The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1880-08-03


zens to invest wealth at home. Sources OF
taxation are thus multiplied and popular
burdens alleyiated. But while New York
statutes create these life assurance agencies
for the absorption of the wealth OF remote,
ignorant or unthinking provinces, New York
prohibits the investment OF money accumu-
lated by these corporations in any SECURITIES
except such as are created by New York. A
market is thus made for New York secur.
ties drawn from Virginia and Texas. and
New York bonds rise in value, while the
very life blood is forced out of those of the
unthinking provinces Of the empire" Five
or six life assurance corporations having ex-
tracted two hundred millions from the south
and west in twenty years in commissions, paid
agents, and in forfeitures and lapsed policies
and annual dues, it is not amazing that when
Senator Morton went down into the "land
of cotton" and of WOOL" he became sad,
contemplating fences falling and houses gone
to decay and paint unknown, and desolalion
and assurance dominant. He forgot to tell,
however. that after war had done its perfect
work, life assurance agents carried away all
the wealth that was left. Ex.planters we're
persuaded that they might well invest the
wreck of fortune in life policies. Their
children would at least havea competency and
they themselves need only toll enough to pay
a thousand or two annually to the great life
corporations of the east. Premiums were
paid till Thad, Stevens and Ben Butler be
came supreme and devious, and delightful
processes Of reconstruction were progressive
and the carpet Dagger and negro politician
and tax-gatherers ragged, and armies came and
hell WAS substituted for peace. To pay pre-
miums where industry was impossible was
wholly impossib e, and they who continued
to do so were finally made wholly impotent
by Jay Cookies collapse ana Sherman 5
thumbscr VS.. Farms and their products
lost saleable value, and forfeitures of insur.
ance policies accomplished perfect work,
Two hundred millions that should have been
invested in fences, farms and homes, over the
RUNS of which Senator Morton wept, were
kindly taken in charge by the "Equitables, /"
and "MutualS," and "KnCkerbockers, and
"Etnas" of the east. The equitableness of
the process is shown in the SPLEEN
dor of a palace costing four
millions, on Broadway, in which
regal stockholders draw each $4,000 per
annum, besides dividends as holders Of sine
CuTeS. lHo nlutudi, vi NoW L uTh IlIe
shows its justice and fairness and the "mu-
tualp advantages of its peculiar processes by
taking $4,000 of the old farmers money and
refusing to give even a psid-up policy for
81 200, as its agent agreed. Tho Kncker
booker made vast deal of fame by suffering
policies lapsed during war to be revived, on
the payment, of course, Of premiums, and
from that time forth it has proceeded to
"knick" them until it has accumulated in New
York enough wealth to build more homes
and school houses and churches in Alabama
than there are wanting in Mississippi. No
wonder poor Senator Morton died of u
broken heart contemplating as he did tho
miseries and poverty OF states which send up
for investment in life assurance in the east,
never to retarn, thirty millions annually.
TOUCHING ASPECT OF THE FACTS.
Now and then hapless wretch, who has
insured his life down east, dies, even while his
policy is in force, and occasionally the sum
due is paid without litigation, and
the widow, gilded with all this
cash, is at once most attractive
in the matrimonial market She is vic
timized by some adventures, the cash
squandered, or her success in winning induces
further investments in this lottery of life and
death in which the victim alone puts up the
STAKE, and only wins at last when dead the
money he staked Meanwhile his farm was
neglected, his home went to decay. the state
and country were impoverished that premi-
ums might be paid in distant states, palaces
reared on Broadway, and Hartford is paved
with gold. New York and Connecticut Leg
islatures generously suffer the countless cease
less little streams of wealth to flow eastwardlv,
but have sedulously damned up the reGuent
tide, and decreeing that this incoming gold
shall beinvested exclusively in real or personal
securities of those old states, In fact the
south has been so ravenously plueked BY
carpet-baggers in government, when the
negro was on top, and when the plowshare
was bayonet under Thad Stevens and
Grant, that property there hardly has
value, and this condition of things
was only aggravated when the people
were induced TO seek security for their u
age and for the dependent by sending their
little gains for investment by life compa-
in the securities and properties of New
York and New England No wonder palaces
rosA up on sterile hillsides of the east and
wretched novels on the sunlit plains of the
desOlale, Impoverished south.
REPREssIyE LEGISLATION DEMANDED.
States have legiststed to protect the people
against ingenious managers Of lotter
les In many states constitutional edcts are
pronounced against them and the churche.
have been constrained to give over the bust
ness to Havana, New Orleans and Louisville.
But this nefarious business of stalking money
on the average duration of human life is
still prosecuted with infinite ardor, and the
law utters no interdict. Lotteries have only
drawn few thousand from the desperate or
from those who amuse themselves by gam.
ing; but these life insurance gambling
bells have reared splendid palaces
and proclaim their possession of
two hundred million taken from farms
and homes of impoverished communities and
added to the enormous wealth of cities and
states that use the federal government itself
simply as a money getting agency. But
tariffs and navigation acts have never robbed
one section to enrich another as ruinously as
these mighty corporations of the east.