sold the difference between the
price to them, $120,000,000, and the price the public pays,
$180,000,000. Let us assume that the public takes up the issue greedily
and the full price, $180,000,000, has been secured. The original owners,
Rogers, Rockefeller, etc., have made $60,000,000, the difference between
the first cost and $120,000,000, the cost to the "underwriters," while
the "underwriters" have made $60,000,000, the difference between
$120,000,000 and the $180,000,000, the cost to the people. In looking
over the list of subscribers to these bonds, you will note that the
largest purchases have been made for the great insurance corporations
and the banks and trust companies owned or controlled by them and "The
System." If, in the instance I am using for illustration, a president
or vice-president of one of the great insurance companies is known to be
willing to subscribe for, say, $10,000,000 for his insurance company;
$5,000,000 for his principal trust company, which is owned by the
insurance company; $1,000,000 apiece for five other banks and trust
companies, also owned or controlled by the insurance company; and can
influence five other affiliated institutions to subscribe for $1,000,000
apiece, he controls, as will readily be seen, a purchasing power of
$25,000,000, and is sought for as an underwriter, if he is not already
an owner. For this $25,000,000 which his institutions buy he "draws
down," as his personal profit, 33-1/3 per cent. "underwriters'"
commission, or over eight millions of dollars.

In taking this amount, he is not _robbing_ his insurance company, in the
common acceptance of the term in this era of "frenzied finance," though
he has absolutely appropriated to himself a profit which belongs to it
and not to him.

It must not be supposed that such transactions as this I have outlined
are conducted in the simple ABC fashion I have set down here for purpose
of illustration. No "one man" appears through any deal. The purchases
and sales are usually made through dummies, and the final recipient of
the "made millions" carefully conceals all the phases of his
participation.

Let us take another type of transaction. An insurance company owns two
adjoining pieces of unimproved city real estate, for which it paid
$250,000 apiece, but which are now worth $500,000 each. The directors of
the corporation formally decide to dispose of these holdings, and sell
the first piece to a trust company, which is own