been taught to regard as men of wellnigh miraculous
sagacity, integrity, and beneficence. With these men I have had none but
the pleasantest relations, and determined as I am on the performance of
my task, I go about it with the reluctance a surgeon feels when, in
order to save a friend's life, he must amputate his limb.

A contingency has now arisen which compels me to depart from my rule and
to discuss much more frankly than I had purposed at this juncture, the
New York Life Insurance Company, the system which controls it, and its
president, John A. McCall, the "System's" representative.

In reply to the inquiries of an anxious policy-holder, who had taken
alarm at my statement that the funds of these great corporations were
under the control of the "System," I stated in the October issue of
_Everybody's Magazine_ that the New York Life was, as well as its
so-called competitors, the Equitable and the Mutual, as much a
participant in the frenzied speculation of the period as were the
plunging Wall Street stock gamblers; but in giving an illustration of
its methods (the New York Security and Trust Company and the New
Hampshire Traction Company) I selected a case which would not
unnecessarily alarm nervous people, for the transaction showed an
enormous profit as the result of a wild stock plunge, instead of an
enormous loss--some of the New York Life's other deals were much less
fortunate. When I stated that the New York Life disposed of its interest
in the Security Trust Company to its directors for four millions of
dollars, which represented a gain of over $3,000,000 on its original
investment, I was careful not to state that the shares for which they
paid $800 each were worth at the time $1,300 each, or $7,000,000 for
what was sold for $4,000,000--particularly careful to state that they
were afterward worth this additional amount.

Policy-holders in the three great life-insurance companies may argue:
"The man who is known to us policy-holders as the real head of the New
York Life is John A. McCall, its president. All that you may say about
the 'System's' votaries being in control may be so, but we depend on the
integrity and the character of this one man to protect our interests. He
is our representative, not the 'System's,' and our savings are surely
safe in his strong hands."

There is the point. In the great insurance corporations that are
"one-man run," the hundreds of thousands of policy-holders have but one