The Oklahoma Workman (Guthrie, Okla.), Vol. 10, No. 7, Ed. 1 Saturday, July 1, 1905 Page: 1 of 8
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Stnd Medical Examination! to Dr. A. L. SHARE, Grand Med. Ex. Ilifflsher, Okla.
Send all Reports and Correspondence^ W. R. WELCH, Graid Rec. Guthrie, Okla.
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Tenth Volume.
'C/AL O*
JULY, 1905.
Number 7
NO
OLD LINE VS. FRATERNAL INSURANCE
I k
\
FRATERNAL PAYS 100 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR.
OLD LINE PAYS 50 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR
Read this Record of Creed and Craft
For the past ten years it has been
the rule for old line insurance agents
to refer to the fraternal societies with
sneers, calling them cheap concerns
and in every way endeavoring to cre-
ate a sentiment that the extravagant
prices' demanded from a two confiding
public by the old line grafters made
their insurance better than the actual
cost asked by the A. O. U. W. The
developments in the management of
the Equitable Life in the past few
weeks opens the eyes of the public to
the fact that just one-half of the pre-
miums collected by old line companies
is commissions, stealing and graft
pure and simple, that $51.00 on each
one hundred dollars paid in premiums
is all that is returned to the policy
holders. In the fraternal Orders of
which the A. O. U. W. stands first,
insurance is furnished at just what is
costs to carry the risk and all the
rotton talk about a big price making
good insurance is now the talk of the
confidence men to extort as much in
graft as it costs in insurance in the
old line fakers. Read the following
from Walter Wellman, one of the fra-
ternal authorities in this country on
all kinds of insurance. And ask your-
self if you can be duped any farther by
talk of a big price making good insur-
ance:
Chicago, June 25.—Walter Wellman,
in a letter from New York, discusses
the discoveries of wrong-doing on the
part of officers of the Equitable so-
ciety and continues as follows:
The crime which these men have
committed is not alone against the
Equitable society and its policy hold-
ers. They have sinned grievously
against the entire American commun-
ity. They have impaired public con-
fidence in the management of our larg-
est financial institutions. They have
led the common people all over the
land to suspect that banks and trust
companies and savings banks and life
insurance companies and societies ev-
erywhere may be affiected with a ilke
gangrene of graft.
If the Equitable, which ;stood for
generations as a model of solid prob-
ity—"strongest in the world"—why not
others? Where next shall we hear of
an outbreak of criminal greed on the
part of eminently respectable rich men
occupying posts of financial trust? In
these days of frenzied finance and of
feverish haste to grow rich, in whom
can we place our faith? Are all our
life insurance companies as rotten
as the Equitable, and does it simply
happen that the Equitable has com-
mitted the sin of being found out?
Ts life insurance honeycombed with
fraud and pilfering and extravagance?
Are we paying our millions upon mil-
lions into the coffers of these concerns,
hoping to protect our families against
want in case of our death or our old
age if we survive, but actually to make
of our savings a plaything for the men
who handle them? Are these great ac-
cumulations of money we have built up
through our self-denial real trust funds
or are they merely pawns in the mad
game as they play it in Wall street?
The growth of life insurance is one
of the most marvelous phases of life
in this marvelous country of ours. It
is difficult to understand the extent to
which it enters the homes, the hopes,
the experiences, the economies, the
present and the future of the Ameri-
can masses.
The grand totals of life insurance in
the United States today are almost be-
yond the grasp of the senses. More
than 5 millions of policy holders are in-
sured for an aggregate of more than
10 billion dollars.
The holders of these 5 million policies
(estimated at 2 million individuals)
paid into the coffers of the eighty com-
panies during the year ended December
31, last, 472 million dollars in pre-
miums. The companies earned interest
and other receipts of 108 million dol-
lars more, making their grand total in-
come 580 million dollars, nearly 2 mil-
lion dollars for every business day in
the year.
What became of this golden stream?
Into what channels was it diverted?
How much of it was sent flowing back
to the families whence it came, to help
the widows and orphans or to lighten
the cares of old age? How much was
invested at interest to earn for the fu-
ture ultimately to spread its multiplied
beneficence upon the men and women
and children who own it? Anw how
much went for expenses of manage-
ment and agents?
Here are the real tests of life insur-
ance. And here are the answers to the
questions. Of 580 million dollars in-
come, 240 million dollars were paid to
policy holders in death claims, divi-
dends, annuities, etc. Nearly 127 mil-
lion dollars went for the actual ex-
penses of management, not including
taxes, which took about 11 million dol-
lars more. Thus the total disburse-
ments were about 378 million dollars,
of which 240 million dollars went back
to the policy holders. In other words,
for every $100 the policy holders paid
in they got back a little less than $51.
Now do you want to know where half
of the premiums to old line companies
go, then read the following record of
graft, unparalleled, and consider that
this is only one little stream in the
great river of graft, in solemn commis-
sions, etc. etc.
A SALARY TO A DEAD MAN
EQUITABLE MONEY PAID OFFI-
CIALS WHO DO NOT EXIST.
Mr. Jerome Will Hold the Court of
Genneral Sessions Ready for In-
vestigation This Summer—A
Movement to Probe all
Insurance Companies.
New York, June 23.—One of the most
sensational developments of the Equit-
able Life situation came to light last
night in the discovery that a man who
had been dead thirteen months and
three others who had long severed
their connection with the society were
still on the pay roll.
The discovery was made through a
.tudy of tlie report of the superinten-
dent of insurance, Mr. Hendricks. In-
cluded in Mr. Hendrick's report is the
salary list for the year 1905. On this
list appears the name of E. W. Lam-
bert, chief medical director, and the
salary of the office is set down as $25,-
000 a year.
Inquiry at the Equitable office dis-
closed the fact that Mr. Lambert h id
been dead for thirteen months.
Further down the list appears the
name of George H. Squire, who is now
a director, and who, until last Novem-
ber, was financial manager of the so-
ciety, at a salary of $20,000 a year.
Notwithstanding Mr. Squire's retire-
ment as financial manager and that
his successor, Mr. Winthrop, has been
appointed, the salary of the Equitable
for 1905 shows that Mr. Squire still
receives the salary of $20,000.
Still another name in the list as
printed in Mr. Hendrick's report is
that of Edward Curtis, whose office as
medical director paid him a yearly sal-
ary of $15,000. While the records of
the society show that Mr. Curtis has
not been an employee of the company
for eighteen months, he is still in re-
ceipt of $15,000 a year, according to
the Hendrick's report.
The fourth name is that J. B. Lor-
ing, registrar of the society. Mr. Lor-
ing received a salary of $7,000 a year,
but at his request, it is said, this was
reduced to $3,500 a year In April, 1803.
Mr. Loring handed in his resignation,
which was accepted.. If Mr. Hendrick's
list is not in error, Mr. Loring has been
receiving his salary regularly for two
years.
The regular summer vacation of the
court of general sessions will be sus-
pended this year so that the court may
be available if the district attorney, Mr.
Jerome, begins prosecution in connec-
tion with the affairs of the Equitable
Life Insurance society. This action
was taken upon the request of Mr.
Jerome.
WOULD PROBE THEM ALL.
A national campaign in favor of a
federal investigation of not only the
Equitable, but of the New York Life,
Mutual, Prudential and all other in-
surance companies doing business in
the several states, is soon to be inaug-
urated by a group of wealthy business
men, headed by Willian F. King, ex-
president of the Merchants' associa-
tion. Mr. King said last night that
plans were now making for sending
out an appeal to every commercial
and civic organization in the United
States, urging them to join in the agi-
tation for a federal inquiry. He said:
"The time has corrie when Some-
thing must and shall be done to pro-
tect the common people from these
big thieves. It is not the Equitable
alone. I have information that leads
me to believe that a very similar sit-
uation exists in other companies."
Mr. King declared that the Equitable
scandal has retarded the commercial
development of the United States
twenty-five years. The public has lost
confidence in banks, life insurance cor-
porations and nearly every fiduciary
institution which ordinarily furnishes
the money for great enterprises. For
this reason he predicted that a money
«trin£onpy wns nlmnst" snrp to follow.
"GRAFT" OF YEARS STANDING
The state insurance commissioner's
report showed that the state insurance
department itself was not free from
a measure of censure. It was devel-
oped in that report that "graft" in the
Equitable was almost coincident with
its birth. From the very first, when
Henry 1!. llyde began the establish-
ment of safe deposit companies and
later trust companies throughout the
country, the manipulations of the sub-
sidiary institutions was of a character
to benefit financially the favored clique
of officers and directors without in
any manner profiting the policy hold-
ers. These facts had never been made
known before in any examination by
state officials and the bond syndicate
transactions of James II. Hyde and his
associates had been equally ignored.
Nothing had been done which would
bring to light the long trail of "graft"
in the great -institution, leading back
to the first years of its existence.
Hut paying salaries to dead men is
not the only graft indulged in, on one
transaction President Alexander of
the Equitable Life has been forced to
disgorge $65,000 and how many more
he has been engaged in no one knows.
New York, June 24.—Restitution on
the part of the Equitable officials and
directors who profited from participa-
tion in the "James H. Hyde and asso-
ciates" syndicate has begun. James W.
Alexander started the movement today
by sending a letter to the chairman of
the Equitable board, Paul Morton, in-
closing his check for $25,053.22, which,
with the $40,790.54 he turned over to
the cashier of the society February 1,
the day previous to his attack on
James H. Hyde, makes the amount lie
has disgorged $05,843.54.
President Alexander is ill and the
letter was written and signed by his
son, H. M. Alexander, a member of
the law firm of Alexander & Colby,
and one of the directors of the Equit-
able Life Assurance society. Many of
the Hyde syndicate checks which tho.
president of the society received for
his participations were indorsed and
deposited by H. AT. Alexander as attor-
ney. The latter was sent to Mr. Mor-
ton soon after the conference in the
office of the attorney general, Mr.
Mayer, today. This conference was at-
tended by Edward Lauterbach and II.
M. Alexander, as representatives of
the ex-president of the Equitable so-
ciety.
HYDE ALREADY HAD ACTED.
Restitution already has been made
by James H. Hyde of his syndicate
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Johnson, S. L. The Oklahoma Workman (Guthrie, Okla.), Vol. 10, No. 7, Ed. 1 Saturday, July 1, 1905, newspaper, July 1, 1905; Guthrie, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc273902/m1/1/?q=%22%22~1: accessed May 5, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.