Topics of the Moment: The Equitable Life Insurance Company; Peace Conference and Portsmouth

TOPICS OF MOMENT.

The Equitable Life Insurance Company.

The scandals that have attended the examination into the Equitable Life Insurance Company are very likely to effect, detri- mentally, the general business of other great companies. When one reads the salary list, and is told that a policy holder is a stockholder and shares the general prosperity of the business, he feels very much like the boy who, while watching his companion eat his apple, spoke for the core. The one in possession exclaimed: "They hain't no core." The policy holder is to share the surplus, if these is one. When he sees the salary list he may well wonder what the surplus is to be. The Equitable has been paying higher salaries, it is said, than the other great insurance companies, and the new president, Mr. Norton, has been cutting down salaries to make them correspond more nearly to those of other great com- panies. The following is the list before and after the cut: Present. New. Gage E. Tarbell, second vice-president $60,000.00 $48,000.00 Thomas D. Jordan, comptroller 35,000.00 28,000.00 George T. Wilson, third vice-president. 30,000.00 24,000.00 William Alexander, secretary 25,000.00 20,000.00 J. G. Van Cise, actuary 17,500.00 14,000.00 M. Murray, caahier . 15,000.00 12.750.00 F. W. Jackson, auditor 12,500.00 10,625.00 Anna L. Amendt 12,000.00 10,200.00 A. W. Maine, assistant actuary 12,000.00 10,200.00 G. F. Brophy, renewals, etc 9,600.00 8,160.00 S. G- Hann, associate actuary 7,500.00 6,750.00 W. E. Johnson, in second vice-pres- ident's office 6.000.00 5,400.00 H. R. Winthro, financial manager 6,000.00 5,400.00 John Gilchrist, securities department. 6,000.00 5,400.00 F. F. Edwards, advertising department 6,000.00 5,400.00 J.F. McGuinness, purchasing department 5,000.00 4,500.00 Samuel Frost, recorder 4,000.00 3,600.00 D. N. Junk, cashier of the financial de- partment 4,000.00 3,600.00 H. L. Gorman, in second vice-president's office 3,000.00 2,700.00

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Miss Anna L. Amendt has been receiving $12,000 as secre- tary of vice-president Tarbell. Hereafter she is to receive only $10,200 a year. The entire cut will result in a saving of $150,- 000 a year, and the salaries will hereafter amount to over a quarter million annually. Such extravagant administration is likely to drive thosewho feel the necessity of life insurance as protectioL to their families into insurance policies that do not have accrueing interests, and also into les3 pretentious compan- ies whose salaries do not absorb so large a percentage of the net profits. It is said that the new president of the Equitable is not likely to receive more than sixty or seventy thousand a year.

His predecessor got $100,000 annually, and the first vice-pres- ident received a like amount. Senator Depew was retained as an attorney at a salary of $20,000. That, too, has been cut off. There have also been wheels within wheels and the modern graft has been worked for all men could get out of it. In sentencing a clerk who had robbed the Equitable, Judge Foster of New York made the following comment:

You stole from the Equitable, but your methods were very crude and bungling. If you had had instead of collusion with an outsider, col- lusion with an insider, and thereby had had your salary raised to $50,- 000.00, and had then divided with the other man. the result would not have been a bit more objectionable, from a moral or ethical standpoint, and would have been no more hurtful to the policy holders, but very pos- sibly you would not have been at the bar of justice. Under all the cir- cumstances of the case, compelled as I am to extend to you mercy by reason of your services to the people, the sentence is to the Elmira Re- formatory.

A life insurance policy is one of those things that an ordi- nary mortal knows nothing about, but, fortunately for the com- pany, what the agent told him has been forgotten before the policy matures, or, in the meantime, the agent has died. Other companies have asked for an examination of their methods. But is a method honest which pays men four or even eight times as much as their services would demand in other avocations? It is true, the surplus of a great insurance company may offer special inducements for men to raise their own salaries, especially when

864 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

there is money within easy reach to pay them. There is a grow- ing demand for federal supervision of these great insurance com- panies. Life insurance has become a part of our national usage. Policy holders have not all the safeguards they are entitled to, and some good is likely to accrue to them out of the scandals now ventilated in the Equitable.

Peace Conference and Portsmouth.

The progress of the peace conference is one of the leading important topics of the day, and the magazines and papers are filled with details of the proceedings, with descriptions of Ports- mouth and its environs, and with sketches and portraits of the peace envoys. It is confidently hoped, but not at all probable, that

this New Hampshire seaport city — the only seaport city in the state — will witness the last scene of one of the greatest wars of history. It is one of the oldest towns in this country, and is noted

as one of the most important ports in the old British colonies where the residence of the royal governors was located until the time of the Revolution. On August 5, just before the departure of the envoys to Portsmouth a memorable scene was witnessed on board the yacht Mayflower, at Oyster Bay, when President Roosevelt greeted the Japanese and Russian plenipotentiaries and bade them God-speed on their mission of peace. President Roosevelt after formally in- troducing the envoys, drank to the welfare of the sovereigns and peoples of the two great nations whose representatives had come thus together, in our great Western commonwealth, to promote peace on earth, good will to men. Then he uttered these admirably chosen words which were flashed under oceans to Tokio and St. Petersburg: "It is my most earnest hope and prayer, in the interest not only of these two great powers, but of all civilized mankind, that a just and lasting peace may speedily be concluded between them." It will certainly be no fault of his if that noble prayer be unfulfilled, while it is a safe prediction that no living person is more interested in the proceedings at Portsmouth than the Presi- dent who is likely to be asked to aid in the effort to make peace; in fact, on the ninth day of the conference it was reported that both sides had consulted him for aid.