The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-10-11
\ BLACK sHAME.

Few events in modern times in the United States have been more thor oughly sickening and discouraging than are the revelations in connection with the New York Life Insurance Company, They are sickening to the moral sense of every decent man and woman in the country. They are dis couraging because they open up vis- ion of blushing and almost unlimited rascality in quarters where we had right to expect honesty and fidelity.
 When we speak of grafters. looters and embesslers. we are apt to think Of the guilty parties as low rascals with out consciences and without any moral sense of uprightness and fair dealing We are apt to class them as common thieves or swindlers who only waited for an opportunity to make on with whatever they could lay hands on The prisons usually get this class.
 In the case of the New York Life and the Equitable, we find men who stood high in the social and business woria' and against whom no breath of slam der or suspicion had ever blown. Those who have kept up with the course of events connected with the Life Company will remember that when suspicion was first aroused, and when a committee of investigation had been formed, the officers of the company con- fdentiy assured the public that there was nothing to conceal, that the affairs of the company would be found all right and the officials all square and biameIess They were so smilfnsiy confident that many were deceived and thought injustice had been done set of honorable gentlemen and blameless officials. s~
 And yet, as is yell known, hardly had the investigation started before such condition of affairs was exposed as to fairly shock all who read the accounts. President McCalrs own testimony has been enough to condemn him dozen times over, and he ought to go to the penitentiary on his own evidence. When asked about the s150.o00 admit ted to have been turned over to the Republican campaign committees, he acknowledged that. there was no rec ord to show what fund of the com pany the money was taken from, or by what authority 1t was used His own admission amounts to a confession that such large sum of money. really belonging to the poucyholders, was handed out to the campaign commit tees just as man would pay for a shave from his own pocket.
 But that Is not the worst feature of the business. To use the language of The New York Post. the positively sickening thing is the final uncovering of the reptile fund to which President Mccall has ordered such vast amounts paid from year to year. Within the past four and a half years. he swore, he had turned over s4fs.s2T to legis- lative jobber wholly without voucher. During that same period, he had paid out $1.103.e2o in law expenses good part of which, it is clear. must have been used to corrupt Legislatures. Of course, Mir Mccall did not use the word corrupt His phrase was. produce results but he knows, and everybody out of the infant school knows. that the most abhorrent means might have been used, and doubtless in many cases were used, to secure the desired re- suits and demoraiize our public life. The President of the New York Life must be commended for greater frank ness yesterday than he displayed when first testifying about his payments to Hamilton. Originally, he talked eva siveiy about real estate transactions; now the only reference from his ac- knowledgements is that the money was a legislative corruption fund"
 Here is nearly one million and half of the company's money, or rather the money of poiicyhoIders in the concern. turned over to what can hardly be otherwise regarded than a corruption fund to influence legislation. When asked if any of this money was used directly as a bribe to members of the Legislature, 1t was natural for Mccall to indignantly deny 1t, but what was the denial worth7 He spent most of his life in Albany and no one can doubt that he knows every trick and how to work it. It was easy enough to buy legislation and leave no record of how it was done or to whom the cash was delivered. To claim. IS Mccall has done. that these large payments were made to protect his company from legislative blackmailers" is a very thin subterfuge. It was made to corrupt legislation and he knows 1t.
 And so 1t goes on through the whole
 sickening affair. Both the New York Life and the Equitable Assurance So- aged without any regard to honesty or
 fairness. Large sums were taken from
 the funds of the companies without
 warrant and mostly without necord. | And the sickenlng, discouraging fea- ture of the whole business lies in the
 fact that Mccall and Hyde do
 not seem to realize that they have ! done or permitted anything wrong. On
 the contrary, they appear surprised
 that they or their acts should be criti-
 eised. The whole business is a black
 shame to the country.
 1 ~-@S-
 LABOR FOR THE SOUTH.
 The Washington Times has an ed-