ng these extracts from Insurance
Commissioner Cutting's report, will ask: "Why have we never heard of
this before?" I can only answer that he found it impossible to get any
part of the warning contained in it before the people. It should be
remembered that the insurance companies annually spend millions of
dollars with the daily, weekly, and monthly press--and it is unnecessary
for me to say more. My own advertisement calling attention to the
life-insurance chapters in the last issue of _Everybody's Magazine_ was
refused by some of the leading dailies of New York, Boston, Cleveland,
and Pittsburg. When I called on the managing editor of one of
Pittsburg's leading dailies for an explanation of the publication's
declination, he said: "Don't mention me or you'll get me into trouble.
Our copy for the advertisement was a day late and the insurance combine
had time to get in its work. The local managers sent a representative to
all the papers warning them not to run your stuff, under penalty of
losing the big full-page annual from each of the three big companies, as
well as the numerous fliers through the year." One hears of the
sagacious ostrich which, when pursued by an enemy, hides its head in the
sand. The ostrich is wise in comparison with the "System's" votaries in
the year 1904.

THE VULTURES FEEDING

Owing to the claims of other subjects on my space, I left the subject of
life insurance for a few months. In the meantime President Alexander
began his grapple with President Jimmy Hyde for the control of the
millions of the Equitable Life--the historic entanglement which has had
such dire consequences for all concerned. In the April, 1905, issue of
The Critics I wrote as follows:

When first I touched on the subject of life insurance and called
attention to the manner in which the three great companies were juggling
with the immense funds entrusted to them by their policy-holders, the
"System" raised a great outcry, declaring that I was unsettling the
confidence of the people in a sacred institution. At this moment we have
the chief officials of one of these huge organizations engaged in a
desperate and disgraceful struggle among themselves for its control.
All thought of the widow and the orphan, against whom they declared my
hand had been raised, has been forgotten in the mad fight for supremacy
over the accumulated millions in stocks, bonds, and in trust companies,
from the secret manipulation of which the great