82 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vou.. VIII. 
the policy. It is of course necessary that the companies should make large 
gains on the policies of those who live long, for they must balance the losses 
on those whom death in some form, by accident or disease, early strikes off 
the list. But you will have gathered from the above that life assurance 
as an investment is of questionable advantage. The great utility of the 
system is the protection it gives to an active worker during the years when 
he is bringing up a family, and if he chooses to take one of the forms of endow- 
ment insurance, and thus unite some savings with that protection, there 
is much to be said in favour of that course, and little against it. 
If you are not tired of such calculations I will give another instance, 
not dissimilar, communicated by an intimate friend. He has three 
policies — 
1. An all life policy in the —— Company (British) for £500. He has 
paid premiums for forty-five years, and entered at thirty-three. The 
premium I suppose to be about £13 per annum. He is likely to live several 
years yet, but the premium adds only to the company’s resources, not to 
his policy. If he had steadily invested the premiums they would now have 
amounted to :—At4 per cent., £1,636; 5 per cent.,.£42,178; 6 per cent., 
42,931; 7 per cent:, £3,974. 
2. Of the second policy of $10,000 in the (American), he writes: 
I have been paying since 1870, and though I have been liberally dealt 
with by the annual reduction of premiums, this year the premium was 
increased by $45, owing, they say, to the paucity of profitable investments 
Over 3 per cent.” 
3. ‘‘The third and last policy,’’ he goes on to say, ‘‘$10,000 in the 
(Canadian) is the worst of all. This policy, taken out in 1877, called for 
$400 a year premiums, and, up to six years ago the premiums were reduced 
to about $320. Then, owing to the recent Dominion legislation, the 
premium has gone up to the original sum of $400. After paying this 
company $8,400 in premiums (I entered in 1877) they offered me a paid 
up policy of $3,500, payable at death only.’”’ The $320 invested would 
have yielded:—At 4 per cent., $15,065; 5 per cent., $17,504, 6 per cent., 
$20,384; 7 per cent., $23,840. 
Then he inveighs against the companies, from whom he thinks, ‘‘no 
justice is to be expected” and says that ‘‘when death takes place the 
officials then try to discover some method of defrauding the survivors.” 
Perhaps we may apply to insurance the proverb ‘‘Whom the gods love, 
die young.” For there is no way of escaping without paying away more 
money without return, in the cases given, except to leave this mortal scene. 
I do not agree with my friend completely. I think he must be in error 
