to make loans to the trustees and their friends, and a general
adhesion to business rules and traditions. But above and beyond all
other reforms, the control of the company by the policy-holders would
make it impossible for greedy and scoundrel officers to gather into
their hands the entire control of the company, and then sell it out to
a rival company for four or five times what the stock cost, and an
annuity for life to the traitor who had betrayed his trust. This has
been, is now, and will be, if not prevented, the fruitful mother of all
the ills of life insurance. Just as soon as any clique get possession
of the majority of the stock, there is danger. Nay, there is always
danger; any clique may, at any time, get possession of the stock by
paying enough for it. If one price will not bring it, another will, and
the value to the wrecker depends upon the amount of assets. It is the
assets which are to pay the profit of the transaction. The money of the
policy-holders is what is sold, not the mere pittance which belongs to
the stock-holders, and it is the money of the policy-holders which is
stolen to pay the purchase money. Honorable gentlemen, prominent in
social life, elders, deacons, and vestrymen who in the past few years
have quietly pocketed two hundred for your stock and retired from the
management of life insurance companies, how are you pleased with your
own conduct? In the light of recent disclosures, does not the
ill-gotten money burn in your pockets? Truly you would not wreck a
company yourselves by transferring it to any man or number of men; but
you accomplish the same purpose by retiring. A captain who will not
himself surrender to the enemy, but who retires from the command of his
fortification knowing that the subaltern who will succeed him intends
to strike his flag, may deceive himself, but he does not long succeed
in deceiving any one else.

The evidence taken before the referee in the Continental case fully
describes and explains the methods of wrecking. A company is sold out
or reinsured in another; that is, the stock has been bought up at two
or three hundred per centum, the officers have been promised good
places, or paid in cash for their silence. Immediately the operations
of the wreckers begin. The agents of both companies go into the work
with a single aim, and that aim is to obtain the surrender of the
policies in the old company in exchange for new policies in the
purchasing corporation. T