New Britain herald., 1929-09-11

 upon to show a spirit of altruistic philanthrophy. You may, without CompunCtion of conscience, be thor oughly selfish, if your selfishncss is all enlightened selfishness. If you Llindly resist all reduction of agents commissions, you place this &ssocia ton on the level of the least enlight- cned trade unions, for even the labor unions are commencing to recognize that their true interests are to be iurthercd by the prosperity of their own trades, and that the further ance of this prosperity must be a Fundamental guiding principle in their deliberations. You will best 1 serve yourselves, at the same time that you are serving the public in your day and generation, by CO., Operating intelligently with all those concerned in the conduct of the in surance business in cndeavors to make it's services to the public more reasonable in price, as well as more beneficial, in character and ! therefore more widely accepted and more readily paid for"
 | Wastagc in Cut Throat Competition 1 Colonel Dunham deplored the Wastages involved in unenlightcncd Cut-throat methods of competition" l Holding that the present prosperity 1 of industry and trade in this country | is due in no small measure to the discovery by leaders of business that | there is profitable business enough ! for all, if only they all unite in l trade associations to increase the az 1 gregate volume of q trade, instead | of trying to get business of their | competitors, he commended this latter policy to the insurance agents. l He also urged the insurance men to check the growing practice of giving long credits to the insured for pay. ments of premiums
 Tt IS clearly Instantaneous to 1 the insurer and anpthing which is fundamentally had for the insurance business Gs a whole IS bad for you" , Colonel Dunham told his audience. i Specifically, also, any departure from cash methods must increase bookkeeping expenses and the risks of your agency business, with no substantial benefits to the body of ] the insurance agents as a whole" Colonel Dunham also discussed a tendency to try 10 gc. business away from other agents by adopting new othods of Short-term insurance and side-stepping the established short rate table now in effect.
 ''I see no economic justifica ton. he said, flor a tendency which, un- les checked, will result in your sell ing insurance like groceries on a month h-to-month or even a wccli-to- week basis. Moreover, once the protection of the short-ratc table is lost, the value of your good twill may be jeopardized."
 Many of you" he continued, are familiar with the efforts being made to tempt insurance agents, by seem- lnglya dvantageous contracts. switch their business from old and long tried insurance companies to con- panies new to the business. Insofar as some of these new companies are simply the creatures of promoters or stock jobbers, who form them to sell out, they carry no guarantee of safety for clients or permannnCe for agents. The tendency does not augur well for insurance business in gen crat. It is generally an unfair and unsound competition which is thus inaugurated.
 Expansion Through New Clients
 Few lines of business, he said, are more readily capable of expansion than the insurance business.
 'The insurance agent may in crease the number of his clients without taking away a single client from any other agent, by educating rev members of the public to the advantages of insurance" he ex- plained. "You are all trying more or less intoligently to do this very thing. When you meet in this as sociation to take counsel together for your common good, you are emitting a good line of approach to q common prosperity, unless you study the problem of educating the new clients as to their best method of protecting themselves against all sorts of insurable risks"
 The work which the insurance in the past
 agent does is somewhat akin to so- Cial service, Colonel Burnham told