amount unnoticed by its policy-holders or the departments. The sum so sequestrated was made up of balances due from agents—presumed, as in all such cases, to be amply secured by pledge of renewal contracts—to the amount of $1,919,734, and $843,891 charged off depreciation of real estate. (See Massachusetts Report, 1902, pages 158-159.)
This illegal suppression of most important transactions, directly affecting, as will be seen later, the interests of policy-holders, would have remained a sealed book but for the careful audit of the Massachusetts Department, which revealed the fact, unnoticed by that of any other State (note in this one instance the boasted careful supervision and boasted double and triple auditing of all accounts before publication!), that the item "Agents' Balances," amounting in the preceding year to $1,527,123, had disappeared altogether from assets. This led to a prompt request from the Massachusetts Department for explanation.
The honorable business men of the New York Life, who pay out so many hundreds of thousands of dollars each year advertising the fact that they are sitting up o' nights to find new ways to acquaint the policy-holders with the innermost secrets of the company, finding there was no avenue of escape from their dilemma, quickly realized that the Massachusetts Department meant to have the facts, and publish them, too. Their own "faked" report was already before the public in the published reports of two departments, those of Connecticut and New York.
There was but one course open to avert the terrific scandal that was inevitable upon publication of the Massachusetts Report, and that was to head off and forestall adverse comment and criticism, as far as possible, by making a clean breast of it. No time was lost in preparing a letter of explanation to the Department. This answered the