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Sugar Weather

By FLORENCE JOSEPHINE BOYCE

A clear, keen morning in the spring, when winter's barely over,

And through the drifts the meadows show their

knolls of withered clover,

When wood birds rap upon the trees, the echoes far conveying,

And hounds go loping 'cross the hills with hollow peals of baying;

Come out, come out, and lend a shout: we'll tap the trees together;

The earth is waking from its nap, and this is sugar weather.

The crows are cawing in the pines, and jays are loudly screaming;

From every sugar place around you hear the men a-teaming;

The little lad out on the crust has left his sled behind

him,

He's heard a robin in the elm, and dashed away to find

him;

Ho! there he is on yonder branch,-now watch him preen a feather!

He's proof enough the spring has come, and this is sugar weather.

The sun looks down above the hill, and all the fields are gleaming;

The sugar house is belching smoke, the old black pan is steaming;

The ruddy farmer, bare of head, comes hurrying from his labor

To send an answer 'cross the lot to some inquiring

neighbor,

And now and then inspects the sky, and draws conclusions whether

The wind is getting in the west, for that means sugar weather.

Up through the woods in snowy roads the patient. oxen wallow,

The creaking sled moves slowly off o'er drifted ridge and hollow;

The dog's incessant barking shows he's sighted game, and treed it;

And by the roaring of the brook you'd know that spring has freed it;

The teamster cries, "Whoa, hush! back, gee!" and snaps his lash of leather;

And all the woods ring full of sounds that go with sugar weather.

I've never heard another bird who chirped so sweet a

warning

As that the robin carols out upon a keen March morn

ing;

I've never found the spot that gave a nectar worth the

sipping

Like where a bright tin bucket hangs and maple sap is dripping;

And king ne'er dined on sweeter fare than when we sat together

And ate our dinner round the arch in happy sugar weather.

Ballad of the Cover Page

By KONAN MACHUGH

Fair, with parted lips, she stands
Where the lilies breathe and die,
Easter music in her hands

And her rapt gaze turned on high;
Lady of the cover page,

Through the rapture-laden breeze.
Anxious thoughts our minds engage,
Are you going to sing or sneeze?

Organ prelude softly calls

Through the vaulted arches fair,
Sunshine stealing down the walls
Glints and nestles in her hair;
Lady of the cover page,

Ere your thoughts take upward wing,

Pray our anxious doubts assuage,

Are you going to sneeze or sing?

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The Despotism of Combined Millions

The Struggle Now Going on for the Rescue of the Mutual Life Insurance Company

By JOHN W. RYCKMAN

The vicious practices that prevailed so long in the Mutual Life are being audaciously continued by a new autocrat of "the system"-Charles A. Peabody. Nothing short of a searching investigation of that company will now satisfy its outraged policyholders. The President in obedience to Standard Oil dictatorship has blocked every step toward reform and the real owners of the company, the policyholders, deploring the false stewardship of their Trustees, are determined to turn them out and manage the business themselves. Furthermore, they will demand restitution and the punishment of faithless officers who have enjoyed immunity through a derelict district attorney.

W1

HILE the public has been interested chiefly in the betrayals of trust which recent life insurance disclosures have revealed and in the intimate relation of insurance funds to the involutions of trust companies and other financial institutions, there is another aspect of the situation more serious and of much more immediate concern to the average man.

When, as in the history of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, millions accumulate so rapidly as to bewilder men accustomed to handling enormous sums, it is not to be wondered that, in this era of omnivorous greed, they have been. easily led into making careless and unscrupulous use of the capital intrusted to their keeping. The officers of the insurance companies have not alone been to blame; there have been cumulative causes for which the people were responsible. There were no adequate provisions

of law to protect life insurance funds from the dragonnade of commercialism. A blind confidence in the wisdom and soundness of Richard A. McCurdy and other financial sorcerers gave a certain shield and warrant to weak and avaricious men who yielded complacently to the temptings of the devil.

The real ethical question for the public and for the trustees of these funds is, or ought to be, Where have these sums come from that have been made the bulwark of Wall street's over-venturesome speculations? And the unmistakable answer is; They have come from the pockets of hundreds of thousands of men in moderate circumstances, business men, tradesmen, professional men, and even laborers who have found in life insurance the only means open to them to provide for their wives and children after their own lives are ended. They have viewed these savings in

the light of a sacred beneficence, never suspecting that a financial Gargantua would enter their depository and pilfer the strong box of the widow and orphan of many millions as was notably the case in the Mutual Life.

For this provision they have been paying premiums, enormously in excess of the actual cost of the insurance received, through submission to the stupendous extravagance and dazzling magnificence of the McCurdy-McCall-Alexander epoch. Or turning it the other way around, to bring out the full force of the facts, the families of the insured have not been receiving the amount of insurance to which they have rightfully been entitled, by actual business conditions, in exchange for premiums paid.

Roughly speaking, the payment of two hundred dollars a year in premiums to an insurance company by a man forty years of age, and in good health, buys an insurance of the face value of five thousand dollars. An examination of the finances of the great New York companies as made public in the recent disclosures, and a comparison of them with the life insurance systems of Great Britain, where the business is honestly and prudently managed, under rigid espionage of the state, indicates that a premium of two hundred dollars ought to secure an insurance of between ten thousand and fifteen thousand dollars.

Here then is the fundamental fundamental wrong of this whole miserable business. The sums that have been squandered and corruptly used have not dropped down from the skies or sprung from the ground like manna. in the wilderness. They have been taken mainly from hard-working

people of moderate means whose families have rightfully been entitled to probably more than twice. the insurance they have actually received for the premiums paid. Solong as such an initial wrong as this was tolerated we could not be greatly surprised that all other possible kinds of wrongdoing were revealed among the consequences of the system.

The Legislative Reforms
Recommended

It is commendable that the Armstrong Investigating Committee in New York completed its great work of unfolding the craftiness by which life insurance funds have been diverted into private pockets and into channels of speculation, by recognizing this fundamental wrong and making recommendations of a drastic nature that, if enacted into law, must safeguard these funds in future. from ruthless juggling by great corporated interests, from the clutch. of the dangerous graftsmen who have sent more than one million

dollars of policyholders' money to Albany to defeat the proposed legal remedies, and from the sophistry of actuaries who have predicated the expense loading on the McCurdy idea of Napoleonic splendor in executive management. It will be interesting to follow the struggle for reform insurance legislation in New York. Never has so conscienceless a group of confiscators assailed the people's interests as those, headed by the Ryan-Rogers-Morgan pillagers who are determined that there shall be no relief from helpless subjugation of the people by the mighty power of combined millions.

The conclusions of the Armstrong Committee were the results of deer

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