President McCall's defence of the New York Life Insurance Company and his reply to my accusations are now completely before my readers. Let us see if there is not a chance here to determine the grave question, "Is 'the one man' who runs each of our great insurance companies honest?"
The facts are: During the past twenty years I have been importuned, begged, and hounded by the several great insurance companies of the United States to take out policies with them almost upon any terms I might name. Of this statement I could present more photographic proof than would fit in any one issue of this magazine, but most of it would have no bearing on the point at issue.
In the present year (1904)—to go no further back—John A. McCall has repeatedly urged me to come into the New York Life Insurance Company. Absolute evidence of the truth of this assertion is presented below. Mr. McCall's letter reproduced here would be accepted as complete proof in any court of justice. In the correspondence that follows this first letter it will be seen that Mr. McCall left no stone unturned in his effort to get me into the New York Life Insurance Company. A duplicate of the communication sent to my residence went on the same date to my office. To quote his own words, "I hope you may" and "I may have the pleasure of welcoming you either to new or increased membership in this great mutual insurance investment." Then, his anxiety being so great, after waiting four days for a reply he sent his special agent to argue with me, and, on the following day, his Boston manager to urge me further.
Is it any wonder that I called the history I am writing "Frenzied Finance"? The man who wrote the letter practically saying that I was a black-mailer and that my reason for attacking the New York Life was my anger because he would not take me into his company, and the man who wrote the ones begging me to come in, are one and the same; and he absolutely controls directly $400,000,000 of the people's savings in the New York Life, and indirectly unnumbered millions in affiliated institutions!
I think the case is complete. The policy-holders of the New York Life have an opportunity to decide whether the "one man" who runs the great institution in which their savings are invested is honest. In making up their minds, I implore them not at the present time, or at least until the question has been more fully ventilated, to allow their policies to lapse. Under any and all circumstances they should keep up the payment of their premiums, for the one thing especially desired and schemed for by some of the "frenzied finance" insurance companies is a wholesale lapse of policies.
Some few years ago the financial world learned with great interest of a new and very useful invention in finance. A group of individuals who had been buying large quantities of a certain stock at a low price, found they could not, on account of the fact of its overcapitalization having become known to the public, resell it; and they were, to use the stock-gambling term, "hung up" with it because it was too water-logged to float. It became necessary to disguise its identity. Here's how they did it: They formed a "syndicate," to which they "turned over" their stock at a good profit; the "syndicate" in its turn put it "in trust" by simply depositing the stock certificate with a trust company, which in its turn issued against the stocks thus held a new security, which it called a "bond." For these a ready market was found, for the word "bond" is still a term to conjure with in the world of finance.