Some months ago the ICONOCLAST paid its respects to the old line insurance companies. It demonstrated beyond the peradventure of a doubt that they are but so many cut-throat gambling concerns. It proved that they are consuming the substance of the people by returning in satisfaction of matured policies about one-third what they collect in premiums. Of course, the expose aroused the ban-dogs of Dives, and they made the welkin ring from Tadmor in the wilderness to Yuba Dam. The ICONOCLAST became a target for oodles of cheap wit and barrels of black-guardism by the journalistic organ-grinders for the insurance buccaneers; but as yet none of the megalophanous-mouthed micrococci have attempted to answer its arguments or to demonstrate that the indictment was too drastic. A gentleman who has made an exhaustive study of the insurance problem sends me some valuable data which I propose to draw upon from time to time, not with the expectation of making high-toned thieves ashamed of themselves and thereby effecting their reformation, but to keep their newspaper panders and potwallopers snarling and snapping until general attention is attracted to the consummate meanness of their masters and thereby curtail somewhat their powers of despoilation. The old line life insurance fake is the most colossal scheme of predacity known to human history. Enough money is annually filched from the people to clothe every pauper like unto Solomon in all his glory and feed him upon the fat of the land. Millions of Americans are today denying themselves creature comforts to pay premiums on policies that will never yield their dependents one penny. The old line fraud flourishes simply because, in the language of the erstwhile P. T. Barnum, the American people love to be hood-dooed and humbugged. I do not by this mean to reflect upon the commercial integrity of all men soliciting old line insurance. Many of them are elegant gentlemen who have engaged, quite unconsciously, in very bad business. The Deity should forgive them for they know not what they do. They really believe that they are engaged in a work of philanthropy, while devoting their best energies to the promotion of a fraud. The average policy-holder knows little or nothing about life- insurance. He desires to provide for his dependants; but being unable to accumulate much property, he scrapes and saves and pays to some remorseless robber all his surplus money. He wants to be doubly sure that the company is solvent and will remain so, hence he selects one boasting enormous "assets." It does not once occur to him that the aforesaid assets have been accumulated in a very few years by bumping the heads of other suckers. He pays the rate prescribed without considering whether it be high enough to keep the company solvent or low enough to stamp his investment as commercial sanity. He is little concerned about "dividends," but wants to be assured that at the time of his death his heirs will