purpose of the Department, which did not care to press the matter, having accomplished its main object.
Now for the moral, or the iniquity, rather, of the preceding, the wrong to policy-holders, which has been so completely ignored and passed over by the insurance press and all hands: Either the company had, as at least supposedly it has in all such cases, ample security for its advances to agents in the pledges of their renewal contracts, or it had not. On the former hypothesis, that $1,900,000-odd was a sound and valid asset, earning a good rate of interest. On the latter, the company simply squandered this amount of trust funds belonging to its trusting policy-holders in its mad rush for business at whatever cost; or—In either case the money has gone from sight so far as any sign or indication appears to the contrary since.
And before leaving this point, it may be well to ask, "Has the New York Life Insurance Company altogether discontinued these advances to agents?" If not, how and where are they accounted for? An answer may be found, possibly, in the comparatively meagre underwriting profits of the company, growing relatively smaller and beautifully less with each succeeding year. I say it may possibly be found here, because this is the only place the item could be buried; but I am reasonably sure that it is not buried here, and that these advances to agents are being continued on a scale as large as, or larger than ever, for the agents could not have been shut off and the business increased at one and the same time.
Again, during the last two months of 1904, or at a time when my story, "Frenzied Finance," began to get in its work all over the