Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/100

 motion of the company. The law now makes possible the organization of new life insurance companies on a sound and legitimate basis, and later amendments permit the organization of mutual companies for the insurance of employers against their liability for the injury or death of employees and for the insurance of deposits by banks.

"One mutual employer's liability insurance company is already doing business and others are about to be organized. A committee of the State Bankers' Association is at work formulating a plan for the organization of a bankers' mutual insurance company for the protection of depositors. Provision has been made for the granting of life insurance and annuities by the state in the state life fund on an absolutely safe plan of collecting a sufficient advance premium and returning the savings. The same idea has been extended to fraternal] insurance by providing for helping the fraternal societies to find out where they stand and to get this information out to their members in the most intelligible form and to bring about as much as possible a more general knowledge of the real principles upon which insurance is based. In all this legislation there are no arbitrary requirements, save only in prohibiting the collection of expense money in excess of a definite proportion of the insurance benefit to be furnished. In other respects, the idea is merely to insist that the policy-holder shall understand his contract and the principles on which it is based and the conditions under which it is made, and that the company shall live up to the contract."

More interesting because more experimental, is the state insurance fund passed as chapter 577, laws of 1911. The following outline of this law, taken from an address delivered before the National convention of insurance