these great institutions was inevitable; but, knowing how vitally interested the public is in the preservation of the gigantic structures its savings have erected, I had thought to treat this phase of my subject later on, when my readers should be absolutely convinced by what had preceded it of the honesty and fairness of my purpose. Moreover, it did not seem possible to touch on life insurance conditions without involving the men who direct the three great companies, and whom policy-holders and the people at large have been taught to regard as men of wellnigh miraculous sagacity, integrity, and beneficence. With these men I have had none but the pleasantest relations, and determined as I am on the performance of my task, I go about it with the reluctance a surgeon feels when, in order to save a friend's life, he must amputate his limb.
A contingency has now arisen which compels me to depart from my rule and to discuss much more frankly than I had purposed at this juncture, the New York Life Insurance Company, the system which controls it, and its president, John A. McCall, the "System's" representative.
In reply to the inquiries of an anxious policy-holder, who had taken alarm at my statement that the funds of these great corporations were under the control of the "System," I stated in the October issue of Everybody's Magazine that the New York Life was, as well as its so-called competitors, the Equitable and the Mutual, as much a participant in the frenzied speculation of the period as were the plunging Wall Street stock gamblers; but in giving an illustration of its methods (the New York Security and Trust Company and the New Hampshire Traction Company) I selected a case which would not unnecessarily alarm nervous