It was the time when the big life companies were beginning their drive to get business in block; to insure for one large premium paid in a lump sum, the entire working force of a bank or business house. When the employe was honorably retired, say at sixty or sixty-five, after a stipulated number of years of steady work, he would be pensioned until he died, which pension might in whole or in part be continued to his wife if she survived him. Or he might receive, upon superannuation, an endowment equaling three years' salary. If he died before retirement his relict might become the beneficiary of an ordinary life policy. There were still other plans and combinations and permutations thereof, whose details were more or less veiled in a haze of actuarial figures, but whose broad effects were alike calculated to incite fidelity in the employe by holding out to him the prospect of a comfortable decline if he stuck to his employer through youth and middle age. Mason quickly reported to Mr. Silverman that within six months the New England Life had written two such block policies for corporations and that three other rival companies had secured one each, while the Eastern had obtained none. Silverman telegraphed sharply to Plaisted, "Why don't you get any corporation business in bulk! Our competitors do." Mr. Plaisted responded with a laborious letter of explanation. Then it developed that the New England Life had things already in shape for a third big deal--the Phosphate National Bank. Mason got the first wind of it, not in Kansas City, but by a direct tip from Mr. Silverman in New York, with instructions to investigate promptly. Within six hours he was able to report back that the proposed premium would exceed five thousand dollars a year, and furthermore that the Phosphate Trust & Savings, being controlled by the same parties as the Phosphate National, was preparing to follow its lead. That would make four banks for the New England in half a year and greatly increase its already disturbing prestige. Silverman answered, "Immediately use all proper methods secure Phosphate business for us. We must maintain prestige. Authorize you act independently Plaisted your discretion. Draw on me in reason." Mason drew on him for one thousand dollars, and obtained two five hundred dollar bills, one of which, after duly cautious preliminaries, he handed to the cashier, the other to the auditor of the Phosphate National. Again, after duly cautious preliminaries, they accepted. These two gentlemen had been detailed a committee to draw up for the convenience of the bank's Board of Directors an analytical syllabus of the differing propositions offered by the competing insurance companies. The Eastern Life got the Phosphate National's business, followed by that of its subsidiary, the Trust & Savings Bank, and Mason got Mr. Silverman's congratulations.