study and impartial conviction on the part of members of the legislature who had devoted seven months to a searching investigation and of counsel who became masters of the problems involved. Well-meaning men may differ as to some of these conclusions, but the recommendations as to abolishment of certain practices, limiting power in the matter of investments, curtailing THE HON. JOHN DEWITT WARNER DISTINGUISHED NEW YORK LAWYER CHIEF COUNSEL OF THE MUTUAL LIFE POLICY HOLDERS' ASSOCIATION expense of obtaining new business likely to impair the stability of any Upon one principle all men who are not of the millionaire despots must agree; these life insurance companies should be put, as nearly as possible on the same basis for the investment of their funds as the savings banks; there should be a law prohibiting them from operating trust companies so as to make it impossible for them to invest in syndicate schemes or lend money in sums of millions to office boys, or take over worthless securities bought by dishonest speculators for nothing and sold to policyholders at high prices; the delusive tontine dividend game should be prohibited; there should be an annual accounting to every policyholder, so as to reduce, year by year, the outlay for his policy; the expenses of conducting the business should be restricted; last, but not least, policyholders themselves, who are the real owners of the mutual companies, should carry on their operation hereafter. Then, with the cost of insurance scaled down, with the returns from real estate mortgages and other sound investments going to the policyholders, life insurance will be the great blessing it is intended to be; policyholders will be relieved of crushing burdens, their heirs will have a good reward for the sacrifices made in their behalf by those who have paid premiums through long years; the business will be divorced from Standard Oil or other other corporate control and Henry H. Rogers, Thomas F. Ryan and their ilk will get out and stay out of the life insurance business. If these men through the influences an unlimited corruption fund usually exerts, should defeat the recommendations of the Armstrong Committee they might succeed in their intention to confiscate a billion dollars of life insurance money, in which event they would soon come uncomfortably near to monopolizing every employment, trammeling every opportunity of the people and display an arrogance and disdain of popular feeling that would almost surely result in revolution. The danger point has been reached and deplorable as it may be, in this of all countries, the people are in no temper to tolerate much longer the stupendous agglomerate absorption of their interests by these men. This may seem an extreme view, but the best way to avoid such a calamity is to extinguish its germ in incipiency. Peabody, the New Autocrat of the System To outsiders the most unaccountable recent Occurrence was the smothering of reports of the Truesdale Investigating Committee of the Mutual Life and the determination of President Charles A. Peabody not to honor any requisition. of the committee for information upon which an investigation could be pursued. Those who were not aware that Mr. Peabody was chosen as Mr. McCurdy's successor by representatives of the Standard Oil Company in the Board of Trustees, expressed surprise at his obstinacy in thwarting a genuine house-cleaning in all departments. But that was the precise purpose for which he was selected. It was not intended by Messrs. Rogers, Rockefeller, and their associates to permit such an overhauling as had taken place in the New York Life. They feared the consequence, for they knew there had been very culpable misdoings in the Mutual Life; moreover, it had been closely allied with the Equitable and New York Life in many flagrantly unscrupulous transactions. Mr. Rogers and his allies knew that the Armstrong Committee did not unearth a tithe of the crookedness and corruption by which Mutual Life policyholders had been robbed of millions of dollars; they were past masters in the artifice of hoodwinking the public and their direct interest in controling the company was not to be disturbed by an exposé of wicked and whole affair as they were appointed to do, became by their insistence. very annoying to the magnates. One member of the committee, however, Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, was too high-principled to become party to this connivance at concealment. He felt that a thorough investigation of the Mutual Life was absolutely necessary; that it was a duty which could not be avoided or safely delayed; that the public required and demanded to know for what reason SIR ALFRED HARMSWORTH (LORD NORTHCLIFFE) THE DISTINGUISHED ENGLISH PUBLISHER WHO HEADS THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF MUTUAL LIFE POLICYHOLDERS and at whose instigation such vast sums had been wasted; why it was that the dividends had dwindled to such paltry proportions; why it was that the payroll at the head office exceeded a million dollars a year; how it happened that the company had lost millions in certain investments; upon what authority the McCurdy family had filched hundreds of thousands a year out of the treasury; how much should be taken off the book value of real estate put down at $34,701,701; what was the actual cost and what the real value of the Mutual's trust company holdings; what were the exact items that made up the enormous amount of nearly two million dollars paid out in transactions cunningly involved in various department expenses. Mr. Fish knew that an investigation as to all these and other matters would disclose what is necessary to be effected to uplift the Mutual from the great injury that has been done to its prestige by yielding to the same vicious system that brought such disaster to the Equitable and New York Life, and being thwarted in his efforts, he did the only thing a manly and sincere man could dohe resigned from the Board of Trustees and announced his unswerving fealty to the interests of the policyholders and, in so doing, instantly made himself a conspicuous and powerful figure in the people's fight against the money giants. Coincident with Mr. Fish's resignation came that of Mr. Effingham B. Morris, the distinguished Philadelphia banker, who could no longer stand, as a trustee, for the dishonorable acts of those who still control the board. Doubtless there are other trustees, to whom the RogersRyan-McCurdy school. of high finance is becoming too offensive for endurance, who will follow the course of Messrs. Fish and Morris before the approaching moment when the policyholders will, by overwhelming vote, unseat every man-jack of the present board. It is significant, in this connection, that Lord Northcliffe, representing committee of British policyholders, recently cabled assurances to Mr. Fish that the European a members of the Mutual Life will uphold and advance his efforts and those of the Policyholders' Association. With this added influence and the support of the powerful foreign element within the company the final link in the chain of reform has been wrought and the regime of graft is surely doomed. The "Disciplining" of Mr. Bowles The same obstinacy now practiced by President Peabody resulted in Richard A. McCurdy's undoing. He had so long worn a self-made halo of kingship in the Mutual, had drawn about him the avaricious speculators who usurped control of the company, had used the policyholders' funds to establish and conduct trust companies, had taken into his confidence and councils the most reckless and audacious gamblers of Wall street, had instituted the pernicious "syndicate" system of juggling with the company's assets, had put members of his immediate family into positions where they became suddenly rich through heinous absorption of the widow's hoard and had carried the company's operations on a scale of regal magnificence until a sense of ownership made him defiant of interference. Had Mr. McCurdy listened to Thomas H. Bowles in 1902 all of this trouble could have been avoided and many millions saved to the policyholders. Mr. Bowles was for more than sixteen years one of the most successful general agents of the company-a man of inflexible honesty and sterling principle, sterling principle, whose exceptional energy and fidelity to the interests of the company had been repeatedly commended by Mr. McCurdy. But the perversion of life insurance into prodigal finan betrayal, unless he exposes and denounces it. He must fight either in the interests of the thousands he induced to go into the company, or he must join in the conspiracy against them. "This was the situation in 1902. I had been instrumental in inducing thousands of persons to join the Mutual Life; I had written over a MR. STUYVESANT FISH PRESIDENT OF THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY, WHO RESIGNED FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE MUTUAL LIFE BECAUSE HE WOULD NOT SUBMIT ΤΟ A WHITEWASHING INVESTIGATION hundred millions of insurance in Louisiana, Mississippi, Wisconsin and Northern Michigan, which territory was under my management, in addition to a considerable amount placed in Georgia and Florida; and the policyholders in my jurisdiction had paid into the company a great many millions of dollars. I felt the seriousness of the responsibility I had incurred to these people and determined to stand by them when I discovered in the course of an investigation made at the request of the president of the company that serious injustice was being done them. The result of that contest is well known." The investigation to which Mr. Bowles here refers was one he personally made at the request of Mr. McCurdy, who evidently, when he gave his sanction, had no idea how far it would go and how astounding would be the revelations made. So thorough was Mr. Bowles' report to the trustees that it clearly showed at great length and in careful detail how more than ninety million dollars of policyholders' money had vanished through unnecessary expenses and devious transactions. When the stupendous nature of this report dawned on Mr. McCurdy he set his machinery at work to suppress its publicity. In terror of losing his crown and having his management discredited he refused to permit the trustees to consider the report and as Mr. Bowles, not comprehending at the time the full meaning of the objection, persisted in demanding action he was summarily dismissed from the company's service for "insubordination." From that moment Mr. Bowles set himself squarely to the duty of divesting the company of the iniquitous control of the McCurdys and their rapacious confederates. He took the part of the policyholders and has devoted himself ever since to obtaining for them the control and management of their own funds. Had Mr. McCurdy acted honestly and frankly toward the policyholders at that time and submitted to the reforms suggested, nearly thirty million dollars that have |