344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ures. Several times, when he had done so, he had taken heavy amounts 

 of life-insurance, so that in case of the failure of his undertakings, and 

 his own death before he could regain his financial feet, his family- 

 would not suffer. On previous occasions he had dropped the greater 

 part of his insurance as soon as his business ventures had terminated 

 successfully. This is not an uncommon thing for rich or speculative 

 men to do. 



In 1878 Colonel Dwight died, with an insurance on his life of about 

 $265,000, some of which lie had carried for years ; but a large part of 

 it had been recently taken for the reasons above stated, and as he had 

 done before under similar circumstances. Fifty thousand of this sum 

 was in old and new policies against one company. 



This company paid at once, thus giving the widow means to fight 

 for her claims against the other companies. In a short time one of 

 the other companies, against which she had a small claim of $5,000, 

 also paid. The other nineteen companies contested. The widow em- 

 ployed Senator Conkling, and the fight has been the hardest, the bit- 

 terest, and the most ghoulish insurance contest ever had in this 

 country ; and finally the companies have won in the Court of Appeals 

 on a purely technical point, after having dug Colonel Dwight's body 

 up several times, in the effort to prove that he was poisoned, that 

 he hung himself, and that he was not dead at all ! They failed ut- 

 terly to prove any material cause of contest ; but they finally won on 

 the ground that, in answering a question in the application for in- 

 surance, Colonel Dwight did not state that he had ever engaged in the 

 liquor business, whereas it had been known that he had owned a hotel 

 where liquor was sold. 



Now, when it is remembered that at one time these companies 

 tried to prove that Colonel Dwight had committed suicide, but that 

 they never had any grounds upon which to claim that he had died of 

 intemperance, the purely technical grounds for the decision of the 

 Court of Appeals is apparent. Ninety-nine policies out of a hundred 

 could be contested on such ground as that ; and so long as insurance 

 contracts retain these unreasonable and oppressive features, no man 

 can be sure that he is not leaving a lawsuit and bitter sorrow to his 

 family, and worst of all a blasted reputation for himself, when he ap- 

 plies for insurance under such a form. 



An officer of one of the companies was heard to boast of the fact, 

 but a few days ago, that his company had spent nearly ten times the 

 amount of the claim against it in this Dwight contest ! This is econ- 

 omy indeed ! Whose money was thus spent ? The policy-holders'. 

 For what ? To defeat one of the policy-holders in a contest for a 

 claim no doubt as honest as any one of the others will present in his 

 turn. 



But suppose that this was not an honest claim ; suppose that Colo- 

 nel Dwight was not a "good risk," is it not a rather suggestive indi- 



