CE; OF
SPECIAL AGENT GILLESPIE'S LETTER OF JANUARY 27TH; OF MANAGER HAYES'S
LETTER OF JANUARY 28TH. THESE THREE LETTERS SOLICITING INSURANCE,
FOLLOWED EACH OTHER WITHIN A PERIOD OF SIX DAYS.]

Is it any wonder that I called the history I am writing "Frenzied
Finance"? The man who wrote the letter practically saying that I was a
black-mailer and that my reason for attacking the New York Life was my
anger because he would not take me into his company, and the man who
wrote the ones begging me to come in, are one and the same; and he
absolutely controls directly $400,000,000 of the people's savings in
the New York Life, and indirectly unnumbered millions in affiliated
institutions!

I think the case is complete. The policy-holders of the New York Life
have an opportunity to decide whether the "one man" who runs the great
institution in which their savings are invested is honest. In making up
their minds, I implore them not at the present time, or at least until
the question has been more fully ventilated, to allow their policies to
lapse. Under any and all circumstances they should keep up the payment
of their premiums, for the one thing especially desired and schemed for
by some of the "frenzied finance" insurance companies is a wholesale
lapse of policies.

Some few years ago the financial world learned with great interest of a
new and very useful invention in finance. A group of individuals who had
been buying large quantities of a certain stock at a low price, found
they could not, on account of the fact of its overcapitalization having
become known to the public, resell it; and they were, to use the
stock-gambling term, "hung up" with it because it was too water-logged
to float. It became necessary to disguise its identity. Here's how they
did it: They formed a "syndicate," to which they "turned over" their
stock at a good profit; the "syndicate" in its turn put it "in trust" by
simply depositing the stock certificate with a trust company, which in
its turn issued against the stocks thus held a new security, which it
called a "bond." For these a ready market was found, for the word "bond"
is still a term to conjure with in the world of finance.

This seemed such a serviceable arrangement that the originators soon had
many imitators. Many "syndicates" were formed, and many so-called
"bonds" were put on the market. In most cases the stocks were purchased
at a low price, turned into "trusts" at double their cost, and