dents immediately near the
office who could attend in person. Every effort to limit the right to
vote by proxy is an attempt to perpetuate power in the hands of the
policy-holders resident here, which would be quite as obnoxious to
sound principles as the government of companies solely by the
stockholders.

It would appear, on every principle of fairness and justice, that the
more full and perfect the right of the policy-holder to participate in
the election of trustees, the more stable and conservative will be the
management. On the other hand, it is quite as apparent that the
limitation of such right is attended with consequences the reverse of
those just stated, and those consequences attained in proportion to the
limitation of the right.

With the broad superstructure of a body of voting policy-holders, the
selling out of the control of a company is impossible, because no one
will be willing to pay for the possession which the next election may
deprive him of. Of all the mean and contemptible methods of robbery as
yet discovered, the selling out of a life insurance company is the
meanest and most contemptible. Too cowardly to wreck it themselves and
personally rob the widows and orphans, the trustees, who quietly
receive a bonus for their stock and retire from the management, sell
the opportunity of robbery to others. This they do too in the full
knowledge of the purpose for which they are asked to retire. When the
crash comes they may say they did not know the purpose of the
purchasers, but they did know they were to receive for their stock two
or three times its value, and that no man could afford to pay such a
price to obtain control of the company except for the purpose of making
money by irregular and questionable means. It will not do for men
entrusted with positions of a fiduciary character to make the holding
of such positions the lever for obtaining a large price for their
stock, and then claim exemption from responsibility for the misdeeds of
their successors. They were there in charge of a sacred trust, and they
have sold and betrayed that trust--for what? Why, for the enhanced
price which they got for their stock. This is the great evil of the
close corporation system. It enables one or more men to own complete
control of a company and to sell it to the highest bidder. Of course
the highly respectable gentlemen who sell, and those also who buy, will
be shocked at having imputed to them any crime or bre