Reassurance

“ If contemporary accounts are to be trusted, the ravenous appetite for assurance was something like that which at the present day possesses projectors, as offices were opened in every part of the town. If one company was commenced to insure marriage portions, a second was sure to follow to insure the portions of their children. A mutual life assurance was instantly followed by a mutual ship assurance. ”

“ They have even undertaken to replace the old-fashioned Providence—and by what? By insurance companies! We insure ourselves against accidents, against risks, against death—indeed a far-sighted wisdom! Why should we not be insured also against fear? ”

“ You can insure your own life, or your wife's, or your children's or anybody else's, in whose existence you may have a beneficial interest, and there are a hundred others ready to receive the premiums. ”

“ In an ordinary life assurance or endowment assurance contract the policyholder has the knowledge that either he or his dependents are assured of the payment of a sum on the occurrence of an event that must happen. In the various forms of insurance, such as fire insurance, marine insurance, accident insurance or burglary insurance, the policyholder pays a premium in order to be insured against a contingency which, if he is an honest man, he hopes will never occur. ”

“ The most terrible misfortunes are also the most improbable and remote—the least likely to occur. The rule I am giving is best exemplified in the practice of insurance,—a public sacrifice made on the altar of anxiety. ”

“ We insure our lives for the same reason that we insure our houses and our ships. All three things have money value; all stand momentarily in danger of destruction; and all are insured for the purpose of recouping ourselves and our dependents for their loss. ”

“ INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it will be a total loss. HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon -- by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you -- amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were insured? INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your loss. ”

“ If an underwriter find that he has incautiously bound himself to a greater amount than he can discharge, he may shift it, or part of it, from himself to others, by a re-insurance policy made on the same risk. ”

“ There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. ”

“ When we would protect ourselves against the chance which gives up our houses to destruction by fire, or when we would secure our dependents against the accident which deprives us of life and them of a protector, we take out an insurance policy on house or life. ”

“ Often, indeed, a man does insure his life, and then in some year of panic or depression is forced to sell the policy or go under. Or he insures in firms that fail. My father insured in three companies and all failed before he died. ”

“ I look upon life insurance as a great comfort, not only to the beneficiary, but to the insured, who very rarely lives to realize anything pecuniarily from his venture. Twice I have almost raised my wife to affluence and cast a gloom over the community in which I lived, but something happened to the physician for a few days so that he could not attend me, and I recovered. ”

“ XII. The insurance of any goods, &c. in this society, which shall be insured in any other office at the same time, to be void: And yet such insurer shall be liable to his covenants. Nevertheless a liberty is given to insure in any other office, so as such other insurance is indorsed on this society’s policy, and subscribed by two of the trustees, for which 6d. per cent. is to be paid; and in which case a proportionable part of any loss is to be paid by this society. ”

“ You see, my business is all connected with insurance; and Mottram was insured with us, and insured heavily.”
“Well, there you are, you see; you have the experience and I haven’t. But doesn’t it seem to you strange that a man in good health, who digests his meals, and has no worries, should take his own life in the hope of benefiting his heirs, whoever they may prove to be? ”

“ However impregnable may seem the safeguards which the law has built round the administration of our great insurance companies, the fact absolutely is that the honesty of "the one man" is the one potent protection policy-holders may depend on. ”

“ Assurance is, indeed, the only qualification to which they seem to have annexed merit, and assurance, therefore, is perpetually recommended to me as the supply of every defect, and the ornament of every excellence. ”

“ Therefore, in view of your circumstances and of your age, I quite understand that you have no need of insurance for yourself; but, Monsieur, you might induce others to insure, either because of their inherent qualities which need development, or for the protection of their families against a precarious future. Now, if you will subscribe to the 'Globe,' and give me your personal assistance in this district on behalf of insurance, especially life-annuity,—for the provinces are much attached to annuities—Well, if you will do this, then we can come to an understanding about the wine. ”

“ The obligation of an insurer in a policy of life insurance is made up of a number of promises, of which one is to pay to the beneficiary the amount of the insurance-the 'proceeds'-and another is to pay the 'surrender value' to the insured upon his demand. ”

“ He regarded life-insurance simply as a family protection; on the part of the insured, he declared again and again, it was a purely unselfish act. No policy-holder must himself expect to benefit from his policy. ”

“ Now, I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so. I have been insured a great many times, for about a month at a time, but have had no luck with it at all. ”

“ With incomes which just enable them to pay their debts, and which provide for no contingencies, they are to a great degree incapacitated from insuring their lives; and solacing themselves, therefore, with the idea that a small insurance would be of no avail, they feel that they cannot afford a great one. To this class, therefore, a society which specially provides for its wants is a great benefit; and a kindly feeling between the clerk on the one side, and his superior on the other, is encouraged, to the advantage of both, through the Provident Clerks’ Mutual Life Assurance Association. ”

“ He’s insured against employers’ liability. He’s insured against war. He’s insured against loss of business profits. The interest on his mortgage securities is insured. His wretched little automobile is insured. ”

“ Insurance companies restore no value, repair no loss; they can only distribute the loss throughout the community. Careless, ignorant, annihilative, is the term to be applied to 75% of [Pg 31] the fire losses. ”

“ So soon as she discovered that she had wedded a poor instead of a wealthy man, and that all her care and cunning had been in vain, she grew gloomy, dark, and discontented; but at last, on representing to her husband that she would be comparatively penniless if he were to die, accompanied by blandishments which were the more welcome from their rarity, he procured an insurance on his life, from the agent of a London company, for some thousands. ”

“ Keep your face Zionward every day and every night and all the time that shall be allotted to you; and when you will all do this, what will be done? Why, we shall secure an insurance against the destruction of the comforts that are around us and desolating our country. ”

“ In the eighteenth century a company was established, the chief feature in which was the omission of the clause which renders the policy void in the event of suicide. A man went and insured his life, securing the privilege of a free-dying Englishman, and then took the insurers to dine at a tavern to meet several other persons. After dinner he said to the underwriters, “Gentlemen, it is fit you should be acquainted with the company. These honest men are tradesmen, to whom I was in debt, without any means of paying but by your assistance, and now I am your humble servant.” ”

“ Unfortunate as these bubble assurance companies might be, unformed and unintelligent as their conductors proved, and ruinous as they were to the people who trusted them, they were a movement in the right direction. The principle of life assurance is so eminently social, and so important to those who wish to invest their savings for their successors, that any effort or endeavour to move this science from the hands of usurers and speculative merchants was to be rejoiced at. ”

“ We take care to have our property and lives safely insured, but when that great Spiritual Insurance Company — the Church — sends her agent to insure us for eternity, we either neglect or refuse, though the policy she offers is infinitely desirable, her reliability infallible, and the premium ridiculously small. ”

“ Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of business—especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been director in an accident insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. ”

“ Insurance companies sometimes insist that individuals largely insured upon their lives, who are embarrassed in their affairs, resort to self-destruction, being willing to end a wretched existence if they can thereby bestow comfort upon their families. ”

“ But in life assurance there are no risks or contingencies. Other investments may fail. A house may burn down. Banks may break; and their stock be worthless. Bonds and mortgages may be seized for debt, and all property or evidences of property may fall into the bottomless gulf of bankruptcy. But money secured to your family by life assurance will go to them without fail or interruption, provided you have used due discretion in the selection of a sound and honorable assurance company. ”

“ While its several branches, such as life insurance, casualty insurance and others, have each had an independent and characteristic development, all these together form an institution peculiar to the modern world, the origin and growth of which attest a remarkable change in men’s ideas and habits of thought.
The simplest and most general conception of insurance is a provision made by a group of persons, each singly in danger of some loss, the incidence of which cannot be foreseen, that when such loss shall occur to any of them it shall be distributed over the whole group. ”

“ Thus accurate method was applied to the insurance-table, which enables a man to hedge against his ugliest risks, to eliminate his chances of fire and death by betting that he shall have a new roof over his head and a provision for his widow. Of all the wonderful turns of the human mind in the course of culture, scarce any is more striking than this history of lots and dice. ”

“ You may make of life insurance a cheap business, or you may make of it a dignified profession; you may be a mere annoying canvasser, or you may be a man who commands respect; but, to be really successful, you must have, or acquire, a technical knowledge of the basis of insurance, a knowledge of law, and, above all, a knowledge of human nature,—and even that will avail little if you are not temperamentally suited to the work. ”

“ Go to the accident insurance office and observe how little anxious they are to take such a risk, and what an enormous premium they ask when they do take one! Here is a man running a powder-factory. The insurance men will not touch him at all! Now our man of success is like the brakeman, in a sense. ”

“ When you are in company note carefully all manifestly interested in the subject, and call upon them the succeeding day. Follow up every marriage and every funeral. What better wedding present than a life-insurance policy? What more persuasive argument than the death of a man uninsured? ”

“ The ‘social insurance’ principle is entirely different from that of either ‘liability’ or ‘compensation.’ The word ‘compensation’ carries a little of the flavor of the ancient damage suit, while ‘insurance’ is simply an amicable business arrangement to provide in advance for the inevitable average risk of the trade, which may be extended beyond the perils of the shop and mill to all places and conditions of the workman's life. ”

“ What we require is the application of the principle of insurance; we must compel a husband and father to do his duty, as many husbands and fathers do their duty now without compulsion. We must regard him as responsible in this supremely important sphere, as we do in every other. ”

“ Now, it is a well known and frequent thing in insurance business, for a person to insure his life, or his property, and either in the policy itself, or by indorsement at the time it is made, or by subsequent indorsement, to which the consent of the company is generally required, to direct the loss to be paid to some third party. ”

“ However, as absolutely necessary insurance, an influence infinitely more powerful than those combined will be employed to positively insure unquestioning belief in the validity of the plan, not only before and during the first few years, but for all time! ”