n item which could rise
and sink with great facility. In some companies it grew to such
proportions as to warrant the suspicion that pretty soon all the money
of the company would be in the hands of agents, and very bad hands to be
in they have generally proven, have these agents' hands. The books of
the Continental Company show about a million of dollars in the hands of
those gentlemen, with very little chance of any considerable portion of
it ever getting into the hands of the receiver.

And the worst of this condition of affairs with respect to the Insurance
Department is that it is a delusion and a snare. If there were no
supervision, people would exercise their judgment themselves,
uninfluenced by annual reports and all the apparently officially
recognized, columnar, battalions of carefully disposed statistics. Then
instead of producing certificates with the departmental seal
authenticating solvency, the life insurance solicitor would be forced to
prove his company entitled to credit by other and more convincing
arguments. Naturally enough, the plain people suppose that when the
State undertakes to regulate the business, it will do the work which it
undertakes well and honestly. It has in fact done neither. While saying
to the country, our companies are under strict supervision; they are
obliged to make annual reports; and if there is any item in that report
which leads the Superintendent to believe the company should be
examined, it is immediately done, and we permit no company to continue
in business unless it has assets enough to reinsure all its outstanding
contracts. That is what in effect the State of New York says. How far
otherwise are its actual doings let the history of the Continental and
the Security answer. The receiver of the first named says it has been
insolvent for five or six years, and insurance people gravely suspected
that for some time. As to the Security, any boy in a life company will
tell you that its absolute insolvency has been well known for at least
two years to all persons having any knowledge of the business at all,
who have read their annual reports. Nevertheless the department did not
interfere. The Continental let it be understood in California that they
were insolvent, so that they could buy in their contracts at a low
price. At home they keep up the appearance of solvency, go through the
solemn farce of making out reports and filing them in the department,
showing a surplus of ne