THE HILL OF TARIK IN AMERICA. 
HERBERT 5S. 
HOUSTON, 
With Photographic Illustrations by Arthur Hewitt. 
Madeira 
the ship’s course 
was straight for 
the Mediterranean. 
Among those = on 
board, bound for 
the Orient, were a 
New York publish- 
er and a bright boy 
from the West, 
eager for all the 
new sights of the 
old world ahead. As 
the land breezes 
caught the pennant 
at the masthead, the boy scanned the East- 
ern horizon and he kept it up for hours. 
“What are you looking for so hard?” in- 
quired the publisher. 
“Oh, T want to see that big sign of the 
Prudential on Gibraltar,’ and the boy still 
peered into the East. When at last the 
great rock, the Hill of Tarik, the Saracen, 
lifted its head above the ocean the boy 
searched in vain for the sign he was sure he 
would see. For him, as for all other Amer- 
icans who read the magazines, the Pruden- 
tial was inseparably associated with Gibral- 
tar. And this association has made the rock 
and the insurance company almost inter- 
changeable terms, simply because each sug- 
gested strength. But the American Gibral- 
tar achieved its strength in a few vears, by 
dauntless human endeavor while the slow 
accretions of ages gave strength to its 
namesake, the mighty Hill of Tarik. 
Ten years after the close of the Civil 
War—a period so recent that its. history 
has scarcely been written—the Prudential 
was established in Newark. As if fore- 
knowing the great rock to which it would 
grow, it began its foundation in a basement 
office. It was like the beginning of the 
New York Herald by Bennett, the elder, in 
a basement on Ann street. But it would 
be an idle play with words to make a base- 
ment office the real foundation of the Pru- 
dential. ~ It was something much deep- 
er down than that—nothing else than the 
bedrock American principle of democracy. 
The Prudential applied the democratic 
principle to life insurance. As _ Senator 
Dryden, of New Jersey, the founder of the 
company, has said, “Life insurance is of the 
most value when most widely distributed. 
The Prudential and the companies like it are 
cultivating broadly and soundly among the 
masses the idea of life insurance protection. 
To them is being carried the gospel of self- 
help, protection and a higher life.” 
From 

And what has been the result of the dem- 
ocratic American. principle worked out in 
life insurance? In 1875 the first policy was 
written in the Prudential. At the end of 
1903 there were 5,447,307 policies in force on 
the books of the company, representing 
nearly a billion dollars. The assets in 1876 
were $2,232, while twenty-seven years later, 
in i903, they were more than 30,000 times 
greater, or $72,712,435.44, the liabilities at 
the same time being $62,578,410.81. This is 
a record of growth that is without pre- 
cedent in insurance and that is hard to 
match in the whole range of industry. The 
rise of the Prudential to greatness reads 
like a romance in big figures, but, in fact, it 
is a record of business expansion that has 
been as natural as the growth of an oak. 
The corn crop of the country seems too 
big for comprehension until one sees the 
vast fields of the middle West, and then it 
appears as simple as the growth of a single 
stalk. So with the Prudential. To say that, 

U. S. SENATOR JOHN F. DRYDEN, 
President of the Prudential. 
