then paid
for by means of these certificates, dubbed "bonds." As one stock after
another was converted into syndicate certificates--"bonds"--the
familiarity of the procedure robbed it of its novelty and these "bonds"
were quoted and dealt in much as other and more tangible securities
bearing the same name. Perhaps this is why the startling announcement of
the New York Life Insurance Company made about this time, that it
proposed to sell all its stocks and thereafter hold nothing but bonds,
created so much less of a sensation than was anticipated. The term
"bond" had become vulgarized.

This excellent example would undoubtedly have had many followers but for
the humor of the Tobacco Trust. This robust institution, with an immense
amount of watered stock, audaciously poured it all but a small amount
into bonds, $157,000,000 of them, and with a fine trumpet-blast
proclaimed these "bonds" safe investments for widows, orphans, and
insurance companies. Even Wall Street, with its frenzied votaries and
its frenzied environment, was staggered. The culmination of these
conversion performances was the brilliant plan evolved by George W.
Perkins, the junior partner in the firm of J. Pierpont Morgan & Co.,
vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Company and expert
investor of its vast surplus, to have the United States Steel Trust
purchase some $200,000,000 worth of its own water-logged stock and
convert the same into more "absolutely safe bonds"; for its most
valuable services in the turning-over process the Morgan firm was to
have a commission of some forty millions of dollars. At this juncture
"frenzied finance" became gagged with its own froth, and I have not
space here to go further into the subject.

The New York Life Insurance Company declares to its agents,
policy-holders, and prospective policy-holders that it no longer holds
stock securities. In its last report to the Insurance Commissioners
there are set forth stock securities of the kind I have described above,
to the amount of fifty millions of dollars. I will give one
illustration:

"Northern Pacific--Great Northern--C., B. & Q. collateral 4s, book
value--$12,057,132.59, market value--$11,375,000."--(From the official
report to Insurance Commissioners.)

Now, these bonds are nothing more nor less than Chicago, Burlington and
Quincy stock of a par value of $100 per share, which shares were
purchased by individuals, and had "bonds" issued against them at $200