Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/511

 IMPROVEMENTS IN INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE 497

we come in contact and are admirably adapted to educating them along the lines of hygiene, sanitation, and the prevention of disease.

We are informed that the nursing experiment has proved so satisfactory that it is Hkely to be extended by the MetropoHtan Life Insurance Company throughout the country wherever nurses' settlements can be found to undertake the work. It has not been absolutely so decided, as the cost is likely to run up to three or four hundred thousands of dollars a year.

Mr. F. Hoffman, statistician of the Prudential Company, has been one of the most forceful and effective writers on social hygiene. His careful and prolonged studies of the conditions affecting the health of workingmen are among the most valuable contributions to the subject, and his company has rendered a distinct service to society by liberating him for the profound in- vestigations he has made. Even if the company has received a full financial return for the cost involved, it none the less de- serves recognition for the researches and publications of its capable statistician.

It ought to be remembered that the most urgent necessity for workingmen's insurance is not considered in these vast schemes of "industrial insurance" — provision of indemnity for disability due to accident and sickness; while the cost for ade- quate invalid and old-age annuities is prohibitive.

3. Other kinds of insurance. — The most urgent and immedi- ate need is assurance of income in case of accident, sickness, and invalidism. These are sure as death, and come before it. Experience has shown that they are all contingencies which must be reckoned with and the risk of which may be averaged in each occupational group and region.

The agitation throughout the world for old-age pensions has prompted the Metropolitan to prepare and publish premium rates, combining insurance for life with annuities of $100 per year beginning at age 65.

One table of rates is on the weekly basis for industrial lives and provides for $100 of insurance whenever death occurs in connection with the $100 annuity at age 65, and the other table