LIFE INSURANCE AS A SCIENCE 231 



mere statistics of past and present population, its distribution by 

 rural and urban communities, its composition by sex, age, color, 

 nativity, and occupation, are all elements of a determining nature 

 which it is necessary to know for the more intelligent control of 

 insurance practice. Without an accurate knowledge of the popu- 

 lation and its distribution by age and sex, no life-tables could be 

 worked out for the general population, and without a careful analy- 

 sis of the facts of physical and social environment, no definite 

 business policy could be established. 



We may briefly consider the relation of insurance to the family. 

 Life insurance as a social institution primarily contemplates the 

 certain and effective protection of widows and orphans, or, in other 

 words, an extension of conjugal duties resulting from marriage under 

 the existing conditions of modern life. Many of the earlier insurance 

 companies were, in fact, called " Widows' Schemes," or " Widows' 

 and Orphans' Assurance Societies," or, in the words of Price, " In- 

 stitutions for the Benefit of Widows." The biological problems 

 resulting from marriage and its relation to insurance are of much im- 

 portance, and I may point out that among the most involved calcu- 

 lations of insurance practice are those of survivorship in marriage. 

 Interesting data and calculations on this subject are to be found 

 among others in a comprehensive work on the Madras Military Fund, 

 which includes observations on the mortality of wives, the rate of 

 mortality and remarriage among widows, wives' chance of widow- 

 hood, etc. Westermarck has contributed the most important inves- 

 tigations on the " Statistics of Marriage," derived from Danish data, 

 but he has also a discussion on the subject in his treatise on Mortality 

 and Morbidity which, unfortunately, has not yet been translated 

 into English. 



Considerations of the chances of survivorship in marriage, the well- 

 established lower mortality of wives than of husbands, the practical 

 certainty of surviving children, point to life insurance as the most 

 effective method yet devised to prevent suffering and dependence 

 upon the charity of others. " A family," wrote Professor Sumner, 

 some twenty years ago, " is a charge which is capable of indefinite 

 development," and whatever may be its ultimate evolution, there 

 can be no question but that life insurance acts as a conserving factor 

 in human marriage and develops the altruistic impulse of the hus- 

 band toward the wife and of the father toward the children. In 

 the homely language of insurance parlance: " Wives often object 

 to insurance, but widows never do," and I may add the glowing 

 tribute of Gilbert Currie, one of the earlier writers on insurance, 

 that " if we only could call from the dusty archives of these vener- 

 able institutions the huge piles of molding ledgers, and extract 

 from their records, what tales would be unfolded of miseries pre- 



