Thus arose a natural struggle between the banks and the insurance companies for the control of the finances of the country. If the bankers could control the insurance companies, they would be masters of the situation. If the insurance companies could control the banks, then the insurance company presidents would be the great men. It may seem odd to suggest that the insurance companies might have controlled the banks, but I can easily demonstrate that this was quite within the realms of possibility. One man with enough shrewdness and enough force, and possessed of not more than $100,000,000, could at that time actually have controlled the banking system of America. On August 5, 1899, when I entered “Finance” with the organization of our company, the capitalization of all the banks in the Clearing House was only $58,000,000, and their total undivided profits were 77 millions--making their entire resources 135 millions; the selling price of their stocks was about 200 millions. One man with a private fortune of $100,000,000, or McCurdy or Hyde controlling an insurance company with assets greatly in excess of that amount, or the Standard Oil group might have been shrewd enough to have bought a majority interest in all the important banks in New York, and this majority interest would have placed in his control, by virtue of the system I have described above, practically the entire banking power of America. We should then have had a financial octopus in the person of one man, with even weirder potentialities of sinister control of American life than the only less dangerous small group which actually did dominate the country financially in the early years of the present century. What actually happened was that the banking power, instead of being all in the hands of one man, was held jointly by a group of a few men who, although they fought incessantly and bitterly among themselves, nevertheless often united for common profit. It may interest the reader to be reminded of these groups and their leaders.