estate, fire insurance, low rent and loan favor graft; in each will be found the same type of syndicates as President Alexander and Vice-President Hyde used for their personal enrichment in the Equitable. To-day President John A. McCall of the New York Life is credited with possessing a fortune of between ten and fifteen millions—a few brief years ago he was State Superintendent of Insurance in Albany. The chief associate in the management of the same corporation, George W. Perkins, J. Pierpont Morgan's partner, is another very rich man, whose wealth has been accumulated in a few short years. Do you imagine for a moment that such transactions as I set forth last year in connection with the New York Security and Trust Company, in which the interest of the New York Life was sold to a syndicate of its own directors for a sum far below the market value of the shares, were put through without the connivance of President McCall and Vice-President Perkins? Even if the New York Life, as its president explains, did make a large profit on the sale of the trust company's stock, he cannot deny that the syndicate paid far less than the then market value of the shares for the insurance company's holdings.
There is something particularly vile about the crimes of these high officials and distinguished gentlemen who have been waxing fat and luxurious on life-insurance graft. In a recent number of this magazine I drew a parallel between the confidence operator and the burglar to show that the latter despises the former for a sneak thief who takes no chances in his thieving operations. Infinitely more depraved than the sneak thief is the high-placed functionary, presiding over a great institution built up out of the savings of millions