ans who have slaved
and toiled to gather up the hundreds of dollars which you have exacted
from them yearly as the price of the future livelihood of their wives
and children, or as the provision for their own old age. You have made
yourself the custodian of these funds under sacred pledge of square
dealing and safe and honest administration. You have made yourself the
national executor, the great depositary of the moneys of the widow and
the orphan. You have cried your virtue and honorableness from the
housetops, and, under the stress of your pleadings, hundreds of millions
of dollars have been confided to you annually--half the savings of the
nation have been turned into your coffers, all because you insisted that
you were honest beyond all other men, and that the dear ones left behind
might rely on your generosity and integrity for their support.

And it is with the moneys that might at any time have been claimed by
these widows and orphans that you have been rigging syndicates,
debauching legislatures, juggling judges, manipulating stock-markets,
and doing other things which will be proven later. Instead of employing
the vast power and the immense wealth intrusted to you to conserve the
interests of your policy-holders, you have made yourself a part of the
cruel robbing machine which the "System" has created to deprive the
American people of their savings. Under the pretence of seeking
profitable investment, your corporation has been perverted into a vast
stock-gambling agency. You have filled the high places in your
corporation with your own children and relatives and their relatives,
and conferred on them great salaries out of which they have grown rich.
You have paid out to friends and associates, on various pleas, millions
that rightly belonged to your policy-holders. You have done all these
things habitually, yet to-day you describe the investigation being
conducted into your operations as an impertinence, and secretly you
regard this inquisition and all that pertains to it as a waste of time
and energy. You are unrepentant, unashamed, and defiant.

I shall take this opportunity, sir, of reviewing our own relations
during the past year and contrasting your position to-day with that you
boasted twelve months ago.

One year ago, in _Everybody's Magazine_, I said:

"The officers, trustees, and officials of the 'Big Three' life-insurance
companies have been and are systematically robbing their policy-holders.
Th