chapters against the votaries of the "System" who controlled the insurance companies, they met my specific charges as dishonest men would meet them, not as honest men would. They impugned my motives, and specifically charged that my reason for attacking them was that I had been blacklisted by all insurance companies and could not get insurance from any of them.
While it was immaterial so far as my specific charges went whether this was so or not, it had a most decided bearing upon the question whether the officers and controllers of the Big Three insurance companies were honest or dishonest men. Therefore I picked up their accusation and began a line of argument to prove they were tricksters and absolutely devoid of honor.
I showed, by reproducing the personal letters of President McCall, of the New York Life, to my office and to my house, reënforced by his special agent's letter, and these reënforced by his Boston agent's letter, that I had been continuously and urgently importuned to take insurance during the time he said I was blacklisted. The insurance people met this by the excuse that these were not personal letters, but mere advertisements.
I then reproduced the million-dollar policy, hoping to drag from the Big Three a specific charge that this, too, was an advertisement.
Of course, I did not pretend that the policy in question was in force, that is, that I was insured in the Equitable Life Assurance Society for one million dollars. This would have been too childish; first, because every insurance policy, particularly the very large ones, is as much a matter of record, to be got at by any one in the insurance business, as are real-estate records; and, next, because that which I printed had the signature punched