Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/359

Rh of the value of the medical examinations by the expert medical examiners and directors of twenty-one life-insurance companies? A risk good enough to "pass" some forty-five doctors employed by, and for the protection of, the companies is, on the face of it, a good enough risk to pay. If this is not so, then the companies, and not the public, should be made to bear the responsibility of the incompetency of their own officers.

But for the reputation of these medical men, it is a fortunate fact that the contest did not prove Colonel Dwight to be an unsafe risk. After his body was dug up several times, and a number of autopsies held, and most of him analyzed, they succeeded in proving that he owned a hotel where liquor was sold!

But under these forms of contract, the companies undoubtedly had a legal right to refuse payment upon even so absurdly technical a misstatement of "occupation." It was claimed that his hotel was a side issue; that he did not think of himself as in that business, and that his failure to say, because of it, that he was "in any way connected with the manufacture or sale of spirituous liquors," was a natural one under the circumstances. How many men give, in answering the question as to occupation in their applications for insurance, all of the numerous "plants" in which they have an interest of a financial nature, more or less important? One man says he is a book-keeper, but he may possibly, also, own stock in a mine. His claim could be contested on that ground. Suppose that he really thought nothing of his mining-stock when he made his application and signed his contract? Suppose that in a short time he was called to see the mine, went into it, and died of the results of that trip? His policy would not, if it contained the usual conditions, be worth, in a legal fight, the paper it was written on.

That companies often waive their reserved right to contest on such grounds, is used as an argument to prove the innocent nature of these forfeiture clauses and other oppressive conditions. But so long as they hold the legal power to do so, the temptation to contest will be too great for flesh and blood, not to say for corporations, to bear without yielding sometimes. The "Get thee behind me, Satan," of a fair, plain contract will be the best safeguard for the heirs in the matter of money, and for the companies in the matter of morals; while the "economy for the sake of surviving policy-holders" might be directed, as there is surely room for believing that it needs to be, into other and more legitimate channels. Economizing on debts to dead policy-holders is not a very good recommendation to living ones, for the companies which thus lock the wrong stable-door.

The new move toward furnishing fair contracts is in the right direction, and it now rests with insurers—the public—to see that it does not stop short of fulfilling the promise of still better things in the future.