investigations, in 1905, of a committee of the New York Legislature
into the affairs of certain life insurance companies revealed that
Depew had long since been an advisory party to the gigantic swindles
and briberies carried on by Hyde, the founder and head of the
Equitable Life Assurance Society.

The career of Depew is of no interest to posterity, excepting in so
far as it shows anew how the magnates were able to use intermediaries
to do their underground work for them, and to put those
intermediaries into the highest official positions in the country.
This fact alone was responsible for their elevation to such bodies as
the United States Senate, the President's Cabinet and the courts.
Their long service as lobbyists or as retainers was the surest
passport to high political or judicial position; their express duty
was to vote or decide as their masters' interest bid them. So it was
(as it is now) that men who had bribed right and left, and who had
put their cunning or brains at the complete disposal of the magnates,
filled Congress and the courts. These were, to a large extent, the
officials by whose votes or decisions all measures of value to the
working class were defeated; and reversely, by whose actions all or
nearly all bills demanded by the money interests, were passed and
sustained.

Here we are again forced to notice the truism thrusting itself
forward so often and conspicuously; that law was essentially made by
the great criminals of society, and that, thus far it has been a
frightful instrument, based upon force, for legalizing theft on a
large scale. By law the great criminals absolve themselves and at the
same time declare drastic punishment for the petty criminals. The
property obtained by theft is converted into a sacred vested