Over a year after the publication of this statement startled the country, John A. McCall, President of the New York Life Insurance Company, and George W. Perkins, Vice-President of the same company and partner of J. Pierpont Morgan, were compelled to confess that they had contributed from their policy-holders' deposits, large amounts of money to a fund to defeat Bryan in 1896 and to the Republican campaign funds of the two following presidential elections, and that they gloried in it. At the same time Jacob Schiff, director of the Equitable Life and a partner in the great international banking-house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., admitted that funds belonging to the policy-holders of the "Big Three," the New York, the Mutual, and the Equitable, were used in a joint fund to influence the Legislature of every State in the Union.

President McCall used almost the same language in September, 1905, in justifying his payment.

The President was notified some few months ago that the cotton report was being juggled by employees of the United States Department of Agriculture in the interest of certain Wall Street speculators who were gambling in cotton. Investigation proved that it was the practice to falsify the report; and certain Government officials and brokers are now under indictment.

See foot-note on pages 189 and 190.