they had collected from the policy-holders, a dollar at a time. This "investment," at the moment it was made, actually represented a loss to the purchasing insurance companies of millions of money, for millions more than the property was worth or could possibly be made worth had gone to the people who formerly owned the steamship properties, and many millions more to the "System" as its share of the swag. And it should be remembered that the men who organized the steamship trust were the men who invested the insurance company's money in its securities.
The policy-holder in Wyoming knows about the steamship trust and about the terrible loss sustained by those who invested in its securities. He does not realize, however, that his insurance company has been buying such poor stuff, for he is persuaded it is a great and noble institution, and far above Wall Street and its rash gamblers. Even when he and his kind find their yearly dividends on their policies growing less and less and their premiums rising "because of the tremendous increase in the expense of doing business," they do not dream of connecting these misfortunes with the "System's" trustifications of inflated securities; nor do they associate them with the glowing accounts of the half-million-dollar seaside palace built by the insurance company's officer who entered the employ of the institution a few years before, with his salary for his fortune, and who is now pointed to as an example of thrift, being worth from ten to fifteen millions.