LAWSUIT OR LEGACY. 341 



promised," and hundreds of heart-aches and unjust suspicions and 

 fears about the dead, which can never be corrected, are aroused in 

 sorrowing but loving breasts by this method of doing " business." It 

 is, of course, of the utmost importance that every precaution be taken 

 by life-insurance companies to protect the funds held by them, in trust 

 for others, against fraud and trickery. But with the agent, the ex- 

 amining physician, the medical directors, and the inspectors all em- 

 ployed by, and answerable to, the company represented, if fraud is 

 committed in getting into the company, one or all of these paid 

 officers must almost, of necessity, be party to that fraud. With all 

 these safeguards in the hands of the company, if a man is accepted as 

 a " good risk," if he pays his premiums, surely his family has the right 

 to expect a legacy and not a lawsuit, nor a " compromise " which 

 must cast reproach on the dead. 



If it were not for the enormous value and benefits of this method 

 of making provision for his family, surely no man in his senses would 

 ever have risked would not risk to-day signing a contract which 

 gives the other interested party not only an absolute fixed sum of his 

 money, year by year, but also reserves to itself the right to investi- 

 gate and construe his actions and motives after he is unable to contest 

 its verdict. 



And not only this, but upon the finding of some slight, wholly im- 

 material flaw in his statements (which it failed to find when he was 

 in the hands of its agents and officers), in some companies he not only 

 forfeits the right of his heirs to their purchased inheritance, but the 

 company retains his money which he has paid in besides ! This is 

 surely a dangerous contract for any man to sign. It is placing a 

 temptation and a power in the hands of a corporation that it has never 

 yet been in the nature of corporations not to abuse. 



" If any statement in this application is in any respect untrue, it 

 voids the policy, and all payments which shall have been made revert 

 to the company," gives a wide field and doubtful motive of action 

 when it is remembered that many of the questions are of such a nature 

 that not one man in a thousand could be absolutely sure that he knew 

 the correct reply. 



" At what age did your grandparents die ? " All four of them. 

 How many men are sure that they can answer that question correctly ? 

 " Of what did each one die ? " You do not know. You have a gen- 

 eral idea. You express it. You pay your premiums ten years. You 

 die (one doctor says of consumption another says of blood-poison); 

 the company finds some old person who says your grandmother on 

 your father's side died of the same thing, and there is a rumor that 

 a long-forgotten (or never-known) country cousin also had it. 



The company sends a representative to the widow. He assures 

 her (and by the very terms of the contract, signed by the dead hus- 

 band, he is right and she is helpless) that they can refuse to pay a 



