eeding further I shall await
the results of its work. If there is any way short of criminal
proceedings to compel the restitution of the millions diverted or stolen
from policy-holders, I shall begin suits which I am satisfied can be
fought to a successful conclusion.

THE CALL TO ARMS

The extraordinary disclosures made before the investigating committee of
the New York Legislature, which is now conducting inquiries into the
methods of the great insurance companies, led me finally to issue the
following open letter to John A. McCall, in which I review the
controversy between us and contrast his disclosures of corruption and
mismanagement with his brazen professions of virtue and probity made
last year. In order to wrest the two great mutual companies from the
control of men who are obviously unworthy to direct them and with whom
the policy-holders' funds are plainly unsafe, I asked for proxies which
would make it possible for me to bring about a change in the control of
these two great corporations.

This letter and call appeared in the November, 1905, issue of
_Everybody's Magazine_.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN A. McCALL, PRESIDENT NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE
COMPANY

_Sir_: It is time your attention was called to the moral sense of the
American people. It is time some one dragged you out of the Wall Street
conservatory and set you in the plain white light of daily life. It is
time you were shown yourself as you are to-day seen by the millions of
your countrymen who, a month ago, believed you to be a great and
honorable man.

In spite of the terrible exposures of the past few weeks, in spite of
the pitiless revealment of yourself and your directors as tricksters,
in spite of the unveiling of the jugglery, grafting, and corruption of
your administration of the most sacred trust that can be confided to
man, you remain unconvinced of your fall and unpenetrated by your shame.
Fortified by the sympathy of your fellow-sinners, you imagine your
audacious bluster and your sly evasions before the Investigating
Committee of the State of New York represented shrewd generalship and
able strategy, forgetting that the enemy against whom your manoeuvres
were directed was the American people and that, in this inquisition,
your character and reputation were as absolutely before the bar as
though you had been indicted for sequestration of the funds of some dead
friend's wife.

Throughout this broad country of ours are good Americ