Q. Collateral 4s, created out of the stock of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and other railroads. I could have selected a much worse type of security, just as, instead of the typewritten letter of Mr. McCall, I might have published others of a more personal nature.
Against me out sallied 2d Vice-President Perkins, brother of George W. Perkins, 1st Vice-President of the New York Life (J. Pierpont Morgan's partner), and at a banquet in Philadelphia boldly answered my aspersions by declaring that the bonds I named "are printed in the list of holdings which the company publishes in detail, and has published for the last five years, in order that its policy-holders may be informed of its affairs in the minutest detail." The convincing logic of this rejoinder the dullest will appreciate, but for a moment I must stop to remind Mr. Perkins that the publicity on which he plumes himself is really not an expression of the New York Life's individual frankness, but merely an observance compelled by the law.
All this recapitulation has been for a purpose. My readers will bear in mind before taking hold of my next exhibit that the great insurance companies have published me as a falsifier, who since 1892 has been refused insurance and black-listed for good reasons, and have claimed that Mr. McCall's letters were circulars sent me by mistake. We are still considering the problem—are the men who run our great insurance companies honest? Well, look at the reproduction on page 442 of a document that is now in my possession and has always been since the date when it was delivered to me by one of the three great representatives of the "System," the Equitable Life Insurance Company.
This document speaks for itself. My readers