est than a
bull.

7. Life insurance is a great institution, and should be a sacred
institution--_provided_ it is honest life insurance. He who would, for
any dishonest reason, disturb the people's confidence in honest life
insurance I consider a criminal; but I am sure that one who, having the
power to awaken the people to their peril, yet stands silently by and
suffers them to be bled and plundered in the name of life insurance is
even a greater scoundrel.

_What is life insurance--honest life insurance?_ A contract between two
parties by which the first agrees, in return for a certain fixed charge
per year, to pay to the family or other beneficiary of the second party
a stipulated sum in case of said second party's death; but it is plainly
understood between them that the annual charge exacted by the first
party shall be only such an amount as will insure the carrying out of
the contract, plus whatever is the legitimate expense of conducting the
business connected therewith. Under no circumstances would I say aught
in disparagement of such a contract, but if I did not lift my voice
against such life insurance as is carried on by the Mutual, New York
Life, and Equitable companies, knowing what I do know, I should be a
deep-dyed scoundrel.

Life insurance as it has been conducted in the past and as it is being
conducted at present by these three companies, I regard as the most
damnable imposition ever practised upon the people of any nation. Under
the pretence that it is necessary to enable life-insurance companies to
carry out their contracts, two million policy-holders are annually
tricked into contributing from their savings sums which not only insure
the performance of these contracts but enable the officers and
trustees--mere servants of the policy-holders--to maintain the most
gigantic stock-gambling machine the world has ever known. Through its
operation the companies themselves not only make and lose millions at
single throws of the dice, but the bands of schemers whose services it
is pretended are essential for the transaction of the life-insurance
business filch for themselves huge individual fortunes. Piled on to
these excessive charges are additional amounts which enable these
tricksters to maintain palaces, hotels, bars, and every conceivable kind
of business, to pay for armies of lackeys and employees and private
servants of officers and trustees, and for debauches and banquets which
vie with any given