NovEMBER, 1906 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
195 
savings. In every day of every month of 
these thirty years he is liable to die and leave 
only a fraction of a sufficient sum for his 
family. And on any day in those thirty 
years he may wake up to find his earnings 
gone, swept irrevocably away by some mis- 
chance of fortune. On the other hand, The 
Prudential Insurance Company puts to the 
credit of his family in the event of his death 
the sum of $5,000 the day and hour on which 
he pays his first premium. It enters into a 
contract with him, by which it pledges the 
millions behind the Company to pay his 
family $5,000. provided only he pays the 
premium equal to his $2 a week savings, as 
agreed in the contract. 
The provident man says to himself: 
“Suppose I leave my family $5,000, how can 
I leave it so that it may not be speedily dissi- 
pated by injudicious use or diverted from the 
purpose for which it is intended? I should 
like this paid in installments sufficient to 
carry the family until the children are edu- 
cated or self-supporting.” This very terse. 
requirement is already provided for. By 
one of the many plans provided by The Pru- 
dential Insurance Company, the money to 
be paid the family can be paid in yearly 
installments, thus carrying the children to 
and beyond the period when they become 
self-sustaining. 
It should be remembered that the fore- 
going figures are based on a fair minimum 
of the possible savings of the average wage- 
earner. Yet if that assumed minimum were 
cut in two, a provision of $2,500 can be made 
for the family under the same conditions, that 
is, on the basis of a saving of only $1 per week. 
On the other hand, a man who can set aside 
$5 per week can carry $12,500 of insurance, 
and thus provide a very comfortable income 
for the family he leaves behind. Moreover, 
it should not be forgotten that these figures 
are based upon the age of thirty years. At 
a lesser age the cost of insurance decreases 
proportionately. Above thirty the cost in- 
creases by slight advances for each year of 
increased age. Two cautions are necessary. 
In the enthusiasm which these figures create, 
a young man may be tempted to take out 
more insurance than he can carry. It is 
wiser to be satisfied with a moderate amount 
and to take increased insurance as one’s 
earning power grows. On the other hand, 
procrastination increases the annual pre- 
miums and incurs the risk of a breakdown 
in health, making insurance impossible. Thus 
indecision in the choice of a plan may lead 
to disastrous consequences, whilst extrava- 
gance in assuming annual premiums is sure 
to end in worry and disappointment. 
The first important result of Life Insurance 
is that it keeps the family together. How 
often when the bread-winner is taken the 
family is parted and partitioned among 
strangers. Sometimes, at the best, the 
children find shelter, more or less grudgingly 
given, among scattered relations. At other 
times they are sent to public institutions, 
to grow up among strangers, with a bare 
remembrance of the meaning of the word 
home and its mother-love as a dim and far- 
off dream. Almost every village has one or 
more examples of the home broken up and 
the family sundered and scattered. On the 
other hand, it is a thing to be thankful for 
that, as against one such broken home, almost 
every village and town in the land has many 
examples of the beneficent results of life 
insurance, the family still clinging together, 
bound by bonds of loving intimacy, education 
fitting the children for complete living—the 
mother happy, even in her grief, that she can 
feed them, clothe them, guide them, keep 
them; and this all due to the providence and 
forethought of the husband. ~To her, mother 
and wife, he seems yet present. He still 
provides for the family,and this daily pro- 
vision creates a new and binding tie between 
the husband who is still ‘“‘the man of the 
house” and the widow who mourns him. 
The greatest legacy any man can leave his 
children is a sound education. It is a trite 
saying that knowledge is power. The 
educated youth can go out into the world 
and face life’s problems on an equal footing 
with the best of compeers. He can cherish 
and realize ambitions impossible to the un- 
educated or half-educated. He can not 
merely win the comforts that money will buy 
but he can also enjoy the things of the mind 
and the higher life. He can think the best 
thoughts of the best men as these are en- 
shrined in literature, and he can think the 
thoughts which God has put into the starry 
heavens above him and into all nature about 
him—divine thoughts which-are formulated 
into science as rapidly as man discovers 
them. A heritage of millions is not so valu- 
able to the individual as the legacy of school- 
ing which puts into his hands the tools with 
which he may carve his own fortune, the 
weapons by which he may achieve his own 
destiny. The individual, the home, the 
nation, owe the founders of safe and reliable 
methods of life insurance a debt of gratitude 
which words cannot express, but which hearts 
can feel and homes can show, and which the 
State should never fail to recognize in its 
protective legislation. 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE Advertiser 
