Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/355

Rh ," and hundreds of heart-aches and unjust suspicions and fears about the dead, which can never be corrected, are aroused in sorrowing but loving breasts by this method of doing "business." It is, of course, of the utmost importance that every precaution be taken by life-insurance companies to protect the funds held by them, in trust for others, against fraud and trickery. But with the agent, the examining physician, the medical directors, and the inspectors all employed by, and answerable to, the company represented, if fraud is committed in getting into the company, one or all of these paid officers must almost, of necessity, be party to that fraud. With all these safeguards in the hands of the company, if a man is accepted as a "good risk," if he pays his premiums, surely his family has the right to expect a legacy and not a lawsuit, nor a "compromise" which must cast reproach on the dead.

If it were not for the enormous value and benefits of this method of making provision for his family, surely no man in his senses would ever have risked—would not risk to-day—signing a contract which gives the other interested party not only an absolute fixed sum of his money, year by year, but also reserves to itself the right to investigate and construe his actions and motives after he is unable to contest its verdict.

And not only this, but upon the finding of some slight, wholly immaterial flaw in his statements (which it failed to find when he was in the hands of its agents and officers), in some companies he not only forfeits the right of his heirs to their purchased inheritance, but the company retains his money which he has paid in besides! This is surely a dangerous contract for any man to sign. It is placing a temptation and a power in the hands of a corporation that it has never yet been in the nature of corporations not to abuse.

"If any statement in this application is in any respect untrue, it voids the policy, and all payments which shall have been made revert to the company," gives a wide field and doubtful motive of action when it is remembered that many of the questions are of such a nature that not one man in a thousand could be absolutely sure that he knew the correct reply.

"At what age did your grandparents die?" All four of them. How many men are sure that they can answer that question correctly? "Of what did each one die?" You do not know. You have a general idea. You express it. You pay your premiums ten years. You die (one doctor says of consumption—another says of blood-poison); the company finds some old person who says your grandmother on your father's side died of the same thing, and there is a rumor that a long-forgotten (or never-known) country cousin also had it.

The company sends a representative to the widow. He assures her (and by the very terms of the contract, signed by the dead husband, he is right and she is helpless) that they can refuse to pay a