world, I received from many quarters information that the Big Three had instructed their leading agents to get in a great lot of new risks "at any cost," so that the total business for the year would show such increase as to discredit my claim that the policy-holders were getting "scared." I watched the game with much interest, knowing that bunco would out in time, by whomever worked. During these months I read from week to week of this great policy, or that record-breaking risk just landed by this or that agent. One in particular made me chuckle at its transparency. A certain friend of the New York Life, a Wall Street man, "has just taken out a $2,000,000 policy." About the same time I began to receive information of the remarkable offers that were being made to prospective customers, offers which probably meant an indirect rebate of perhaps the full first year's premium; and I got to thinking and reaching back into my memory-box, and I raked out a number of instances of the same kind of offers which had been made to me in the past, and I ruminated to myself how all this was possible; for even if the Big Three were bold enough to get around the law against such practices, it puzzled me how they could pay to their agent the big cash commissions that new business called for. Presently as I waited I read, as did the rest of the world, the big January full-page advertisements of the New York Life to its policy-holders, calling their attention to the increase of $15,000,000 new business over the year before. Then I took another think and did a little work, with the following result:
A JOLT FOR THE NEW YORK LIFE
The "Brown