dollar of its assets is in stocks of
any kind?" when I unqualifiedly state the fact that the New York Life
owned the millions of the New York Security Company's stock; that it
paid $150 a share for them and sold them to a syndicate of its own
directors at $800 per share, and that the stock afterward sold at over
$1,300 per share, and still afterward dropped to less than $600 per
share. I did not wish to be unfair to the New York Life, or I should
have stated, what I shall endeavor to show before my story is ended,
that at the time the New York Life parted with these shares to their own
directors at $800 per share they were actually worth and could have been
sold for hundreds of dollars per share more.

THE HONESTY OF THE ONE MAN

At this the big insurance companies uncovered their guns, and soon the
air, the newspapers, and my mail were full of underwriting explosions.
It was necessary then to line up my forces and to go at the attack
seriously. So, having carefully thought out a campaign which my
knowledge of the men whom I was antagonizing taught me would bring
results, I began, in December, as follows:

When I began to write "Frenzied Finance" I specifically stated that I
should not concern myself with men, but with principles. I held that to
put an end to the plundering of the people required more than the
denunciation of individual criminals; that the real peril lay in the
financial device through which the plundering was done and the "machine"
developed for their operation. The "machine" is the tremendous
correlation of financial institutions and forces that I call the
"System," and the most potent factor in the "System" is the life
insurance combine--the three great insurance companies, the New York
Life, Mutual Life, and Equitable, with their billion of assets and the
brimming stream of gold flowing daily into their coffers. That I should
have to discuss the relation between the "System" and these great
institutions was inevitable; but, knowing how vitally interested the
public is in the preservation of the gigantic structures its savings
have erected, I had thought to treat this phase of my subject later on,
when my readers should be absolutely convinced by what had preceded it
of the honesty and fairness of my purpose. Moreover, it did not seem
possible to touch on life insurance conditions without involving the men
who direct the three great companies, and whom policy-holders and the
people at large have