own directors at $800 per share, and that the stock afterward sold at over $1,300 per share, and still afterward dropped to less than $600 per share. I did not wish to be unfair to the New York Life, or I should have stated, what I shall endeavor to show before my story is ended, that at the time the New York Life parted with these shares to their own directors at $800 per share they were actually worth and could have been sold for hundreds of dollars per share more.
THE HONESTY OF THE ONE MAN
At this the big insurance companies uncovered their guns, and soon the air, the newspapers, and my mail were full of underwriting explosions. It was necessary then to line up my forces and to go at the attack seriously. So, having carefully thought out a campaign which my knowledge of the men whom I was antagonizing taught me would bring results, I began, in December, as follows:
When I began to write "Frenzied Finance" I specifically stated that I should not concern myself with men, but with principles. I held that to put an end to the plundering of the people required more than the denunciation of individual criminals; that the real peril lay in the financial device through which the plundering was done and the "machine" developed for their operation. The "machine" is the tremendous correlation of financial institutions and forces that I call the "System," and the most potent factor in the "System" is the life insurance combine—the three great insurance companies, the New York Life, Mutual Life, and Equitable, with their billion of assets and the brimming stream of gold flowing daily into their coffers. That I should have to discuss the relation between the "System" and