ave been filched and wasted; analyze
the Frick report and the letter of President Alexander to the directors
of the society, calling for Vice-President Hyde's removal from office.
Think, ye farmers and laborers, of personal traveling expenses of
$75,000 in a brief period, of salaries of $100,000 annually paid for a
few hours of work per day; think of vast sums of your money used to
provide expensive safe-deposit institutions with low-priced quarters so
that the personal income of men already multimillionaires may wax still
greater. Think of the great institution to whose hundreds of millions'
income you contribute your hard-earned dollars, being farmed, milked,
and squeezed by a pack of dissolute and greedy schemers and robbers more
conscienceless and oppressive than any band of thugs in the country.

When I began to discuss in _Everybody's Magazine_ the subject of the
three great life-insurance companies, I stated that there is actually
nothing between the two million-odd policy-holders and the possibility
of their being robbed of the billions of dollars of their accumulated
savings but the devotion and the honesty of the men who are in control
of these institutions.

You know what happened when I said this to you the first time--less than
a year ago. The officers, trustees, and hirelings of these great
companies laughed to scorn my statements and called me a liar and a
scoundrel. They drew the attention of the whole world to the standing
and wealth and honesty of the men who managed these great corporations,
and proved by the most positive asseverations that nothing could be more
preposterous than that any one of them could do wrong. But the great
God, who seldom allows His children to remain long deceived to their
undoing, heard these loud-mouthed protestations, and to-day the world is
listening to exposures of low, mean thefts and contemptible crimes far
worse than any to which I had pointed.

And from whom comes the proof of the treacheries and rascalities
perpetrated within the Equitable? From the men who control and manage
this great institution and its hundreds of millions of accumulations.
When my accusations first appeared, these men saw the handwriting on the
wall and some of them, bolder than others, determined to seize these
vast hoards of the public's money and at the same time get possession of
all evidence of past crimes so that they might be immune forever after
from punishment and the necessity of ma