Frenzied Finance Part 46

I already have the names of thousands of policy-holders, but to make my plan instantly effective I must have scores of thousands.

My plan has for its aim and end, this and only this:

The absolute preservation of the face value of your policy.

The reduction of future premium payments to forty cents on the dollar on what you now pay.

The rest.i.tution of millions upon millions looted from the three great companies, or as much as can be collected after a careful examination of the books--and the punishment of the thieves.

Bear in mind _that I will not have any money connection with you in the working out of my plan. I pay my own expenses. I will not ask any reward or profit, money, office, or otherwise, nor will I under any circ.u.mstances accept any._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Policy-holders reply coupon.]

In response to this appeal I received over sixteen thousand proxies, representing over fifty-four millions of insurance. The investigations made by the legislative committee of the State of New York are unearthing in a most thorough manner the iniquities of the directors and managers of the Big Three, and before proceeding further I shall await the results of its work. If there is any way short of criminal proceedings to compel the rest.i.tution of the millions diverted or stolen from policy-holders, I shall begin suits which I am satisfied can be fought to a successful conclusion.

THE CALL TO ARMS

The extraordinary disclosures made before the investigating committee of the New York Legislature, which is now conducting inquiries into the methods of the great insurance companies, led me finally to issue the following open letter to John A. McCall, in which I review the controversy between us and contrast his disclosures of corruption and mismanagement with his brazen professions of virtue and probity made last year. In order to wrest the two great mutual companies from the control of men who are obviously unworthy to direct them and with whom the policy-holders' funds are plainly unsafe, I asked for proxies which would make it possible for me to bring about a change in the control of these two great corporations.

This letter and call appeared in the November, 1905, issue of _Everybody's Magazine_.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN A. McCALL, PRESIDENT NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

_Sir_: It is time your attention was called to the moral sense of the American people. It is time some one dragged you out of the Wall Street conservatory and set you in the plain white light of daily life. It is time you were shown yourself as you are to-day seen by the millions of your countrymen who, a month ago, believed you to be a great and honorable man.

In spite of the terrible exposures of the past few weeks, in spite of the pitiless revealment of yourself and your directors as tricksters, in spite of the unveiling of the jugglery, grafting, and corruption of your administration of the most sacred trust that can be confided to man, you remain unconvinced of your fall and unpenetrated by your shame.

Fortified by the sympathy of your fellow-sinners, you imagine your audacious bl.u.s.ter and your sly evasions before the Investigating Committee of the State of New York represented shrewd generals.h.i.+p and able strategy, forgetting that the enemy against whom your manoeuvres were directed was the American people and that, in this inquisition, your character and reputation were as absolutely before the bar as though you had been indicted for sequestration of the funds of some dead friend's wife.

Throughout this broad country of ours are good Americans who have slaved and toiled to gather up the hundreds of dollars which you have exacted from them yearly as the price of the future livelihood of their wives and children, or as the provision for their own old age. You have made yourself the custodian of these funds under sacred pledge of square dealing and safe and honest administration. You have made yourself the national executor, the great depositary of the moneys of the widow and the orphan. You have cried your virtue and honorableness from the housetops, and, under the stress of your pleadings, hundreds of millions of dollars have been confided to you annually--half the savings of the nation have been turned into your coffers, all because you insisted that you were honest beyond all other men, and that the dear ones left behind might rely on your generosity and integrity for their support.

And it is with the moneys that might at any time have been claimed by these widows and orphans that you have been rigging syndicates, debauching legislatures, juggling judges, manipulating stock-markets, and doing other things which will be proven later. Instead of employing the vast power and the immense wealth intrusted to you to conserve the interests of your policy-holders, you have made yourself a part of the cruel robbing machine which the "System" has created to deprive the American people of their savings. Under the pretence of seeking profitable investment, your corporation has been perverted into a vast stock-gambling agency. You have filled the high places in your corporation with your own children and relatives and their relatives, and conferred on them great salaries out of which they have grown rich.

You have paid out to friends and a.s.sociates, on various pleas, millions that rightly belonged to your policy-holders. You have done all these things habitually, yet to-day you describe the investigation being conducted into your operations as an impertinence, and secretly you regard this inquisition and all that pertains to it as a waste of time and energy. You are unrepentant, unashamed, and defiant.

I shall take this opportunity, sir, of reviewing our own relations during the past year and contrasting your position to-day with that you boasted twelve months ago.

One year ago, in _Everybody's Magazine_, I said:

"The officers, trustees, and officials of the 'Big Three' life-insurance companies have been and are systematically robbing their policy-holders.

They are grafters--mean, contemptible grafters."

I gave specific instances of their thieveries.

You replied, not by haling me to court, but by:

Circulating throughout the world doc.u.ments by the millions, disparaging my reputation by advertis.e.m.e.nts and "news" and "editorial" statements from your subsidized insurance press, denying my charges and attacking my character, all at the expense of your policy-holders.

You libelled me in thousands of private letters to policy-holders, many of which came back to me.

You employed James M. Beck, ex-a.s.sistant Attorney-General of the United States, then and now chief attorney for Henry H. Rogers, the Standard Oil Company, the "System," and the Mutual Life Insurance Company, to ridicule my utterances and asperse my honor in addresses in the cities of Philadelphia and Boston.

You employed James H. Eckels, ex-Comptroller of the Currency of the United States, now president of the Commercial Bank and representative of the "System" in the West, to attack my arguments and distort my motives in Chicago.

You ordered Vice-President Perkins, of the New York Life Insurance Company, to perform similar service in Philadelphia; and

The burden of all these doc.u.ments, advertis.e.m.e.nts, and disguised advertis.e.m.e.nts and addresses was: "Lawson is an unmitigated liar and scoundrel, whose sole reason for attacking the insurance companies is that we refused him insurance."

I replied by printing your personal letter to me, wherein you importuned me to accept insurance in your company.

Again you gave me the lie, and p.r.o.nounced your letter spurious.

I replied to you and your followers by instancing cases of perjury, bribery, and false statements.

I stated that your claim that your company did not own, nor loan upon, stocks was false, and that it was made for the purpose of misleading and imposing upon your policy-holders, banks, trust companies, Government officials, and investors.

You answered this by writing a letter to one of the great churchmen of America, and in it you said: "I pledge you my word of honor this company has never, since 1899, had a dollar's interest, directly or indirectly, in any stock. Lawson knows this, and deliberately, for his own base purposes, makes charges to the contrary which he knows to be false."

To-day you and your fellow-plunderers stand convicted in the eyes of the whole world not only of juggling the moneys of the widow and the orphan in the stock-market, but of manipulating these trust funds for the benefit of your own pockets. To-day the world is aghast at your perfidy and amazed at your temerity.

Notwithstanding the turpitude already exposed to the people, you still imagine you can so conduct yourself as to prevent the investigators from fastening on you and your a.s.sociates the more desperate crimes that have been committed in the past--the 150 to 200 millions stolen and diverted or used in corruption. You know as I do that only the very edges of this national cesspool have yet been uncovered. You know that not only have the ballot-box and the Legislature at Albany been tampered with, but the law-making and administering machinery of other States corrupted, the Federal Government surrounded, and certain of the judiciary of America "educated."

You believe you can keep the evidence of these crimes from the American people by the same kind of bluff and effrontery with which you met my first charges. But you have mistaken the tempers of your countrymen.

I have been authorized in writing by over 16,000 policy-holders, carrying over fifty-four millions of insurance, to act for them.

I had intended to await the finish of the New York investigation before proceeding, but as I have had placed in my hands during the past few days evidences of the determination of yourself and your accomplices and fellow-conspirators to face it out regardless of consequences, and as I believe men capable of committing the acts that have been proved during the past few days are fully capable of taking the transportable part of the billion and a quarter funds to foreign countries, and of using them to keep themselves from their justly deserved punishments, I have decided to act now.

In sending you this open letter, I am actuated only by a desire to bring you and your a.s.sociates to such a sense of the seriousness of your position that you will see it is useless longer to attempt to defy the American people.

Yours, for the Exposure of Corporation Sneak Thieves, THOMAS W. LAWSON.

TO LIFE-INSURANCE POLICY-HOLDERS

At the beginning of my story, in 1904, I made certain accusations against the management of the three big life-insurance companies.

I knew, when I began my story, that the big life-insurance companies were in the hands of grafters and thieves, just as are the great banks, trust companies, railroad companies, and big corporations and trusts.

_This I knew_ and, in plain language, said it.

The big insurance companies, through their officers and trustees, replied by declaring: "He's an unmitigated liar."

I kept at my knitting, for I knew the crimes of these insurance grafters were such that, sooner or later, the world would have an opportunity to judge fairly who were the unmitigated liars and thieves.

The opportunity is at hand.

To-day the press of the world is devoting its s.p.a.ce, news and editorial, to a recital of the contemptible and heinous crimes of the New York Life and the Mutual Life Insurance companies--not as I relate them, but as their own officers and trustees publicly confess them.