Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-08-19

TUtr CrltlclSDI.
New York Tribune.
Some of the recent criticisms of life in
surance management have been strangely
unfair. This vast interest, involving the
happiness of more than 100000 families,
and the investment of more than $40O,OOO,-
900 of capital, should not be wantonly or
maliciously sacrificed by unjust criticism.
1t is peculiarly desirable at this time, when
all important branches of business are
to re-establish themselves on a
solid specie basis, and when the insurance
business, in particular, has been subjected
to most rigid examination, that there should
be sharp discrimination between the COM
panies which have borne the test with sue
cess, showing undoubted solveney notwith-
standing the general depression and the
great losses of the last four years, and those
which have been mismanaged or have be-
come insolvent. Yet there are people who
still persist in creating distrust, so far as
they can, not of particular companies, but
of the management and condition of insur-
ance business generally. 1t is wildly as
serted, for instance, that the decrease in the
assets of the companies has been alarming,
and that the decline in their business has
proved the inability of the companies, as
now administered, to re-establish the con-
hdence which their own mismana cement
has impaired. Now, no person who has any
knowledge of this business will think these
remarks just, as applied to either of several
companies the perfect solvency of which no
one has ever doubted. 1t would be easy to
name dozen life companies which all in
telligent men know to have beer very ably,
honorably and successfully managed. But
the object here is not to commend any of
the companies separately to public conf
dence, but to point out the exceeding injus-
tlce of sweeping and random censures which
assail the credit as well of the best and
strongest as of the weakest companies.
1t is the common fault to imply that life
insurance generally is to be suspected, be-
cause some kite-ay1ng or swindling concerns,
started during the period of reckless specula-
ton, have gone down in dishonor, while
some others, formerly sound and honorable,
have fallen into knavish management But
this is the last degree unjust. No candid
person suspects the credit of A. T. Stewart
d Co., because many weak or speculative
dry-goods dealers have failed. On the con-
trary, it is seen that the removal of an ex-
cessive and desperate competition actually
strengthens the firms which have been able
to sustain themselves. So it is in life in
| surance. The weeding-out process is at
least as beneficial to the best and most
nrmly -established concerns in that business
as in any other that can be named.
In time of general suffering, when the
millions are forced to deny themselves
Injuries, pleasures, and even necessalies, it
happens that fewer persons are able to buy
clothes, houses, railway travel, or insurance.
Does this enforced economy of the people
show that there is a just suspicion of the
integrity of woollen OF cotton manufacturers
of real estate owners, railway or insurance
companies! Decrease in the amount of
business done IS the necessary consequence
| of a long -continued prostration of commerce
and industry, and it inevitably extends to
life insurance, as to every other branch of
| business. 1t is not the fault of the COM
panies that fewer persons are able to pay for
| insurance; it is not the fault of the sound
and unquestionably well-managed companies
that fewer persons do maintain or take out
policies.
In the face of long continued prostration,
the insurance companies now doing business
in this State have certainly sustained them
selves remarkably. They show that they
have actually increased every year in gross
assets, Notwithstanding reductions in valua-
ton of property. The apparent decline in
| gross assets last year was wholly owing to
the withdrawal of the Charter Oak and others
from the list of companies reporting IN this
State; the remaining companies show larger
assets in the aggregate than they have done
in any year before. Their surplus as re-
CARDS policy-holders is actually larger by
about $2o,0oo,O00 than 1t ever has been, and
their reports show that their asserts are more
| carefully invested, and their property is more
scrupulously valued. If there are individual
companies which merit suspicion, candid
critic will name the companies and give the
reason. But it is peculiarly unfair and
cruel, after the better companies have SO
manfully invited criticism, so successfully
borne investigation, SO carefully conducted
their business and preserved the assets in
trusted to them, to include them with those
which have failed, in one indiseriminate and
wanton charge of unsoundness. Certainly /,
is not for the pnblic good to create needless
blind, and unwarranted panic.