Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/388

384 of deposit and collection, etc., and they pay out more than $400,000,000 annually in death-claims, endowments, etc., to policyholders, all of which is evidence of the vast and intricate ramifications of the business throughout the social structure. Every policyholder is in touch with at least two other individuals, thereby affording the life-insurance companies seventy-five million points of contact with the public, and constantly open channels of communication through which educational material may be transmitted.

We may summarize the reasons why life-insurance companies should engage in health conservation work as follows:

1. The machinery is at hand.

2. It can be utilized without loss, and with probable gain to both company and policyholder.

3. The very nature and extent of the life-insurance business imposes a public obligation to exercise this power for the welfare of the people.

The medical and scientific staff of a life-insurance company is trained in the consideration of disease-tendencies, rather than active diseased conditions. The influence of living-habits and the significance of physical disabilities and abnormalities, and especially of personal and family history, upon large masses of insured lives, form the body of the rapidly developing science of medical selection. By combining this intrinsic knowledge with the readily available extrinsic data relating to personal hygiene, the medical officers of a life-insurance company are, or should be, especially well equipped to guide their policyholders toward safe and sane living-habits. Furthermore, experience shows that the policyholder will listen to the advice of his life-insurance office on such matters, because he discerns the practical business motive that prompts it, however liberal an admixture there may be of normal, genuine interest in human betterment.

The lines along which such work may be carried on are too numerous to permit of minute description in this article. Briefly, they may be summarized as follows: health-hints and instructions distributed with premium-notices; periodical bulletins covering the fundamental principles of healthful living; cooperation with boards of health and other welfare-agencies, by furnishing statistical and other information accumulated by the company's bureau of research; the creation of public sentiment where needed, for the enforcement of health-laws and proper equipment and support of health-departments; persistent effort in favor of legislation for the proper registration of vital statistics; persistent publicity to the need for national, state and local warfare against preventable disease, not only of the communicable class, but of those conditions arising from wear and tear, maladjustment and faulty living-habits. These are a few of the many activities that could readily be carried on by well-equipped life-insurance companies.