TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 149 
chased by the men. After paying a moderate rate for wages and management, and 
the proper allowance for reserves and depreciation, any excess over 10 per cent. of 
the profits was to be allotted half to the capital, and the other half as a bonus to 
the workmen in proportion to their earnings. At first they were suspicious, but 
the plan succeeded so well, that in the very first year the dividend was 12 per cent., 
and the 2 per cent. which was allotted as a bonus on wages, allowed of an average 
increase 73 per cent. to the work-people on their earnings. In the second year, 80 per 
cent. of the workmen took shares ; the profits were 15 per cent., and the 3 per cent. 
bonus allowed an average increase of 10 per cent. on the workmen’s earnings, besides 
setting by 9 per cent. on the capital as a reserve fund. The village has been per- 
fectly peaceful, the work-people have become sober, industrious, and respectable in 
their conduct, and they generally invest their profits in the extension of the business. 
There has been no dispute and no charge of neglect of work made. This is not a 
small experiment, 1200 men and boys have benetited by the operation, and £90,000 
of capital is invested in the concern. 
With modifications adapted to different trades, this system seems worthy of a 
wide extension. The proper rate of bonus for labour must, no doubt, depend on the 
proportion which the labour bears to the other costs of production and of bringing 
the article to market. Competition of foreign countries, variations in supply and 
demand, may prevent wages bearing a fixed proportion to the other capital required, 
consequently the bonus to wages may have to be adjusted in different manufactures 
or trades. But some of the best of the trades’ unions have declared themselves in 
favour of the trial of this scheme, and the commercial greatness of England is deeply 
interested in its success. 
Insurance.—Leaving subjects still so full of doubts and difficulties, we turn to 
one which, though established upon laws of nature equally recondite, has been 
ushed into practice with an energy and success highly creditable to this country. 
t would be inexcusable in this city (in which have been founded two amongst the 
greatest and most enterprising of our insurance companies, which under the able 
management of Sir Samuel Bignold, one of the Vice-Presidents of this Section, have 
obtained so wide a reputation, and to whose representative in London, Mr. C. J. 
Bunyon, we are indebted for the best works which have appeared on the law of 
fire and life assurance) not to allude to the progress which these valuable institu- 
tions have made in this country. Vital statistics are now assuming a form which 
enable the most complicated problems of human life to be dealt with as if they were 
certain and simple events. Yet little more than a century has elapsed since the 
Attorney- and Solicitor-General of that day, when reporting on the application for 
a Royal Charter to the first society formed on scientific principles for the assurance 
of life, objected to it on the ground that its success must depend on calculations 
taken on tables of life and death, whereby the chance of mortality is attempted to 
be reduced to a certain standard. “This is a mere speculation,” they observe, 
“never yet tried in practice, and consequently subject, like all other experiments, 
to various chances in the execution.” Further, considering that the general tables 
include both healthy and unhealthy lives, they thought that “the register of life 
and death ought to be confined, if possible, for the sake of exactness, to such per- 
sons only as are the objects of insurance.” It was argued, to show the small pro- 
bability of success for the society, that the Royal Exchange Assurance, in forty 
years, had taken only £10,915 in premiums, of which the profits, amounting to only 
£2651, must have been nearly exhausted in the charges of management. They 
would hardly expect a more considerable capital to arise from lower premiums, and 
the hazard of loss will be increased in proportion as the dealing will be more ex- 
tensive. The petition was dismissed, but the Society (the Equitable) was formed, 
and in spite of the gloomy prognostications at its birth, had afterwards, at one time, 
nearly £20,000,000 of assurances on lives in force together. About six years back, 
from an estimate made on a large proportion of the companies in the United King- 
dom, it was computed that about £372,000,000 were assured upon lives; and at the 
rate of progress made of late years, it is probable that this is now increased to 
£400,000,000. But a still more remarkable extension of this kind of business has, 
within a few years, taken place within the United States of America. At theclose 
of 1866, thirty-nine companies doing business in the State of New York, had about 
