out, which made it obvious that it was not in force. My object was to lead the Equitable into the positive statement that it was an ordinary advertisement, when I would have reproduced the proposition that accompanied it and which the Equitable made in probably the most elaborate set of documents ever assembled by an insurance company for the purpose of inducing one of the "best risks" in America to take out a "great big policy." These constitute the complete argument which was made by the Equitable Life Assurance Society to persuade me to take a million dollars' worth of insurance. They are engrossed upon parchment and bound in a specially gotten-up morocco cover, and, I was told, cost the insurance company between four and five hundred dollars. They were presented to me as the result of my demanding that all the inducements they offered to come into their company should be put down on paper, so that there could be no mistaking them. The documents as engrossed and the terms of the contract were carefully copyrighted by the Equitable, and are now on my table before me as I write.
The question which the publication of the million-dollar policy was to settle was whether or not I had been importuned to take out great sums of insurance in the leading insurance company of America, and it proved exactly what I had contended—that I had been so importuned.
Up to and including my April, 1905, instalment I have made specific charges against the great insurance companies, the Mutual, the New York Life, and the Equitable:
1st. That the control of the officers of these great corporations over the billion dollars of their policy-holders' funds is as absolute and unrestricted for all practical purposes, as is their control