Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/442

434 moderation will be accepted. I think it safe to say that, other things being equal, all American life insurance companies would consider a total abstainer a more desirable risk than a moderate drinker.'

The United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution, of London, is a large and successful company which was organized in 1840, expressly for total abstainers, because at that time larger premiums were asked from abstainers than from drinkers, the common opinion then being that alcoholic liquors were necessary to health. In 1846, this company added a general section, in which carefully selected moderate drinkers were accepted, but each section was kept entirely separate from the other. This separation has continued to the present time, both classes paying the same premiums, but sharing in profits according to the earnings of the section to which the members belong. From 1866 to 1900, for every 100 deaths in the temperance section there were 137 deaths in the moderate drinking section, based on a corresponding number of lives at risk. The dividends for a recent five years average $20 to the temperance members, and $17 to the drinking members.

The actuary of this English company, Mr. Roderick Mackenzie Moore, read a paper before the Institute of Actuaries, in 1903, in which he reviewed the work of this company during its history of sixty years' experience with abstainers and over fifty with non-abstainers. He showed that there has been no marked difference in the number of policies in force in the two sections, and the average amount of the policies in each section has been about the same, so that the comparison is as fair as could possibly be made. He gives these figures: 'Non-abstainers, male, expected deaths, 8,911; actual deaths, 8,947; per cent, of actual to expected, 100.4. Abstainers, male, expected deaths, 6,899; actual deaths, 5,124; per cent, of actual to expected, 74.3.' This shows a difference of 26.1 per cent, between the actual and expected deaths of abstainers and moderate drinkers, and the full figures show the death rate among the drinkers to be 35 per cent, higher than among the abstainers.