228 INSURANCE 



from the effects of such casualties; and applies himself to the prose- 

 cution of his business with that confidence and energy which nothing 

 but a feeling of security can inspire." 



The principle of insurance in its application to commerce is, how- 

 ever, no longer limited to marine and fire insurance. The last fifty 

 years have seen the practical development of the insurance idea in 

 various other directions, of which I may mention the following: 

 Accident, health, and employers' liability insurance; fidelity, surety, 

 bond, mortgage, and title insurance; plate-glass, elevator, and boiler 

 insurance; hail, windstorm, and tornado insurance; and finally, 

 live-stock and burglary insurance. All of these have assumed 

 the character of instruments of commerce and are in theory and 

 fact an indispensable element of the commercial development of the 

 present age. 



The present-day tendency to industrial organization and the 

 combination of capital is reflected in the status of the insurance 

 business of the United States, which has followed the general com- 

 mercial trend of the age. Of the ordinary life insurance business, 

 six companies have 62 per cent of the total insurance in force; of 

 the industrial business, 94 per cent of the policies are with three of 

 the companies transacting this form of insurance; and of fraternal 

 insurance, so-called, 64 per cent of the membership is in five of 

 the principal organizations. The resulting gain has been very con- 

 siderable, especially in the direction of enhancing the general security 

 of the business and public confidence in this form of individual and 

 family protection. This tendency has not operated injuriously to 

 the development of a healthy spirit of competition, which may be 

 illustrated by the fact that there are to-day seventy-nine ordinary 

 and thirteen industrial insurance companies transacting business in 

 the United States. The problem of wealth and its distribution may 

 be summed up in the statement by Thompson that "the property 

 of the most numerous class, that is, the poorest, is coming evermore 

 to the front as a great problem of modern statesmanship." Life 

 insurance is to-day one of the most important factors in the re- 

 distribution of wealth, and perhaps of all methods the most equit- 

 able and effective. It reaches every stratum of society and enables 

 the poorest to provide for the future a sum of money which in 

 every sense of the word represents capital obtained by individual 

 efforts as the result of habitual saving and prudent self-denial. 

 The insurance companies collect these savings in small amounts, 

 which range as low as five cents per week, or assume considerable 

 proportions per annum; the accumulations form the assets of the 

 companies and as such they become available for profitable invest- 

 ment in productive industries and trades; they are redistributed 

 through payments to policy-holders as claims or matured endow- 



