& Q. Collateral 4s, created
out of the stock of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and other
railroads. I could have selected a much worse type of security, just as,
instead of the typewritten letter of Mr. McCall, I might have published
others of a more personal nature.

Against me out sallied 2d Vice-President Perkins, brother of George W.
Perkins, 1st Vice-President of the New York Life (J. Pierpont Morgan's
partner), and at a banquet in Philadelphia boldly answered my aspersions
by declaring that the bonds I named "are printed in the list of holdings
which the company publishes in detail, and has published for the last
five years, in order that its policy-holders may be informed of its
affairs in the minutest detail." The convincing logic of this rejoinder
the dullest will appreciate, but for a moment I must stop to remind Mr.
Perkins that the publicity on which he plumes himself is really not an
expression of the New York Life's individual frankness, but merely an
observance compelled by the law.

All this recapitulation has been for a purpose. My readers will bear in
mind before taking hold of my next exhibit that the great insurance
companies have published me as a falsifier, who since 1892 has been
refused insurance and black-listed for good reasons, and have claimed
that Mr. McCall's letters were circulars sent me by mistake. We are
still considering the problem--_are the men who run our great insurance
companies honest?_ Well, look at the reproduction on page 442 of a
document that is now in my possession and has always been since the date
when it was delivered to me by one of the three great representatives of
the "System," the Equitable Life Insurance Company.

This document speaks for itself. My readers are aware of the
negotiations and investigations which precede the making of an insurance
contract. To them and to the "System's" votaries I recommend the exhibit
and the underwriters' resolutions as a simple lesson in frenzied
finance.

My charge that the directors of the great life-insurance corporations of
America use the funds of the companies they control in stock speculation
for their personal benefit is but one contention in my argument against
the character of their management. Here I formally add another charge:
It is that in the placing of loans, in the purchase of properties and
securities, and in the underwriting of enterprises, there are enormous
profits made, directly and indirectly, which a