New Britain herald., 1917-11-15
DWIGG|NS LOSSES
 WILL BE MADE GOOD
Official of Bankers Life Insurance Company in New York on Case

New York. Nov. 15.--I. NJ. Earle, vice president and general counsel of the Bankers Life Insurance company. arrived here yesterday from Des Moines, Iowa. to confer with the United States district attorney and officials of the Federal Reserve bank in an effort to determine just how far the Bankers Life company may he responsible for the activities of its agent, Elmer Dwiggins. in collecting subscriptions to the Liberty I>oal;. While neither Mir. Earle nor any other officials concerned in the mat ter would express any views yester- day, yet in the opinion of those fa- niliar with the case the chances are bright for the company's making good to those who subscribed through Dwiggins any losses which they might have incurred.
 MT. Earle spent most of the day with Assistant District Attorney Knox, Assistant District Attorney Benjamin A. Mathews, officials of the Federal bank, Lee J. Wolfe, consulting actuary for the Bankers Life. who has been in charge of Dwiggins' office since the latter's disappearance last Saturday, and post office inspectors, whose in- vcstiEation into the missing agents books has shown discrepancy of $75,OO0.
 After the conference Mir. Mathews said that the government had noth- ing to add to it's version of the case except the fact that Dwiggins was still at large. Since the issuance of warrant for his arrest Tuesday, the police of every city in the country have been asked to watch out for him. II am here as vice president and general manager for the Bankers Life to investigate the Dwiggins affair."" said MT. Earle. Just as soon as I have the facts I will communicate ! with the directors to ascertain just ] what is up to us to do.
 "Jn the first loan, we accepted a degree of responsibility for Dwiggins, authorizing him to accept subscrip | tions for the Liberty bonds We tried to push the loan as hard as we could | in all our offices. And in this loan an examination of the stationery shows that he used the name of Bank CTS Life, representing that the com pany was behind him.
 | 1T corresponded with the superin 1 tendent of insurance in this state about Dwiggins at the time of the 1 first loan. I told him that in our opinion tho agent was an honorable man. of course we thought he was. The last letter I got from MT. Phil lips was in the latter part of June. l in which he promised to consult us if he wanted more information about our agent. We heard nothing more
 from him and thought naturally that everything was satisfactory.
 We knew absolutely nothing of this second venture of his when the
 campaign for the second loan started,
 this Liberty Loan Extension club The first thing we knew of 1t was when the Federal Reserve bank wrote us
 on Oct. 27."
 Asked to make a statement whether
 or not the company would make good,
 MT. Earle replied that it was "up to
 tho directors" and he couldn't say.
 In reference to statement made by
 Francis Stoddard. second deputy su-
 perintendent of insurance of New
 York, to the effect that, even if 1t wanted to, the Bankers Life could not make good out of its surplus funds a. shortage 00e to one of it's agents, MT.
 Earle said that he wasn't sure but
 that that matter would have to be
 left to the State Insurance department
 of Iowa and New York;