ain on my way to my office this
morning a lawyer told me the following story: A client of
his, a real-estate agent, represented a corporation owning
and wishing to sell a valuable Chestnut Street property.
The price asked was $750,000. A representative of a New York
corporation called upon him and agreed to take the property,
but stipulated that the price named in the deed and
receipted for should be $850,000, the difference covering
his commission of $100,000. The Philadelphian, finding it
impossible to induce his clients to make this concession,
and the New York agent insisting upon it as indispensable to
the purchase, made a trip to New York to see the principal,
acquaint it with the facts, and find out whether or not some
arrangement could be made by which the buyer could take care
of its agent's commission. He was received by the manager of
the New York corporation, but when he stated that he
represented the owner of the Philadelphia property he was
instantly bowed out of the office, with the assurance: "We
never interfere with business in the hands of our agent."
The outcome was that the sale was not consummated, because
the officers of the Philadelphia corporation would not
receipt for $850,000 when they were to receive only
$750,000, for the reason that they could not square the
transaction with their stockholders, and the buyer's agent
would not consummate the deal without such a receipt,
because he could not square with his client and its
stockholders the payment of $850,000 with the consideration
of $750,000 mentioned in the deed. This story was told to
illustrate the proposition that every action has its
prompting motive, and my fellow-passenger imparted to me his
conclusion that the motive of the manager of the New York
corporation for refusing to listen to his client was that
"the scoundrel was in cohoots with the agents to share in
the commission and cheat his own company." The public will
in time come to look for motives, and we, fellow-editors,
and the managers of mutual life-insurance companies, will be
judged by what seems the most apparent motive for our
actions....

Any alliance between life insurance and this modern
speculative frenzy cannot be too deeply deprecated, nor too
strongly reprobated. Ev