Life — August 3, 1905 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

White there ts Lite there's Hope VOL, XLVL AUGUST 5, 190 No. 11s 1 West Tanery Free Sremer, New Vous, (Goreenor HIGGINS com’ ed the life end- insurance businessas conducted 7] in the State of New York to the at- tention of the St Legislature te not so much with intent to discover additional the m. ble Society, as the defects in agement of ct_ proposals the medication of life insurance in The important thing for a committee neral. ge legislative to discover is what life insurance ought to cost the policy: put holder, and how it is possible to able nin his reach at a reas tw as become rice, The impression very general that the present is a great deal higher than it sh ost of it or needs to be. rs, even in the investment of its In many essential par- tic! the Equitable has probably moneys, been much better managed than it gets, cre for at this t were doubtless too b loans that it should not have made, « Its salaries g; it made some nt some securities that aight. Other seem to have done as badly, or worse, boug not have b in both particulars, Ev concern sometimes makes a bad loan, sionally gets caught in a bad investment. More than from bad loans, bad investments or too high salaries, the policy-holders of the Equitable seem to have suffered from too urgent a desire on the part of to get new business, in- me the ry lending rye investor occ and every crease its surpluses, and be gest thing on Earth and the fattest In desires of that nagers. sort the policy-holders have vi If a legislative committee interest *LIFE* New York State what life insurance ought to cost them can tell citizens of and where or how they can get the most for their money, it will be doing avery useful and timely servic ‘'T present all that most of us know about life insurance is what the life insurance agents have told us. It is high time that the information we m them should be supplemented by reliable information and trust- nts’ interest have been getting fr disinterested The ag and the premium payers’ interest are from some worthy source. by no means identical, If a legisla. an tell the premium advantage, it n. If the deferred dividend policies are, as a rule, disad- tive committee payer anything to. his cannot begin too si va’ yeous to the buyer, we want to know it. If life insur: © 8 NOW con- ducted makes unduly for the advantage of the insurance ayents and the com- pany officers, we want to know that, and want Iso to have some safe p devised whereby the savings of the provident can be handled to their best advantage, wish Commander and Mrs Peary and their family good luck intheir present quest for the North Pole. If they will yet it and fetch it home and set it up in their back yard t will be a very useful service, and one very well adapted to promote the peace of mind of nations, The value of the North Pole does not lie in its intrinsic qualities, but solely in its scarcity. If it were common, not one of us would give it house-roc and Commander Peary would be able to sit at home and plan expeditions to Mars. The great advantage of expeditions to Mars will be the impossibility of actually starting one. That is why it is so ble that the North Pole should be desi found and done for, and that the at- tempts on Mars she ald be begun. HE gist of the situation which lately set the District: Attorney’s assistants to rummaging through the account-books in the office of Town Topics is this: When one Ahle, a book subscription agent, with creden- tials from Town Topics, asked Broker Post to subscribe to ‘Ame! Smart Set," to be published at five hundred dollarsacopy by the Zow Topics Com- pany, he sugyested that unless Mr. Post did subscribe, Town Topics would print an objectionable story about him, Mr. Post trapped Ableand had him ar- rested for blackmail. In a book that he carried were found the names of a number of well-known people who had subscribed ranging from hundred dollars to one thousand dol} for ‘America’s Smart Set.”” It has since transpired that the Town Topics Com- pany been getting up another book called ‘t Fads and Fancies,"' for which the minimum subscription price is fifteen hundred dollars, though sub- scribers are allowed to pay more. Many well-known people have subscribed fifteen hundred dollars, and not a few have given more, twenty-five hun- dred dollars in several cases, and in one case ten thousand dollars. It seems, too, that a concern called " The Social Editors’ Society '’ has a similar » for which its If people are being scared into buying these books for fear of what Town Topics or the Social Editors will print about them, the District Attorney wants to know it, and so do all of us. Most of us know, either by hearsay or direct investigation, what sort of information Town Topics is willing to purvey. What we don’t know at this writing is whether Town Topics systematically finds a profit in being placated or bought off. The intimate connection of Justice Deuel of the Court of Special Sessions with Tows Topics has excited surprise. It had not been suspected that the ad- ministration of justice could blend harmoniously with any share of edi- torial responsibility for the disclosures in that paper. ca’ sums one work in contempl agents solicit subscriptions. comicbooks.com