The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-02-02


TO give that protection to those whom
he has made. or who rightly are. de-
pendent on his life and its financial
product, and his desire to get it at only
its actual. proper cost
The only way TO make a policy at
tractive as a personal venture to any
man is to do away with mutually, ex-
cept in the premium charged: charge
the full mutual premium, but instead Of
giving back to each man his share of
the yearly savings, divide them up
among only few and make the rest go
without
No man would accept such a PROPOSE
ton unless he was either assured. or
felt considerable degree of confidence,
that he was to be one of the few. So
the thing is put up as a gamble. Each
man agrees to leave his share of the
savings with the company for say
twenty years: that if he dies meantime,
his policy being still in force, all his
yearly shares of savings which he
might have had back shall be forfeited
to the company for division among the
| final few: also, if he does not keep up
his policy, his share of the savings
while it was in force shall go the same
way. The division is supposed to take
place at the end of the twenty years
/ among those who have survived so long
and also have paid their full premiums
straight through; but each one has had
to agree beforehand to accept whatev-
er the company allots to him ais his
share; there is to be no statement of
the size of the pot" nor any account
ing for its distribution. The expected
value of the share in it of each of the
final few is set forth in the estimates of
various bonds" and other forms of
contracts, the specific feature of all of
which is the postponement of all divi-
dends for some period of years. 1t is
the chance of being in at the final di-
vision and getting what others have
lost that is the attraction, addressed
to the personal interest of the man and
not to his sense of duty and honor to-
ward his dependent family. That
chance, as estimated by the companies
originating the scheme, is about one in
three. AT least two-thirds will drop
out by the way. Each man expects to
| be of the third. So he stakes his
own proper share of the savings for
| twenty years in the hope of helping di-
vide what the other two thirds must
lose. And the company holds the
stakes without accountability to any
one.
Notwithstanding the fact that none
of the companies doing this sort of in
vestment" business have ever made
dividend which even Appropriated the
estimates which attracted the invest
ors," and that these dividends have
steadily and rapidly shrunk through all
| the many years of their experience, it
| is true that they still succeed in attrac-
| ting great numbers to their member
ship. Personal interest in, what is
made to appear good thing" for
which some one else is expected to
| furnish the contents, is a motive far
more easily appealed to, with less eff
fort and with much reader success,
! than ones sober, unselfish duty to those
he has made helpless and dependent,
and whose protection he has no right
to put in hazard.
The point of view of the companies
selling postponed dividend schemes is
admirably revealed in the instruction
recently given to its agents by one Of
the very largest of them; the italics
are the company's own: Get the idea
out of your own head. and keep it out
of the investors head, that you are
simply assuring his life. Avoid that in
/ adequate conception of the transaction.
| View the matter accurately and scien-
| tifically. You are selling a block of
! Bonds-that is the first idea. To that
you add the idea of insurance. Insur-
ance of what? Why insurance of the
| investment. It is not, strictly speaking,
| life assurance any more than it is fire
insurance, or marine insurance-it is
bond insurance" But your client
may say: "The question of cost is a
| gamble after all. Well, you can, for
! the sake of argument, admit that it is a
gamble. 1t may aid you in selling your
bonds
1t is precisely because the great bulk
of business now done by life insurance
| companies is made to appear and to be
as little like real insurance as possible,
and as much like financial venture of
personal profit to the investor" as pos
sible, that the operations of The Con-
necticut Mutual take on peculiar in
| terest to all whose families need the
protection that pure life insurance
alone can give.
| For The Connecticut Mutual is not
offering Bonds" nor Investments
which can be made an actual invest
ment to one man only by taking what
| two other men have lost on their gam
ble." 1t seeks out the men whose fam
| lilies need life insurance; it offers them
| real life insurance, in its own name, on
| it's own proper motive and basis; it
does not expose itself and its business
and the protection of its beneficiaries to
complete destruction, by policy con-
| tracts which permit all the reserves to
| be drawn out in cash, in any year, at
the will of the policy-holders, like de-
posits in bank; it holds and treats its
funds in the only manner in which they
can be held and treated for the proper
protection of real life insurance con-
tracts and with an eye single to the
sure care of it's benefciaries whose
| certain protection is the only reason