he resulting disclosures are the
sensation of the hour as this book goes to press. In order to protect
the interests of policy-holders, in case the authorities declined to
act, I issued the following address in the July, 1905, number of
_Everybody's_:

TO THE POLICY-HOLDERS OF THE NEW YORK LIFE, MUTUAL, AND EQUITABLE
INSURANCE COMPANIES

The time has come for you to act. When, less than a year ago, I began my
story, "Frenzied Finance," I exposed the function of the three great
life-insurance companies in the structure of the "System." I explained
that they were controlled in the interests of great financiers and that
their funds were juggled with to compass the huge plundering operations
of Wall Street. At that time the New York Life, the Equitable, and the
Mutual Life loomed before the American people as the greatest, most
respected, and most venerable institutions in our broad land. To-day
they stand for all that is tricky, fraudulent, and oppressive.

A great change to have been accomplished in less than twelve months!

My readers are by this time familiar with the condition of affairs in
the Equitable. The greed, juggling, and grafting practised by its
officers and controllers have been fully exposed through the press. I
hope none of those who have followed the terrific arraignment of
rottenness and rascality made through the Frick report are so foolish as
to imagine that the evils described are confined to the Equitable. In my
own opinion the Equitable is much less reprehensible than the New York
Life, and when that institution and the Mutual are thoroughly shaken up,
as they will be in the future, indubitable evidence of the same fashion
of extravagance, trickery, and fraud will be found in plenty. Conditions
in the three institutions are the same; though of late the New York Life
has altered the character of most of its securities. Each has piled up
an immense surplus which has been used through allied trust companies
for stock juggling; each has paid extravagant commissions to agents; the
funds of each have been managed to afford to high officials plentiful
opportunities of graft; each has its real estate, fire insurance, low
rent and loan favor graft; in each will be found the same type of
syndicates as President Alexander and Vice-President Hyde used for their
personal enrichment in the Equitable. To-day President John A. McCall of
the New York Life is credited with possessing a fortune of between ten
and