for Wealth-making when that formula has done its perfect work. The bonds are issued, the stock is floated, the syndicate is enriched, the palace arises. And every cent thus represented we furnish: we that consume the tobacco, ship the freight, grow the crops, eat the beef, hang to the straps of the street cars, pay for the bad gas, endure the bad service; we upon whose backs is piled the whole vast mass of watered stocks, fictitious bonds, fraudulent scrip, gambling securities. gambling securities. And the only profit obtained by society in all these operations is the spectacle of five or six men accumulating great fortunes, fortunes beyond computation, fortunes for a few comprising the sum of available wealth that should be for all.

Such are the facts. Sorry and stained and wretched, in the light of them, looks also this particular palace among the golden houses of the fortunate. Built out of the enforced contributions of the public, the sweat of the defrauded farmer, the blood of the small dealer, what interest has mankind in the mounting millions that it represents? Or wherein have we gained from its existence, we whose unexampled patience renders all these things possible?

CHAPTER XIII

THE GREAT GAME OF INSURANCE

ONE thing that Thomas F. Ryan must quickly have learned about the golden city of his dreams has impressed itself upon all other men that have tried

In the golden city is boundless wealth, but the vast mass of it is not to be touched, handled, come by, nor spun upon the table of the Wall Street

game.

At that game the playing is done with counters. All are counters-credits, stocks, bonds, notes, accounts, buildings, railroads. Of tangible gold to redeem the counters there is very little. True, the banks are enjoined by law to the keeping of certain reserves in cash, and, true, so long as these reserves endure one may at the banks get cash for his counters; but the law has requirements (stern though sometimes violated) about borrowing upon counters, the operation is not easy, and the propor

tion of cash to counters is infinitesimal.

Yet sometimes for the greatest and most profitable plays at the table great quantities of ready cash are absolutely necessary.

Amid the desert sands of counters, counters, always counters, flows one stream of actual cash, pouring steadily into New York. Day upon day, week by week, month after month, it comes in a solid, incessant stream, to fall into fewer than a dozen coffers. To the great insurance companies, that is where it all goes, millions upon millions of cash, not counters, paid daily by the policy-holders all about the world. The three great insurance companies have total assets of approximately a billion dollars, and this is the only free, large, and unrestricted source of ready money in the country.

Hence the madness of the struggle to gain control of these golden streams, for which men have risked the penitentiary and their souls. Year after year, as the business of the insurance companies grew and the golden stream rolled, the utility of the assets increased until hardly any new industrial enterprise could be floated without recourse to the policy-holder's money. Naturally, then, the money kings were impelled to get possession of the stream and to turn it whither they pleased.

The control of the policy-holder's money was in each case vested in the finance committee of the insurance company. In each case, also, the finance committee of the insurance company was composed of the money king and his friends. Hence the policy-holder's money could be used at any time to further, finance, or float the private schemes and ventures of the money king, to the money king's profit and the policy-holder's peril.

Inci

This was one use of the golden stream. dentally, there grew up another game with these millions, played at a side table and with great gains to the players. It consisted of what is known as "side syndicates." The substance of the "side syndicate" is a transaction not to be deemed honest merely because it happened to be developed since the framing of the criminal code. The men that controlled the insurance companies were also interested secretly in certain firms or companies whose business was to deal in securities. As these men directed absolutely the operations of the finance committees, their practice was to have their firms buy securities at a low rate and immediately, through the finance committees, sell them at a very high rate to the insurance companies. In this easy

manner it was possible to make two or three millions in a morning without the least effort or risk.

Much more than chance or opportunity was involved in these operations. The thing was systematized, it was reduced to a faultless process in which the financiers held every advantage. The very spirit of the times played into their hands, for the rapid development of industrial enterprises through the country created an imperative demand for increased capital, and the supplies of available capital came to be almost exclusively with these finance committees.

But

Suppose, for instance, some great industrial enterprise in the booming Middle West desired to increase its facilities and extend its operations. It issued securities to the desired amount, and to dispose of them came straightway to New York-the financial capital of the Western World and supposedly the only source of available cash. once here in this financial capital the supporters of the Western enterprise found themselves confronting a strange difficulty. As a rule only a few, a very few, specified firms or bond companies would handle their issue. Of these there was a regular list perfectly well known. When after negotiation one of these firms agreed to undertake the