The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-21
Life Insurance Policies.
To Editor of the Journal and courie

Permit me the use of little space tc point out two serious defects in the most popular life insurance policies now issued by the Old Line companies, as well as by the Fraternal associa- tions.
 In the first place they are made to cover too many years.
 In the next place, they are too limited in their beneficent scope.
 The great majority of the policies now outstanding, and those issued from day to day require the insured either to pay partly or wholly in advance, or else to pay continuously as long as he lives even if he lives to be Q hundred years of age and over! A little intelli- gent reflection ought to satisfy any man of ordinary sense that such con- tract must be an unwise contract for him. It covers too much time.
 . No good reason can be given why the average man should enter into a con- tract which purports to insure his life until he is a hundred years of age. Yet that is just what every man does when he takes out a life policy. When we stop to reflect it becomes clear that the average man should studIously refuse to enter into any agreement which re- quires him to pay insurance premiums, or assessments after he has attained his sixtieth or sixty-f1fth birthday. Why SO? Because the averag ge man has become physically disqualified to earn much in the way of salary, or wages, at that age.
 What a man of that age needs is not a burden, but relief, not a. contract of insurance for somebody's benefit when he is dead, but the immediate. and full control, and benefit of all he has been able to save in any way, to support himself and wife, if he has one. during the remainder of their life. For such old people to be bound by an iron-clad contract to pay insurance premiums or assessments as long as they live is ab- surd in the highest degree. For. if they have had children, they are grown up, and are able to take care of them selves, at least they ought to be.
 Every life insurance contract, there fore, whether it be issued by an Old Line company or by a Fraternal asso- citation should either expire" as a term policy or mature as an "en- dowment policy when the insured is from sixty to sixty-f1ve years of age. If the contract is a term" contract, the discontinuance of the premiums, or assessments will at least tighten the burden that much during the remaind- CT of the journey. If the contract is an endowment" the ready money it brings into the house will supplement very nicely the old mans rapidly de- creasing wages or salary"
 For the average man, an endowment policy in a good company, whose pre- mium rates and management expenses are low and honest. is unquestionably the best. It is a great incentive to save money; it provides good protection in early life for the family, and if the in sured lives to see his policy mature, he gets the final benefit himself in his ole age. If I were to live my life over again, would touch nothing else, but would carry all I could of this kind But if possible, would want my policy to contain agreements which no policy of insurance now contains, namely, that several causes besides death should mature the contract. Among those causes should be included these: Hope less insanity, softening of the brain, to- tai blindness. paralysis, loss of botl, arms, etc. Any or all of these entail 8 far greater loss than death wherever they occur.> They should certainly mature the insurance contract therefore. The benehcent institution of life insurance-it is g. benef1cent insti- tuition in spite of dishonest men, for it expresses the best there is in the hu. man heart, self-denial for the sake ot others, needs broadening at this point, T. F. DAVIES,