in one transaction an amount so great that if it had been lost, the
bank's entire capital would have been more than completely wiped out.
That my readers may not base their conclusions upon this one
transaction of this mighty engine of the "System," vicious as it shows
on the surface and destructive as it really was to the thousands who
were parties to it, _I will later in this story show the National City
Bank in another section of the Amalgamated deal, doing things which in
intention and in result were so much bolder and grosser that this
transaction will by comparison appear pure and legitimate_.

During the past thirty years the American people have become so used to
enormous figures in connection with corporations and trusts that they
have not stopped to discriminate between different classes of fortunes
nor to figure out that fortunes of certain kinds are absolute
self-evidence that they were acquired by illegal methods, and that if
allowed to multiply the people will surely be enslaved and the republic
destroyed. For instance, there are in New York City alone dozens of
national and savings-banks and insurance and trust companies which
control money enough to make them practically omnipotent in whatever
direction their controllers exert their power. I will name but seven,
showing what enormous amounts their managers control; and let it be
borne in mind that all such institutions are linked together by the
"System" as firmly and surely as any human things can be linked. The
Equitable, Mutual, and New York Life Insurance companies have a combined
capital of $1,200,000,000 of assets, a yearly income of $230,000,000,
and $4,500,000,000 of insurance in force; the National City Bank, United
States Trust, Mercantile Trust, and Union Trust companies $30,000,000
capital, and $45,000,000 surplus, and they have the vast sum of
$450,000,000 of the people's money to juggle with.

CHAPTER VIII

"STANDARD OIL" INVESTS "MADE DOLLARS" IN GAS

And now I shall have to go back a bit in my story. After "Standard Oil"
had firmly established, through the agency of the curb,[5] the value of
the 1,000,000 shares of Standard Oil, the corporation seller of oil, at
between $600,000,000 and $800,000,000, and had used it as collateral in
securing control of the four classes of money institutions I have
named--the national and savings-banks and trust and insurance
companies--it proceeded to use the funds thus controlled to manipula