the most tremendous panic this country has ever seen, if the Equitable Life-Assurance Society had gone into the hands of a receiver."

The Equitable was then carrying $6,500,000 of Mr. Ryan's Metropolitan Street-Railway stock. At the recollection of this fact Wall Street laughed again.

And yet, I think that when Mr. Ryan said that he had bought Mr. Hyde's interest in the Equitable, he must have used the word in a sense not recognized by lexicographers, because, according to expert authority, he had not bought it at all. How easily we are all fooled! The mystery of Mr. Hyde's sale for $2,500,000 of stock worth $7,500,000 was really no mystery. Mr. Ryan knew well enough the potentialities of the Equitable assets; Mr. Hyde probably perceived that there would be bickering so long as he remained ostensibly in control. Hence Mr. Ryan easily induced him to lease the stock, and that is the arrangement now in force. Mr. Hyde remains the owner.

But for the purposes of the game a lease of the stock is as good as a purchase, and it is pleasing to know that with Mr. Ryan in control of the Equitable, the Standard Oil gang of the Mutual, and Mr. Morgan of the New York Life, the good old

game does prosper and go merrily, and no mistake. Every day you can hear in Wall Street the clink of the policy-holders' dollars as they roll over the table, making profits for the deserving "System," and for others in authority over us, just as if the names of Armstrong and Hughes had never been heard in this world. Wonderful are the achievements of a legislative investigation! The net results of our virtuous indignation about the insurance scandals are a few men worried to death, two or three in exile, two obscure persons sentenced to prison, and the game exactly as before.

Great thing, this spasmodic indignation of ours. Mr. Ryan chose for president of his share in the game Secretary of the Navy Paul Morton, formerly of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, and involved in very serious charges of having violated the anti-rebate law. There is no reason to suppose that Mr. Morton and Mr. Elihu Root ever compare notes as to their respective careers, but such a comparison, now that both are working for Mr. Ryan, might prove mighty interesting.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WRECK OF A GREAT PROPERTY

ON October 8, 1907, a quiet little man was sitting in the witness-chair before the New York Public Service Commission, telling in a quiet little way some of the historic secrets of the Ryan-Whitney syndicate.

Much of his testimony was well worth the world's serious attention.

He admitted an instance of his own knowledge in which the syndicate had possessed itself of more than half a million dollars of the Metropolitan's money. How? Well, there was a so-called company with a so-called franchise to operate a socalled railroad between Wall Street Ferry and Cortlandt Street Ferry. Mr. Anthony N. Brady, the quiet little witness, owned this precious device. He said it cost him $200,000. Under the coercion of the syndicate, he sold it to the Metropolitan Securities Company, acting for the Metropolitan

Street-Railway Company of New York, then the name of the street railroads amalgamated by the syndicate. He received a check for $965,607.19. Of this he retained $250,000. Then by agreement he gave of the remainder, $111,652.27 to Thomas Fortune Ryan, $111,652.78 to William C. Whitney, $111,652.78 to P. A. B. Widener, $III,652.78 to Thomas F. Dolan, $111,652.78 to W. L. Elkins.

So here was a plain revelation of where some of the gentlemen had gotten It.

Every person that heard this cool recital, nearly every person that the next day read of it, was astounded. The whole country seemed to receive a kind of electric shock. Yet the really amazing thing was that there should have been any amazement. Any one that cared to know, any public prosecutor, for instance, or any State officer or newspaper editor, could have found out long ago, and with the greatest ease, not only the whole story of the Wall and Cortlandt streets railroad deal, but other matters, compared with which the Wall and Cortlandt streets railroad deal was mere child's play-in the way of loot.

As the evisceration of the Metropolitan Company was the crowning triumph of the syndicate's

achievements, and typical of all, and as it, moreover, presents the best possible illustration of exactly what these achievements mean for the public, I purpose here to relate it at length, and without comment, as the most instructive chapter in the history of modern finance.

On October 8, 1907, Judge Lacombe, in the United States Circuit Court, acting on a petition of certain stockholders, appointed receivers for the New York City Railway Company, which meant the Interurban Street-Railway Company, which meant the Metropolitan Street-Railway Company, which meant the vast system of surface railroads amalgamated, unified, and controlled by the Ryan-Whitney syndicate.

Ordinarily the appointment of a receiver for a property has only one meaning. It means that the property is depleted, impaired, unable to earn its interest charges, and on the verge of bankruptcy. But this great traction system of New York, this wonderful money-earner, this inexhaustible hopper into which so many thousands of people daily pour their nickels, this concern once regarded as the Gibraltar of traction companies, whose stock was once quoted at 269, how did it fall into a depleted and bankrupt condition? Its business has not declined,