The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-12-12
Little Talks on Insurance

Insurance companies may be considered as being divided into two general classes stock and mutual. There are several subdivisions, such as limited div idend stock which means that the amount rate of dividends to be paid to stockholders limited parc- ipatng stock, which the poicyhoders participate in the profits to some extent; essential mutualS, Loyds reciprocal, nter-nsurers and others, but the two general classes first mentioned sufficient for this illustration.
 Stock insurance companies, meaning the strictly non-participating straight stock class which work solely in the interest of the stockholders may be said to be selfish in that the purpose of their organization being to make money for their stockholders, regard less of the interests of others, they much likely than any other class and especially the tuas to go into conspiracies and combinations to ro the price to be charged for insurance into schemes to shut out competition, and into organizations the purpose of which is to control legislation in their interest
 Being interested in securing the highest rates ob- tanabe in cutting down the amounts to be paid their poicyholders loss claims, in wording their tracts of insurance that they may far as possible escape liability for losses, avail themselves oftech ncal defenses against claims made by their policy holders they act accordingly, and in short many of them apparently to think that the chief end of their business is getting all they from their toners and in keeping all they get for themselves.
 Mutual insurance companies, in contrast to stock companies are operated in the interest of all their poicyholders whose cooperation makes their success possible.
 Mutual means co-operation-workng together for the good of a sharing of benefits among the many instead of taking the profits from many and dividing them among the few.
 Mutual, applied to insurance, does not sessment insurance the employees of stock con- panies and their friends seek to show those who interested in advocates of the mutual pan but if it did, in those mutual insurance companies who have under their charters the right to their members the cost of occasional assessment has never equaed the assessments levied by the stock companies through their tariff associations and en- forced by their local boards and insurance exchanges assessments levied without warrant of law of fact against whole communities, without their consent and in spite of their protests by executive committees in distant states.
 There companies in the United States near ly hundred years old who have made an as- sessment their policyholders, but which the rary have returned in the form of dividends to them equal to from 40 to 95 per cent of the premiums paid by them.
 Most of the big cotton mills in the country are in- sured in mutual companies. large proportion of the lumber mills ice factories aundries foundries and other manufacturing plants insured in mutual companies. Many of the office buildings most of the druggists, wholesale grocers, dry goods houses and other mercantile establishments, and in some of the states most of the dwellings insured in mutual companies.
 Nearly all of the large life insurance companies operate on the mutual plan, and there companies who have paid good dividends, accumulated large serves and surplus and never made assessment on their pocyholders, and who never will
 The best authorities agree that mutual company may be good a stock company, while many who have had the experience know that mutual company surance, treatment of clients and settlement of claims for losses.
 As applied to insurance stock means the interest of the few, and mutual means the good of the many
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