n nature is better established
by proof. Given these elements, how easy to erect the fabric of life
insurance--how easy to spread among the many the misfortunes of the
individuals who die untimely deaths, their numbers being known
beforehand.

Upon this paradox life insurance rests. It is at once one of the most
simple and one of the most beneficent methods ever invented for
alleviating the evils necessarily incident to our complex civilization.
For a trifling sum, a man may make provision for his family against
untimely death, and thus gain the quiet of soul and peace of mind
necessary for the pursuit of his avocation.

But I do not mean to sing a paean to life insurance. It may be safely
said that the subject is not new, or the field uncultivated. On the
contrary, the topic has been said and sung in prose and verse for so
long that it ceases to attract for novelty's sake; while we have all
heard the ubiquitous agent sound its praises in our ears, until it
appeared to our excited imagination as if there were no need of any
further want, or care, or trouble in the world, and that life insurance
was, or was about to be, or at least

Might be the be-all and the end-all here.

The object of the present writer is to suggest the spots upon the sun,
to point out the fallacies, the faults, and the frauds which have been
allowed to grow up around the system, and to make some suggestions for
the cure of the evils and their prevention.

To begin with, the frauds in life insurance date from the period when
companies were started for the purpose of making money, and with the
appearance of being philanthropical institutions. Savings banks have
gone through the same experience, and it is a sad one. Men who attempt
to lead the public to believe that they are engaged in an enterprise
based, not upon the selfish principle of profit, but upon the unselfish
principle of doing good, and who then deliberately go to work to fill
their own coffers by means of the business, are, to say the least,
obtaining their money by false pretences.

The capital of the Continental Life Insurance Company was $100,000, and
although, by the original charter, the stock-holders were entitled to
share with the policy-holders in the profits of the business, yet some
years ago an arrangement was made, upon the transfer of the risks of
another company to the Continental, that only seven per cent. should be
paid to stock-holders. Ever since the yearly st