into $22,000, not in a gold or diamond mine, but in a
life-insurance company where every dollar comes from the policy-holder
who is supposed to pay in only enough to insure a promised payment plus
provision for honest expense.

The Prudential Company owned the stock of the Fidelity Trust Company,
the capital of which was $1,500,000, and the directors came before
Commissioner Cutting and informed him that they proposed to double up
the stock of the Fidelity Trust Company to $3,000,000; that the new
$1,500,000 at a par value of $100 was to be sold for $750 per share;
that the new stock was to be bought by the Prudential Company and the
Equitable Company; and that with the proceeds of the sale, the Trust
Company was to buy a control of the Prudential Company from its
directors. The motive of this transaction was as follows: The set of men
who absolutely controlled the Prudential, with its sixty millions of
assets belonging to its policy-holders, proposed to control it for all
time, but without tying up $7,000,000 of their own money in the
business. In other words, they desired to eat their pudding and yet have
it for continuous re-eating, and had found a way to accomplish this
heretofore impossible feat.

By this plan the men who controlled the Prudential Company, and thereby
the Trust Company, at the time the plan went into force, would forever
continue to manage and control both institutions, although not one of
them held a policy or any investment in the insurance company beyond the
one share of stock required by law to qualify as director.

If this scheme had been consummated it would have borne to "frenzied
finance" the same relationship that perpetual motion does to mechanics.
By it a few men could gamble forever with the entire assets of the
policy-holders of this corporation for their own personal benefit. If my
readers will imagine the same scheme applied to several other great
insurance companies and the men controlling them, the "System's"
votaries, they will recognize the "System's" ideal world, with all the
people in a condition of ideal servitude. However, this ingenious plan
was forestalled because there happened to be in control of the
life-insurance affairs of Massachusetts one of those old-fashioned
relics of American honesty--a man who thought more of the interests of
the people intrusted to his care than of the prospect of innumerable
"made dollars" which might have been his had he proved more amenab