IT is hardly eight years since I saw a great figure
in the insurance world talking a little haughtily to
a group of approving listeners. With much eloquence
and tingling with moral indignation, he was making
observations on the "muck-raker." His vocabulary
of invective was too limited to express all that he
felt on this subject.

At that moment the storm was gathering against
his own and other towering insurance companies.
He was stung to the quick as by a monstrous injus-
tice. It seemed to him very simple. It was the work
of the "agitator" and of creatures properly called
"muck-rakers." His main reason for resentment
was that "they were destroying public confidence."
He was very impressive about this. Business and
general prosperity, he said, could not endure for a
month without confidence. It was the one source of
our welfare. To undermine that confidence was to
bring disaster upon all, but especially upon people of

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