ngs the daily receipts of each of the Big Three are
larger than the expenditures. We are also told "We keep large amounts,
ready to take advantage of a sudden smash in the market." This sounds
well, but cloaks one of the most vicious practices of these great
institutions, and another of the insider's opportunities for private
graft. It means that the officers of the great insurance corporations
are ever ready for a stock gamble with the sacred funds of their
policy-holders; that is, they admit their willingness to use the
people's savings to make sure-thing gambling-profits from those
unfortunates who must throw over their stocks and bonds because of the
"System's" manipulations.

Imagine, my honest, old-fashioned reader, the millions of insurance
funds used in this way! Let me give you a picture of how it is done. I
have seen it worked a score of times. The stock-market is crashing,
dropping tens of millions a minute, and business men are saying: "Oh, if
we only had cash to buy, but we can not get it! The banks will not loan
at any price. Rates have gone up to 100 to 150 per cent. and no cash is
in sight." No one has money but the big insurance companies and the
"System's" votaries.

Suddenly mysterious buying appears--hundreds of thousands of shares of
stock, and bonds in million blocks. The crash has been stayed; the panic
is over; stocks are bounding upward again; millions are being made by
the mysterious buyers with each tick of the clock, and presently it is
common knowledge that all the insurance insiders have cleaned up
millions, and--of course, the company has made something, but the
biggest profits have been won by the men who, having previously
personally loaded up, were able to throw the unlimited buying power of
the policy-holders' millions into the gap. Talk of loaded dice, or any
of the sure-thing gambling devices! They are lily-white business schemes
compared with this method of plundering the people.

Again we are authoritatively informed that the great companies have so
much cash on hand that it is impossible to find investments for it save
at a low rate of interest. The fallacy here is obvious. If these
institutions have grown so unwieldy that they cannot conduct their
business as ably as the smaller companies, the latter are the ones to
insure with, because, right along, they are deriving larger returns from
their invested funds than the big companies. There are scores of ways,
however, by which t