sly evasions before the Investigating Committee of the State of New York represented shrewd generalship and able strategy, forgetting that the enemy against whom your manoeuvres were directed was the American people and that, in this inquisition, your character and reputation were as absolutely before the bar as though you had been indicted for sequestration of the funds of some dead friend's wife.

Throughout this broad country of ours are good Americans who have slaved and toiled to gather up the hundreds of dollars which you have exacted from them yearly as the price of the future livelihood of their wives and children, or as the provision for their own old age. You have made yourself the custodian of these funds under sacred pledge of square dealing and safe and honest administration. You have made yourself the national executor, the great depositary of the moneys of the widow and the orphan. You have cried your virtue and honorableness from the housetops, and, under the stress of your pleadings, hundreds of millions of dollars have been confided to you annually--half the savings of the nation have been turned into your coffers, all because you insisted that you were honest beyond all other men, and that the dear ones left behind might rely on your generosity and integrity for their support.

And it is with the moneys that might at any time have been claimed by these widows and orphans that you have been rigging syndicates, debauching legislatures, juggling judges, manipulating stock-markets, and doing other things which will be proven later. Instead of employing the vast power and the immense wealth intrusted to you to conserve the interests of your policy-holders, you have made yourself a part of the cruel robbing machine which the "System" has created to deprive the American people of their savings. Under the pretence of seeking profitable investment, your corporation has been perverted into a vast stock-gambling agency. You have filled the high places in your corporation with your own children and relatives and their relatives, and conferred on them great salaries out of which they have grown rich. You have paid out to friends and associates, on various pleas, millions that rightly belonged to your policy-holders. You have done all these things habitually, yet to-day you describe the investigation being conducted into your operations as an impertinence, and secretly you regard this inquisition and all that pertains to it as a waste of time and energy. You are unrepentant, unashamed, and defiant.

I shall take this opportunity, sir, of reviewing our own relations during the past year and contrasting your position to-day with that you boasted twelve months ago.

One year ago, in _Everybody's Magazine_, I said:

"The officers, trustees, and officials of the 'Big Three' life-insurance companies have been and are systematically robbing their policy-holders. They are grafters--mean, contemptible grafters."

I gave specific instances of their thieveries.

You replied, not by haling me to court, but by:

Circulating throughout the world documents by the millions, disparaging my reputation by advertisements and "news" and "editorial" statements from your subsidized insurance press, denying my charges and attacking my character, all at the expense of your policy-holders.

You libelled me in thousands of private letters to policy-holders, many of which came back to me.

You employed James M. Beck, ex-Assistant Attorney-General of the United States, then and now chief attorney for Henry H. Rogers, the Standard Oil Company, the "System," and the Mutual Life Insurance Company, to ridicule my utterances and asperse my honor in addresses in the cities of Philadelphia and Boston.

You employed James H. Eckels, ex-Comptroller of the Currency of the United States, now president of the Commercial Bank and representative of the "System" in the West, to attack my arguments and distort my motives in Chicago.

You ordered Vice-President Perkins, of the New York Life Insurance Company, to perform similar service in Philadelphia; and

The burden of all these documents, advertisements, and disguised advertisements and addresses was: "Lawson is an unmitigated liar and scoundrel, whose sole reason for attacking the insurance companies is that we refused him insurance."

I replied by printing your personal letter to me, wherein you importuned me to accept insurance in your company.

Again you gave me the lie, and pronounced your letter spurious.

I replied to you and your followers by instancing cases of perjury, bribery, and false statements.

I stated that your claim that your company did not own, nor loan upon, stocks was false, and that it was made for the purpose of misleading and imposing upon your policy-holders, banks, trust companies, Government officials, and investors.

You answered this by writing a letter to one of the great churchmen of America, and in it you said: "I pledge you my word of honor this company has never, since 1899, had a dollar's interest, directly or indirectly, in any stock. Lawson knows this, and deliberately, for his own base purposes, makes charges to the contrary which he knows to be false."

To-day you and your fellow-plunderers stand convicted in the eyes of the whole world not only of juggling the moneys of the widow and the orphan in the stock-market, but of manipulating these trust funds for the benefit of your own pockets. To-day the world is aghast at your perfidy and amazed at your temerity.

Notwithstanding the turpitude already exposed to the people, you still imagine you can so conduct yourself 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 of Corporation Sneak Thieves,
THOMAS W. LAWSON.

TO LIFE-INSURANCE POLICY-HOLDERS

At the beginning of my story, in 1904, I made certain accusations against the management of the three big life-insurance companies.

I knew, when I began my story, that the big life-insurance companies were in the hands of grafters and thieves, just as are the great banks, trust companies, railroad companies, and big corporations and trusts.

_This I knew_ and, in plain language, said it.

The big insurance companies, through their officers and trustees, replied by declaring: "He's an unmitigated liar."

I kept at my knitting, for I knew the crimes of these insurance grafters were such that, sooner or later, the world would have an opportunity to judge fairly who were the unmitigated liars and thieves.

The opportunity is at hand.

To-day the press of the world is devoting its space, news and editorial, to a recital of the contemptible and heinous crimes of the New York Life and the Mutual Life Insurance companies--not as I relate them, but as their own officers and trustees publicly confess them.

In the July instalment of my story I called upon policy-holders to sign a coupon blank inserted in _Everybody's Magazine_, and send same to me that I might speak for them in a plan to further their interests.

In response to my call I have received up to October 4, 1905, 16,307 answers, representing $55,165,916.

I think my readers, when they analyze the following list and take into consideration the character of the senders, many of whom are men of the highest standing--bishops, ministers, governors, mayors, judges, senators, members of Congress, railroad, bank, and trust company presidents--will agree with me that it is the most remarkable collection ever made by one interest since life insurance began.

INSURANCE COUPONS

_Received from June 20th to October 4, 1905_

New York Life $18,845,410
Equitable 17,317,956
Mutual 14,550,240
Miscellaneous 4,452,310
-----------
$55,165,916

Alabama 22 Montana 130 Arizona 127 Nebraska 236 Arkansas 124 Nevada 28 California 842 New Hampshire 73 Colorado 211 New Jersey 282 Connecticut 177 New Mexico 40 Delaware 43 New York 1,780 District of Columbia 152 North Carolina 466 Florida 230 North Dakota 143 Georgia 169 Ohio 985 Idaho 150 Oklahoma 154 Illinois 1,012 Oregon 93 Indiana 415 Pennsylvania 1,133 Indian Territory 130 Rhode Island 67 Iowa 560 South Carolina 81 Kansas 316 South Dakota 104 Kentucky 153 Tennessee 157 Louisiana 197 Texas 580 Maine 144 Utah 68 Maryland 126 Vermont 57 Massachusetts 843 Virginia 242 Michigan 406 Washington 417 Minnesota 574 West Virginia 205 Mississippi 173 Wisconsin 318 Missouri 499 Wyoming 36

Alaska 27 Corea 1 Argentina 1 Mexico 71 Bermuda 1 Newfoundland 4 Canada 344 New Zealand 1 Chili 1 Panama 2 China 1 Philippines 16 Colombia 1 Porto Rico 5 Costa Rica 1 Santo Domingo 7 Cuba 4 Straits Settlements 1 England 9 Sweden 1 France 4 Trinidad 2 Hawaii 35 Uruguay 2 Honduras 2 Yukon Territory 4 Japan 4 ------ Grand total 16,307

As soon as I received a number of signatures sufficiently large to warrant it, I quietly began operations.

The first direct result is the investigation now being held. This investigation has proceeded far enough to put before the public absolute proof of all the crimes I have charged, and three to thirty times as many more.

It is now evident to all that:

1st. The policy-holders in the great companies have yearly paid into their company scores of millions more than necessary.

2d. The policy-holders have been robbed of scores of millions.

3d. The vast funds now on hand have been habitually used by the grafters now in control of them in the rankest kind of stock-gambling.

4th. These funds have been used to corrupt the ballot-box and the law-makers of the country.

I repeat, absolute proof of all this has been made public.

It should now be evident to all that:

1st. The funds now on hand are in actual jeopardy, because they are in the absolute control of unprincipled scoundrels.

2d. Unless something is done, and done at once, by the policy-holders, each and every one of the largest companies may become insolvent; that is, they may not be able to meet the engagements of their policies, because of waste of funds, tremendous falling off of new business, tremendous cost of new business, and the nature of the new business--so-called "graveyard business"; for I am credibly informed that they are now seeking to insure those who formerly have been refused insurance because of physical infirmities.

It should also be plainly evident that, if the policy-holders move, and move quickly, they can be absolutely assured that:

1st. The funds as they are to-day will remain intact.

2d. They will be added to by the restitution of from $75,000,000 to $150,000,000.

3d. A score of the thieves who have plundered policy-holders in the past will be sent to prison.

4th. The future payments of policy-holders will be largely cut down.

5th. The present swollen surpluses will be returned in large part to policy-holders.

6th. In the future policy-holders will actually run the company.

7th. All policy-holders can be assured that in the future they will receive the actual worth of their policy at surrender.

All this being so, it is most eminently desirable for policy-holders to act, and at once.

The time will never again be so opportune, for if nothing definite is done now, policy-holders will be discouraged for all time.

I have given the subject the closest and most earnest study, assisted by the best insurance experts and lawyers procurable, and guided by the suggestions of over 100,000 policy-holders, for in addition to the 16,000 mentioned, I have received over 90,000 letters. I have come to the conclusion that the one thing for policy-holders to do now is:

To authorize some one in whom they have confidence to select a committee to take their proxies and at once seize possession of the two great mutual companies, the New York Life and the Mutual.

I omit the Equitable at this stage, because litigation may be necessary before the Equitable, being a stock company, can come into the policy-holders' hands. But in the other two, no obstacles can be placed in the way of the policy-holders' taking control.

To empower this committee to bring action at once to compel full restitution and enforce full punishment, and then to change the present method of conducting the insurance business.

The vital question is: Whom can the policy-holders trust to do this?

The "Big Three" are at present spending vast sums of the policy-holders' money to prevent some such action as this, in the following ways:

First, by moulding public opinion through paid news and editorial items; next, by the collection of proxies; and third, by the inauguration of different moves and dummy suits and investigations.

There are already three of these affairs under way. Almost any way the policy-holders turn for relief they are confronted with traps which, if they fall into them, will make relief and rescue impossible.

Any man or body of men who go to the great expense necessary to collect proxies must have some hidden scheme for reimbursing themselves, or they must be working in the interests of the thieves now in control.

I therefore make bold to say: I am the natural one to make this move.

Just a minute before you pass judgment. Let us see if I am:

1st. I have already spent in my work over a million dollars of my own money.

2d. I am willing to spend, if necessary, two millions more.

3d. I will absolutely prove I want nothing in return.

4th. I will absolutely prove on the face of my plans that I cannot in any way benefit beyond the satisfaction I shall derive from putting another spike in the "System's" coffin.

I ask of the policy-holders simply this:

Fill out the following form of proxy; sign and seal it, and send it to me. Quick action is most desirable in view of contingencies.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] In the course of the legislative investigation of the great insurance companies in New York, it developed that the Mutual Life Insurance Company conducts a publicity bureau, organized to discredit any one who dares criticise its methods. This bureau is conducted by one Charles J. Smith, on a salary of $8,000 per annum, and he works through Allan Forman, editor of the _Journalist_. Forman maintains a "telegraphic news bureau" and secures publication in various newspapers or periodicals of matter sent him for dissemination by the Mutual Life, and he is paid $1.00 per line of the policy-holders' money on all matter for which he obtains publicity. The whitewash paragraphs recently published throughout the country in regard to President McCurdy and the Mutual Life were all paid for on this basis.

II

THE ENEMIES I HAVE MADE

When a man discovers that a public building full of men, women, and children is infested with rats and that these vicious rodents have undermined its foundations and honeycombed its structure, it becomes his duty, first, to warn the occupants of the presence of the rats, next, to show them the damage that has been wrought and how the rats can be trapped and killed--and then he may take a hand in the rat-hunt himself.

That is about what I have been doing, and if proof were needed that the "System" suffered under my exposure of its villainies, I should have it in plenty in the showers of mud bullets it has fired at me. From scores of quarters these volleys came. A regular army of the "System's" votaries must have been out working like Trojans to stop my work, to discredit me, to bespatter me with its dirt.

The manner in which the "System" writhed under my attacks showed how seriously it was hurt. What surprises me was that so little intelligence was exhibited in defaming me. Such wanton, foolish attacks those that were made on me personally! As though it mattered who or what I am in comparison with the accusations I have made. Americans are not fools. To say that Lawson is this or that does not minimize or detract from his charge of robbery and conspiracy.

Every morning after I began to write "Frenzied Finance" I found a new budget of personalities in my mail, in the newspapers, in pamphlets. Learned lawyers traveled about the country slinging mud at me at banquets and society gatherings; scores of hireling weekly and monthly papers devoted pages to vilifying me; the insurance press was laden with assaults, and for fear the public should miss the brickbats, the insurance companies carefully mailed them to their policy-holders. All these tirades were in one key--that of crude abuse. The statements about myself and my career were nothing but lies. They were not even cleverly imagined.

Upon entering on this crusade against "Frenzied Finance" I expected attack. Reforms are not matured to accompaniments of incense and rose-water, and I had made up my mind to disregard the mud and its slingers. Afterward, if there were any "System" left, I rather looked forward to smothering it beneath the foulness of its own generating. There came a time during the year, however, when I deemed it proper to depart from this resolution and nail some of the lies my enemies were circulating about me. I debated the subject thoroughly, for the rancor of these assaults was evident and I could not help feeling that the general run of my readers would be impatient of the space given these gutter rakers. The determination to go at them was clinched by a letter which came to me, with a number of others from clergymen of various denominations, from a learned Catholic priest, who put the case for a reply most earnestly. He said:

You owe it, my son, to yourself to clear away, for once and
all, the charges your enemies have made against you. I have
faith you mean all that you say, but there are many, many
sons and daughters who are troubled in heart and harassed in
mind with doubt whether your motives be pure, and if your
deeds in the past have been along the ways of the good. It
is my advice, if you will accept it, that you put aside your
pride and your dignity and frankly and openly tell us
whether these charges that we read are true or false.

BECK VS. LAWSON

I shall deal with the subject as fairly as possible, reminding my readers, however, that I am at a disadvantage in having to use pen and ink instead of the implement appropriate for the purpose, a hose connected with a disinfectant barrel. To begin with, I reproduce the following from the Toledo _Blade_, December 26, 1904. (I have similar paragraphs clipped from one hundred other papers.)

JAMES M. BECK FLAYS LAWSON

Calls Boston Author-Broker a Frenzied Fakir.

DEFINES MONEYPHOBIA

Declares He is Victim of New Disease--Compares His Actions to "Crazed
Malay Running Amuck."

PHILADELPHIA, December 26th.--Ex-Assistant Attorney-General
James M. Beck talked on "Moneyphobia" at the thirty-ninth
annual commencement exercises of the Peirce Business
College. He paid his respects to Thomas W. Lawson in such
terms as "frenzied fakir" and "crazed Malay running amuck."
... "There are abundant indications that this epidemic is
now rife in the community. The extraordinary vote polled by
a Socialistic candidate for President, in a time of general
prosperity, seems to evidence this, as does the avidity with
which many intelligent people read in a cheap 'penny
dreadful' magazine the incoherent, self-contradictory, and
self-incriminating articles of a notorious frenzied fakir,
who, like a crazed Malay, is wildly running amuck, and,
without rhyme or reason, slashing at the reputations of
judges, senators, and financiers."

The following is from a Chicago insurance paper, and comes to me with the marginal inscription, "Puncture this bladder when convenient." I may say that I receive hundreds of clippings every day from various parts of the country, sent me by correspondents who are determined I shall be apprised of what my antagonists are trying to do against me.

BANKER ECKELS AND BROKER LAWSON

The splendid tribute to our country's greatness, resources,
and possibilities given by President James H. Eckels, of the
Commercial National Bank, of Chicago, and ex-Comptroller of
Currency of the United States, before the Chicago Life
Underwriters' Association, was listened to with earnest
attention.