The New York herald., 1922-03-19
UNTERMYER HITS LOBBIES
FOR SMASHING HIS BILLS
Continued from First Page.

all save few of the many important
/ features OF the committees program. 1t
| has been torn to shreds Our entire
body OF antitrust legislation and every
| part OF the legal and administrative. ma
chinery that is required TO make it eff
fective and that was embodied in the
State trade commission bill have been
smashed TO smithereens and the people
of the State are left as never before at
the mercy OF the profiteers and Of the
most powerful and corrupt insurance
combination conceivable and one that is
and has been for years literally robbing
the public, backed by a vast lobby that
stops at nothing.
Nothing is to be gained by hum
bugging ourselves or the people, who do
not understand these intricate problems.
| They may as well know that they have
been betrayed. and the identity of hte
men who have done the dirtiest nights
work ever put over on them!
But the fight is far from over It
has just begun. This struggle has
demonstrated to me that except in the
rare intervals when the public is thor
oughly aroused the corrupt companies
and their still more corrupt lobbes are
more poperful than the people of the
State, and that until the one can be
curbed and the other exterminated pop
ular government will continue to be a
| failure
Vim fifteen years there has been no
insurance legislation passed except what
these companies wanted, and none has
been possible however urgent. Superin-
| tendents of insurance Nare their mere
puppets and that is particularly true of
the present one and of the one who for
years before him held the Office and
registered the Will OF the companies
that he was supposed to supervise He
| has received his reward in having been
| made the head of their combination, and
he has certainly earned that reward by
the thorough job of destruction that he
has brought to completion in the defeat
of the insurance legislation.
1T is to him more than to any one
other lobbyist that we owe the emascu-
lation and defeat of almost the entire
insurance legislative program.
| Insurance Bills Beaten.
"The four important insurance bills
that passed the Senate and that have
now been beaten are:
'The one requiring the fire insurance
companies to stop their gambling in
speculative stocks with the policy hold
ers' money. and to limit their invest
ments to those now permitted life in
surance companies and savings banks,
which was strangled to death by the
Speaker in the Rules Committee of the
Assembly
1T had received the unanimous sup
port of the Lockwood committee ire
| spective of party and no reason was
| ever suggested for opposing this bill
! except that given by the presidents of
! the companies from the witness stand
when they said in effect that the public
might be damned and that it was none
of the policyholders' business how they
| invested or what they did with the
| S650,000.000 and upward of unearned
| premiums that are supposed Co be a
trust fund in the hands of these men.
"The next important insurance bill
giving to the Superintendent the right of
supervision over the rates that these
! companies have been making in COM
| bination and that the poicyholders have
been compelled to pay without redress
and more particularly that part of the
bill giving the right to the insured to
| review the reasonableness of these rates
by the court, was again so emasculated
/ at the eleventh hour that It might
almost as well not have been passed.
THE same destructive jokers' that
were found in the bill and extracted from
! IL by me on Wednesday were put back
into Il in the Assembly at the eleventh
| hour through the trickery Of Mr. Phil
| lips and the treachery of Mr.. Stoddard,
the present Superintendent of Insurance,
and their lobby aids. ably assisted by
the Speaker of the Assembly
II attach no special Importance to the
right of supervision by the Superintend-
ent OF Insurance, for these men appar-
emily will never be anything but rubber
stamps TO register the wills of the com.
panies. The remedy given to the courts
to review these as fixed rates by the
companies acting as they are in combi-
nation for a judicial review OF the action
of the Superintendent is. however, of su-
preme Importance. It is upon that right
OF review that reliance was placed for
the public protection. AS the bill stood
when / left Albany on Friday night
this power of review was given without
qualification whenever any risk or class
of risks was found by the court to be ex-
cessive or unreasonable.
The clauses now put back were taken
out OF It. The Superintendent distinctly
agreed to the bill as II stood when I
came away from Albany in the presence
Of his chief assistant and others. At
least three times I demanded to know
from him whether he had definitely con-
sented to leave out those clauses and
each time he expressed his agreement,
but said that he would like to telephone
somebody or the subject---doubticss
meaning his boss, Mr.. Phillips. VINO.
though at the head of the companies
supposed to be supervised. Is still the
real Superintendent OF Insurance.
s'Jokers' Destroy Relief.
These two jokers' that are destruct-
i've OF any real relief have now been put
back into the bill. With them in IL it
might as well not have passed.
Both OF these jokers' virtually take
away all discretionary powers from the
court. One absolutely requires the SUI
perintendent and the court in reviewing
the reasonableness of a rate to base 1t
upon the experience Of five years, when
in fact there may be- and often Is. no