UC-NRLF 
 
 INING FOR A 
 
 LIFE INSURANCE 
 AGENT 
 
 WARREN M. HOKN'EP, 
 
LIPPINCOTT'S 
 
 TRAINING SERIES 
 
 "FOR THOSE WHO WANT 
 TO FIND THEMSELVES" 
 
 TRAINING FOR A LIFE 
 INSURANCE AGENT 
 
LIPPINCOTT'S 
 
 TRAINING SERIES 
 
 "FOR THOSE WHO WANT 
 TO FIND THEMSELVES" 
 
 TRAINING FOR THE 
 NEWSPAPER TRADE 
 
 By DON C. SEITZ 
 
 Business Manager of "New York World" 
 
 TRAINING FOR THE 
 STAGE 
 
 By ARTHUR HORNBLOW 
 
 Editor of " The Theatre Magazine" 
 
 TRAINING FOR A LIFE 
 INSURANCE AGENT 
 
 By WARREN M.HORNER 
 
 Provident Life and Trust Co. 
 
 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 STREET RAILWAY 
 
 BUSINESS 
 
 By C. B. FAIRCHILD, JR. 
 
 Executive Assistant of the Philadelphia 
 Rapid Transit Co. 
 
 TRAINING OF A 
 FORESTER 
 
 By GIFFORD PINCHOT 
 IN PREPARATION 
 
 TRAINING AND 
 REWARDS OF A DOCTOR 
 
 By RICHARD C. CABOT, M.D. 
 
 TRAINING AND 
 REWARDS OF A LAWYER 
 
 By HARLAN F. STONE 
 
 Dean of Columbia Law School 
 
 12mo. Cloth. Putty Illustrated. Each$1.2Bnet 
 
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LIPPINCOTT'S TRAINING SERIES 
 
 TRAINING FOR A LIFE 
 INSURANCE AGENT 
 
 BY 
 
 WARREN M. HORNER 
 
 LIFE INSURANCE AGENT AND MANAGER, WRITER AND LECTURER 
 ON LIFE INSURANCE TOPICS 
 
 ' Be not a man of many words nor 
 busy about too many things." 
 
 MAHCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 PHILADELPHIA & LONDON 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
COPTRIOHT, IQI7, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHED MARCH, IQI7 
 
 PRINTED BT J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, U. 8. A. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO 
 JOSEPH ASHBROOK 
 
 FROM WHOM I HAVE RECEIVED 
 GREAT INSPIRATION AND HELPFUL 
 SUGGESTIONS IN MY LIFE'S WORK 
 
 463305 
 
'How blessed is he who crowns 
 
 in shades like these, 
 A youth of labor with an 
 age of ease." 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
 'One science only will one genius fit, 
 So vast is art, so narrow human wit.' 
 POPE. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 A PREFACE to a book should be like any 
 other introduction, a sort of " Who's Who 
 Why's Why and What's What " proposi- 
 tion. At any rate, I am the one who has 
 been selected by the publishers to set down 
 some facts about an important world move- 
 ment because there is much need for such 
 a work. 
 
 The Life Insurance business is conspicu- 
 ous in contrasts. It is the most important 
 thing to the people, and they know the least 
 about it. It is the most scientific business in 
 the world, with very unscientific methods in 
 the producing end. It is a veritable fairy- 
 land for the imaginative mind, in its ramify- 
 ing opportunities for constructive service and 
 personal development. Yet one must go 
 through the darkest, coldest dungeon of de- 
 spair and privation to attain mastery. 
 
 It has the most enticing allurements for 
 the really successful on the gilded side; yet 
 the average agent is a financial failure, and 
 a greatly preponderating number of those 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 who undertake the work never attain any 
 reasonable success, but stray into other 
 pastures. 
 
 There are good reasons for these appar- 
 ently irreconcilable divergent conditions, and 
 I hope to make them reasonably clear in the 
 chapters of this book. 
 
 I believe in Life Insurance as a vocation, 
 not passively, but with a burning intensity 
 that is almost an obsession. It is not, how- 
 ever, any job for a lightweight or a shirk. 
 Anyone who desires to enter the Life Insur- 
 ance business should study the situation care- 
 fully, and make the fight only after he feels 
 called to this great work of conservation. 
 
 This book is written, primarily, for those 
 directly interested in the Life Insurance busi- 
 ness, but in a non-technical manner so that 
 it may be of value to laymen, especially 
 those interested in salesmanship. 
 
 I have striven earnestly and naturally to 
 add something of value where there is great 
 need for enlightenment and standardized en- 
 deavor, and sincerely hope the reader's ver- 
 dict will be that it is not written in vain. 
 WARREN M. HORNER. 
 
 January, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 TRAINING FOR A LIFE INSURANCE AGENT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OPPORTUNITY 15 
 
 WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN, AND How 24 
 
 SALESMANSHIP 38 
 
 SYSTEM AND EFFICIENCY 47 
 
 THE STANDARDIZED REPRESENTATIVE 55 
 
 GENERAL AGENCY OR ORGANIZATION METHODS 64 
 
 SOME SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE LIFE INSURANCE BUSINESS ... 75 
 
 DOES IT PAY TO ADVERTISE ? 86 
 
 THE WOMAN IN LIFE INSURANCE 92 
 
 RECAPITULATION 99 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE LIFE INSURANCE AGENT AND THE LAYMAN 
 
 THE AGENT AND THE LAYMAN 109 
 
 BUSINESS LIFE INSURANCE Ill 
 
 WELFARE INSURANCE 117 
 
 INCOME INSURANCE 128 
 
 LAYMEN'S RESPONSIBILITY. . .... ISO 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A MODEL AGENCY ORGANIZATION (CHART) .... Frontispiece 
 
 EFFICIENCY DIAGRAM 33 
 
 KEY TO SUCCESS 52 
 
 EFFICIENCY METHODS (CHART) 58-59 
 
 KEY TO OFFICE FURNITURE. . . 66-67 
 
PART I 
 
 TRAINING FOR A LIFE 
 INSURANCE AGENT 
 
TRAINING FOR A LIFE 
 INSURANCE AGENT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OPPORTUNITY 
 
 As an institution for systematic thrift, as 
 a means of preventing want and pauperism, 
 as a medium of safeguarding the home and 
 old age, as an equalizing force in business, 
 and as a leveller of human affairs, sound Life 
 Insurance stands as a great bulwark to man- 
 kind. 
 
 It is quite unusual that a business of such 
 ramifying importance in its economic and 
 beneficent value to the public should be ac- 
 corded so much prejudice and be so generally 
 shunned as a vocation. This bias and aloof- 
 ness has materially lessened in recent years, 
 but the condition is still far from satisfactory, 
 although without any fundamental reason. 
 
 Life Insurance, in its inception, was asso- 
 
 15 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 elated with death and its resultant sorrows 
 and harrowing experiences. The fact that 
 the business, in its beginning or undeveloped 
 stages, apparently had to do only with death 
 and its grim realities, made the work of early 
 proponents of the system fraught with stag- 
 gering hardships. The crusading methods 
 required to break down prejudice and lack 
 of understanding, to get people to do the 
 very obvious thing of insuring their lives, 
 served to build up prejudice against the busi- 
 ness as lacking caste. Indeed, Life Insur- 
 ance agents, as a rule, have been regarded 
 as a sort of necessary evil, and even by many 
 as an unnecessary evil. The preposterous- 
 ness of this point of view cannot alter the 
 fact of its existence. Neither does the con- 
 dition militate against the business in its op- 
 portunities, exactly the reverse being true. 
 
 Before amplifying the many opportunities 
 afforded by the business of Life Insurance, 
 a brief survey of its development in the 
 United States should be given. 
 
 The founders of the system of Legal Re- 
 
 16 
 
OPPORTUNITY 
 
 serve Life Insurance builded better than they 
 knew. It is the greatest system of finance 
 in behalf of the public weal ever devised. 
 In this country, with its rapid growth and 
 multiplication of fortunes and enterprises, 
 with incident hazards, Life Insurance has 
 become both a personal and business neces- 
 sity, and is viewed generally, and very prop- 
 erly, in the light of a conservation measure. 
 
 It is unfortunate that those at the home 
 offices and in the field who dealt with the 
 public in the early stages did not themselves 
 have a clearer idea of the true significance 
 of the business, and dress their presentation 
 of the subject in a more attractive manner, 
 from a human and economic standpoint. 
 Much of the prejudice and aloofness toward 
 Life Insurance and its salesmen would never 
 have existed had a broader and saner presen- 
 tation been given the public from the start, 
 and a more efficient and scientific method 
 of appointing and training agents been 
 practised. 
 
 Again, the lack of a drastic uniform state 
 
 2 17 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 law, or, what is far better, a federal law, 
 for the incorporation and control of com- 
 panies, has resulted in much spuriousness 
 and exploitation to aggravate anti-public 
 opinion. 
 
 With all these handicaps, the business has 
 grown in value enormously, and in the minds 
 of the public, in a better understanding and 
 appreciation of its benefits to them, and to 
 such an extent as to make the opportunity 
 limited only by the capacity and energy of 
 the agent. 
 
 The modern interpretation of Life Insur- 
 ance is not just Death Assurance, but live 
 insurance for live people. While the busi- 
 ness is built around the uncertainty of life 
 and certainty (uncertainty of time) of death, 
 it has gradually taken on a more human 
 and attractive dress, in the shape of income 
 and annuity policies, or those used in busi- 
 ness as fiscal governors in an enterprise, and 
 as welfare or profit-sharing media for em- 
 ployees of all classes. 
 
 The business does hold wonderful oppor- 
 
 18 
 
OPPORTUNITY 
 
 tunity for the agent who can, and will, make 
 the fight in breaking through the outer crust 
 of antagonistic public mind to the inner state 
 of both a conscious and subconscious attitude 
 of receptivity. The piercing of this armor 
 of aloofness is a man's job, and only those 
 possessed of understanding and industry 
 should undertake the work. 
 
 Fortunately, the co-operative method of 
 compensation based upon results, and elim- 
 ination of the salary evil, offer inducements 
 in that the merit system prevails entirely 
 as to financial reward. This feature is made 
 the more attractive because the agent is paid 
 not only a commission on the first, but also 
 on subsequent premiums. These renewal or 
 collection payments are, under certain con- 
 ditions, paid even after the agent leaves the 
 service, owing to death, incapacity or resig- 
 nation. This building of an income as a 
 future reward is both just and sound busi- 
 ness procedure. 
 
 From the compensatory angle, there are 
 three very important and attractive advan- 
 
 19 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 tages in Life Insurance as a vocation: (a) 
 The unlimited absorbing power of the pub- 
 lic; (b) the co-operative nature of reward, 
 eliminating salary evils; and, (c) The pay- 
 ments over a term of years resulting in a 
 non-forfeitable estate to the worthy individ- 
 ual who remains steadfastly with one 
 company. 
 
 For those who are ambitious for promo- 
 tion and place, Life Insurance offers great 
 inducements. The companies are actually 
 hungry for real, capable men and women 
 to fill responsible positions. The compara- 
 tive newness of the business, in its larger 
 aspect, as practised in the United States and 
 the Dominion of Canada, has created a short- 
 age of individuals who can join production 
 with executive ability, and for such the op- 
 portunity is ample, greater, in fact, than 
 in any other field not requiring large capital. 
 Then for those red-blooded members of 
 society who have the constructive, building 
 disposition, who are interested in something 
 
 aside from the humdrum, trite, everyday 
 
 20 
 
OPPORTUNITY 
 
 experience of their fathers and grandfathers, 
 and who do not desire to select their vocation 
 a la " rich man poor man beggarman 
 thief doctor lawyer merchant chief " 
 fashion, Life Insurance holds wonderful 
 opportunities. 
 
 Its operations, in the field, have been char- 
 acterized by wasteful and unscientific meth- 
 ods. The scope for originating and carrying 
 out modern efficiency methods is limitless. 
 It is a poor job for the individual who cannot 
 self -inaugurate something. 
 
 Life Insurance enters into the hearts and 
 homes of people of all classes. Therefore, 
 viewed in the light of the grouping of society 
 in the superficial, or outward castes, the busi- 
 ness has a wide range in the opportunity for 
 remunerative employment of people of dif- 
 ferent strata of business and social caste. 
 Those familiar with the needs and desires 
 of each class can better serve that class in 
 supplying them with protection. 
 
 The history of the most efficient company 
 
 organization has proven, conclusively, the 
 
 21 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 foregoing: that agents of moderate, average 
 and phenomenal ability all succeed in due 
 proportion when properly trained and gifted 
 with industry, a sound mind and a good 
 heart. 
 
 Why, then, with all this opportunity for 
 accomplishment, in ethical and financial up- 
 lift, do so many fail? 
 
 The reasons are public aloofness, unscien- 
 tific methods and lack of time-accountability, 
 together with the fact that the agent must 
 always be pulling up-stream in keeping at 
 work. However, these reasons are only sur- 
 face, and not fundamental. The real reason 
 so many fail is that Life Insurance is the 
 " acid test " of salesmanship. 
 
 It calls for superior ability in discernment 
 of human nature, backed by industry and 
 intensive power to sway people to harmo- 
 nious action. Without these, continuous and 
 cumulative success is impossible. 
 
 It has been shown that there is abundant 
 opportunity for a wide range of individuals 
 
 in the Life Insurance business ; that promo- 
 
 22 
 
OPPORTUNITY 
 
 tions are promised and remuneration, in 
 method and amount, attractive; that oppor- 
 tunity for success is ample for those of aver- 
 age ability, and large for those of large 
 ability. 
 
 More important, however, is the fact that 
 the business embraces or calls for more attri- 
 butes of human responsiveness, right deal- 
 ing, fair dealing and square dealing than any 
 other human agency. If practised as it 
 should be followed, it will cultivate a logical 
 mind, analytical wisdom as to social and 
 economic conditions, and, above all, and more 
 important than all, a disposition to love and 
 care for one's fellows. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN, AND How 
 
 I. WHO SHOULD BEGIN 
 
 IF the reader is impressed with the senti- 
 ment in the closing words of the preceding 
 chapter, he then possesses one of the requi- 
 sites of a Life Insurance agent. 
 
 It is folly to engage in the work without 
 a pulling at the heart-strings because of the 
 great human side of the business, and unless 
 there is a thorough understanding and ap- 
 preciation of Life Insurance, as a world 
 force, in its economic and beneficent relation 
 to humanity. 
 
 Too many young men waste time " feel- 
 ing out " other people in choosing a vocation. 
 If the advice of someone else is going to be 
 taken on selecting a vocation, keep out of 
 Life Insurance, because it has enough fail- 
 ures aboard already. It takes a little clear 
 grit to break into the Life Insurance pro- 
 fession it is no place for a molly-coddle. 
 
 24 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN AND HOW 
 
 Then, in seeking the opinion of others, 
 much misinformation is acquired, as there 
 are many individuals, glib of tongue but 
 void of understanding, who scoff at the busi- 
 ness as a vocation. 
 
 Self -analysis should be used liberally, h 
 selecting one's life work, as to disposition 
 and capabilities. However, many persons 
 carry self-analysis and inquiry beyond the 
 necessary limits of reason. 
 
 By the same token that a person can do 
 some one thing successfully, he can do some 
 other thing creditably, with the application 
 of the same amount of energy and enterprise. 
 It is not the intention to convey the idea that 
 a good blacksmith would make a painter of 
 works of art, and so on, but, outside the fine 
 arts and major professions, the rule laid 
 down does apply. 
 
 Life Insurance, as a vocation, is properly 
 classed in a twilight zone between a pro- 
 fession and ordinary business, embracing, as 
 it does, the attributes and opportunities of 
 both. It is a poor job for a cold, clammy 
 
 25 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 individual, with a sordid ambition and a 
 warped soul. It is a business where person- 
 ality counts personality, with gentlemanly 
 enthusiasm outside, and quick discernment 
 of human nature, plus conviction, inside. 
 
 Where doubt exists in regard to becom- 
 ing a Life Insurance salesman, study the 
 characteristics of Ex-presidents Taft and 
 Roosevelt, and Ex-premier Asquith and his 
 successor, Lloyd George, as opposites, and 
 then Woodrow Wilson as a composite, in 
 some degree, of all these personalities. 
 
 Mr. Taft's highly-specialized, judicial 
 mind, lacking executive positiveness, does 
 not possess the requisites necessary to success 
 in Life Insurance field work. Mr. Roose- 
 velt, with his many-sidedness, but with these 
 qualities toned down, is fine. Mr. Asquith, 
 with his great judicial and parliamentary 
 ability, is too cold. Lloyd George, in quick 
 grasp, human responsiveness and positive- 
 ness, is ideal. 
 
 Woodrow Wilson is enough of a com- 
 posite to not be set aside like Taft and 
 
 26 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGINWHEN AND HOW 
 
 Asquith, and too austere to be classed with 
 Roosevelt or Lloyd George. 
 
 It is the intention to convey to the reader 
 that personalities resembling, to a prepon- 
 derating degree, the characteristics of Ex- 
 president Taft and Mr. Asquith are not 
 adaptable to the business; and that person- 
 alities, with a leaning toward the qualities of 
 Ex-president Roosevelt and Lloyd George, 
 are equipped to an unusual degree for 
 success. 
 
 Furthermore, that there are a large num- 
 ber of individuals who possess the adapta- 
 bility of President Wilson, without either 
 the preponderating negative qualities of a 
 Taft or an Asquith, nor the overwhelming 
 positive requisites of a Roosevelt or a Lloyd 
 George, who can still attain very creditable 
 accomplishments. 
 
 The fact should be clearly visualized that 
 there is more adaptability in the human 
 make-up than most people realize, and this 
 should not be overlooked, especially with 
 young people. With reasonable adapta- 
 
 27 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 bility, opportunity and determination are 
 mighty factors. 
 
 The author is firmly convinced that a 
 careful study of the foregoing will greatly 
 aid individuals seeking light as to their fit- 
 ness or adaptability for the business of Life 
 Insurance, and that their own deliberative 
 judgment, exercised by such process, is far 
 more valuable than a hasty conclusion 
 reached by shopping around for ideas. 
 
 In conclusion, for this part, remember 
 that there is an opening for individuals of 
 moderate, average and exceptional ability, 
 as mentioned in the first chapter, and as will 
 be more clearly shown in those to follow. 
 
 II. WHEN 
 
 A generation ago, young men at the 
 threshold of their life's work rarely entered 
 the business. The young man who did so 
 was the exception, not the rule. It was com- 
 monly supposed that a young man could not 
 cope with the difficulties and obstacles to be 
 overcome, in lack of understanding and prej- 
 
 28 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGINWHEN AND HOW 
 
 udice existing in the public mind. It was 
 thought necessary to employ, as agents, 
 older men who had acquired ability to meet 
 and overcome difficulties. This led to the 
 practice of recruiting for agents from among 
 those who had spent years in other fields of 
 work, and desired to change to something 
 more lucrative and congenial, and also from 
 the ranks of failures and the down-and-outs. 
 
 This was a baneful practice, and it has 
 been difficult to outgrow the evil. When 
 the business awoke to an appreciation of its 
 possibilities for young men, and to the fact 
 that it needed their fighting qualities and 
 growing propensities, it found the early 
 practice had built an artificial wall to keep 
 out these young men. 
 
 However, this aloofness is rapidly wear- 
 ing away, because of more standardized 
 methods and better understanding. Young 
 men, college graduates, and all those with 
 a purposeful attitude toward their future 
 find a ready and lucrative market for their 
 
 29 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 activities, if applied with zeal and deter- 
 mination. 
 
 It is entirely fitting that young men should 
 take up Life Insurance as their initial work, 
 and follow it through to the end of their life's 
 journey. There is nothing against, and every- 
 thing in favor of, such a practice, as in all 
 important vocations. They should begin 
 when young, and spend their building, con- 
 structive years fitting themselves for the big 
 things of place and accomplishment which 
 can only come in any life or profession by 
 years of growth and development. 
 
 Happily, educational institutions, through 
 their own vision in practicalizing education, 
 and with the aid of leading insurance men, 
 are incorporating Life Insurance in their 
 curricula, so that graduates are better fitted 
 to understand Life Insurance as an economic 
 force, and its relation to them as a means of 
 livelihood. 
 
 Many companies and large agencies have 
 their own schools of insurance and salesman- 
 ship, and abundant opportunity is given the 
 
 30 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN AND HOW 
 
 younger generation to grasp the advantages 
 which the business offers. The training 
 given in these courses, and in real service, is 
 very valuable, even if the recruit should 
 eventually follow some other calling. 
 
 While Life Insurance is pre-eminently a 
 business to enter while young, as an initial 
 venture no hard-and-fast rule can be laid 
 down. Many men have taken up the work 
 later in life, because of its freedom of time 
 and operation, and made conspicuous suc- 
 cesses, but these same men would, of course, 
 have gone much further had they applied 
 their activities from the start. 
 
 Therefore, the Life Insurance business 
 should be taken up by young men college 
 graduates, high school graduates, or other 
 young men who select it as their first and 
 only vocation. 
 
 III. HOW 
 
 Many a good Life Insurance agent has 
 never reached a reasonable fruition of his 
 powers, or has left the business as a total or 
 partial failure, because of a poor start. 
 
 31 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 The first essential for a beginner is to 
 thoroughly understand the business, in its 
 broad economic aspects. This means study 
 at the start, and study all the way through 
 to the end, study of the economic and be- 
 neficent value of Life Insurance, study of 
 human nature, study of self and systems of 
 work applicable to the individual. 
 
 The agent should not try the Tbusiness. 
 It should be taken up as a life's work, with 
 a determination to stick. It is a man's job, 
 and will not mix with anything else. It is 
 ethically and fundamentally wrong to mix 
 it with anything else. 
 
 The agent should be ambitious to serve 
 his friends and acquaintances, riot to prey 
 upon them. The things shown in the accom- 
 panying diagram should be clearly visualized 
 and followed. The agent should learn when 
 to talk, and when not to talk. He should 
 learn to arrange interviews to best bring re- 
 sults. Life Insurance should be regarded, 
 and sold, as a conservation of man's energy 
 or earning power as live insurance for live 
 
 32 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN AND HOW 
 
 people. Figuratively, the salesman should 
 look through a man like an X-ray, and see, 
 beyond, his loved ones, or business, or both, 
 and talk protection for these, not just selling 
 arguments to put dollars in his own pocket. 
 
 This efficiency diagram ia constructed on the theory that an individual'! 
 effort for success should be dominated by the idea that a straight line is th 
 shortest distance between two points. 
 
 Point E is an individual's visualized ambition. 
 
 The straight line A-E is the visualized course 
 that this individual must hold in mind. 
 
 The curved line is the general course that a 
 successful individual will travel who keeps in mind 
 3 33 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 the visualized point and indulges in directly applied 
 energy, remembering that a straight line is the 
 shortest distance between two points. 
 
 A, B, C and D represent the scope of an indi- 
 vidual's efforts, practical and otherwise, between 
 just existing, A to D, and rising to maximum 
 capacity, A and C. 
 
 C is the highest point of accomplishment that a 
 given individual can attain. 
 
 The dotted lines above E represent the actual 
 course of a successful career of one who keeps in 
 mind point E, and works in accordance with curved 
 line A and E. 
 
 Of course, the curved line A and E with the 
 successful individual actually becomes a curved 
 line to follow the course of one of the dotted lines 
 above E or A-7, 6, etc., to assumed maximum, 
 A and C. 
 
 Dotted lines below E, and between E and D, 
 represent a lessening of vigilance and efficiency. 
 A and D is just keeping one's head above water. 
 
 Below D is failure, and point 14 total failure. 
 
 A, B and C is the forbidden zone. 
 
 The stars represent points of contact of an 
 individual when he is working inefficiently or in an 
 impractical way. Stars in the forbidden zone, 
 bounded by A, B and C, represent points of con- 
 tact of an individual where he is wasting his energy 
 entirely because of being outside his sphere as a 
 means to the end to be accomplished. 
 
 34 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN AND HOW 
 
 The purpose of this diagram is to convey the 
 idea that so many people are constantly working in 
 the zone A, B and C, and represented by the stars 
 therein, working out of their element, indulging 
 in impractical and visionary things in their daily 
 work. 
 
 An important lesson to be learned from the dia- 
 gram is that an individual will always reach a 
 higher goal than the objective, provided he work 
 constantly for an objective and indulge in directly 
 applied energy, eliminating wasteful and impracti- 
 cal endeavor. 
 
 What is in the mind of the agent is easily 
 conveyed to the prospect. Therefore, intelli- 
 gent, sincere and sustained effort gets cumu- 
 lative results. Many men drift in the busi- 
 ness. This is a wicked shame, for only a 
 small percentage of people are adequately 
 insured, and millions come into an insurable 
 age every year. 
 
 The agent should not drift or work in any 
 hap-hazard fashion. He should respond to 
 the time-accountability system of an organi- 
 zation, and be severe and honest with him- 
 self, striving from the start to be the best 
 
 35 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 Life Insurance agent in his " own home 
 town." He should be considerate of others, 
 but never suppliant, and remember the in- 
 scription on the Gates of Busyrane: 
 
 "Be Bold!" 
 
 " Be Bold, Be Bold, and Evermore Be Bold ! " 
 
 "Be Not Too Bold!" 
 
 An agent should not begin with the idea 
 that he is going to make a fortune the first 
 year, nor should he be ambitious to succeed 
 his manager or be president of the company 
 without earning those jobs. 
 
 One of the greatest difficulties with the 
 younger generation, and especially college 
 graduates, is a too impatient and arrogant 
 attitude toward doing the work of an appren- 
 tice, and in not wanting to work and wait a 
 sufficient length of time for advancement. In 
 other important vocations! or professions, 
 such as engineering, banking, law and medi- 
 cine, few men attain the very big things until 
 nearly forty years of age, and in the major 
 
WHO SHOULD BEGIN WHEN AND HOW 
 
 professions spend years and money in prepa- 
 ration. 
 
 Yet, thousands of Life Insurance agents 
 have tried the business and given up when 
 they did not succeed the first six months. If 
 a college graduate has spent four years to 
 prepare his mind to assimilate big things, he 
 has a missing link somewhere if he is not 
 willing to spend, if necessary, a couple of 
 years in preparation for his real life's work, 
 in the actual school of experience. 
 
 Advancement in income, or to managerial 
 or official positions, is a matter of evolution 
 and revolution. No one ever attains to a 
 thing worth while without burning up a tre- 
 mendous amount of energy during some par- 
 ticular period. 
 
 To learn to do anything well means to be 
 " Patient as Destiny," to know how to wait; 
 not sit and wait, but work and wait. Success 
 means earnest, manful effort; grim energy 
 dominated by a personality willing to take 
 risks by crossing bridges and burning them 
 en route. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SALESMANSHIP 
 
 A GOOD substitute should be found for the 
 word " salesmanship " because the word, or 
 that for which it stands, is actually in disre- 
 pute on account of being considered, in the 
 minds of altogether too many individuals, as 
 representing a sort of cunning, the possession 
 of which is rather against, than for, the indi- 
 vidual. Unless this condition can be cor- 
 rected so that the meaning is interpreted as 
 being a high order of approach, which results 
 in the meeting of minds, some other word 
 which better comports with advanced ideas 
 on selling should be substituted. 
 
 Small consideration should be given the 
 idea that only a favored few are born sales- 
 men, because only the unfavored minority 
 cannot become efficient members of a sales 
 organization. Every individual is selling 
 something every day of his life. A good 
 salesman is a born gentleman who is not lazy. 
 
 38 
 
SALESMANSHIP 
 
 All human accomplishment hinges around 
 salesmanship. Even advertising is a form 
 of salesmanship. Salesmanship is driving 
 power militancy not the noisy, flamboy- 
 ant kind, but that born of industry, enter- 
 prise, determination and inherent gentle- 
 manly qualities. 
 
 A Life Insurance salesman is a composite 
 individual, exercising the qualities of the 
 ordinary salesman, plus functions of the lead- 
 ing professions, combined with the knowl- 
 edge of the economist and sociologist. 
 
 Life Insurance salesmanship has been 
 shunned because of the percentage of failures 
 registered by those who engaged in the work, 
 and because of the common misconception 
 of the importance and dignity of the business 
 as a profession. 
 
 Failures in salesmanship not alone in 
 Life Insurance, but in every field have been 
 multiplied owing to the lack of constructive 
 sales methods in the decorum employed in 
 daily work, and the unscientific methods of 
 organizing and developing sales forces. 
 
 39 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 That more failures, in proportion, have 
 occurred in the Life Insurance business, is 
 due to intensifying of evils existing gener- 
 ally, and for the further reason that the Life 
 Insurance business is the " acid test " of 
 all salesmanship, requiring a more varied and 
 higher order of ability to acquire success. 
 
 It is a business where the glib, shallow indi- 
 vidual will not last. In Life Insurance, and 
 in every line of business, the American peo- 
 ple should get away from the idea that sales- 
 manship is just the union of buyer and seller, 
 through word of mouth. Salesmanship is a 
 composite idea in the ethics, psychology, logic 
 and economy of marketing all commodities. 
 It is a local, national and international mat- 
 ter of far-reaching importance. It strikes 
 at the very heart of the nation, through every 
 individual enterprise, corporate entity, and 
 public servant, and is vital in every business, 
 affecting every one, from the most humble 
 employee to the proprietor. 
 
 We need more constructive salesmanship. 
 More constructive salesmanship, in ordinary 
 
 40 
 
SALESMANSHIP 
 
 commercial lines, means better and more 
 adaptable goods, greater efficiency in manu- 
 facture, more attractive packages, prompt 
 delivery and broader fiscal policies. As an- 
 other result, our own public and the foreign 
 buyer will be met by a salesforce that has 
 been selected and instructed on more stand- 
 ardized and enlightened methods. 
 
 Constructive salesmanship in the Life In- 
 surance business necessitates the cultivation 
 of the idea and practice of selling one's brains 
 by a sagacious method of approach and pub- 
 licity, just as the lawyer and the doctor em- 
 ploy in building a successful practice in their 
 professions. 
 
 The minister or college professor who in- 
 dulges in a little well-ordered publicity, and 
 brushes up against the public, is the one who 
 receives calls to greater fields o activity. 
 They make more money and do more good 
 for humanity than their more silent brethren. 
 
 Life Insurance has been likened to all four 
 of these professions, and it does embrace 
 most of the attributes of them all. 
 
 41 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 Some feel that the agent is made too ideal- 
 istic by this kind of education, and that there 
 is engendered in him the idea of sitting 
 around waiting for people to come to him 
 for business, instead of indulging, as he must, 
 in unremitting toil. 
 
 If the agent is thoroughly imbued with 
 the economic and beneficent value of Life 
 Insurance and the preposterousness of the 
 layman feeling that he is not carrying a mes- 
 sage of great business and sentimental value ; 
 if he is adequately trained and inspired with 
 habits of systematic work, and imbued with 
 the efficacy of time-accountability; and, 
 finally, made to realize that, in his initial 
 work, he must be ready to overcome huge ob- 
 stacles and to fight discouragements, there 
 cannot then be builded too idealistic a struc- 
 ture in his mind as to the professional side of 
 what he is doing, nor as to the monumental 
 value of the system of Legal Reserve Life 
 Insurance. 
 
 A salesman cannot succeed, in any voca- 
 tion, without exercising an enormous amount 
 
 42 
 
SALESMANSHIP 
 
 of physical and mental energy. Many sales- 
 men are prone to overdo the physical, and 
 neglect the mental development of their 
 work. 
 
 Salesmanship, especially Life Insurance 
 salesmanship, is not a matter of brute force 
 or series of strong-arm jabs. It is the ability 
 to " nose out " prospects and close them with 
 the finesse of a diplomat. 
 
 In the " Letters from a Self-made Mer- 
 chant to his Son," by George Lorimer 
 (Small, Maynard and Company), the very 
 pertinent expression is used: " A real sales- 
 man is one-part talk and nine-parts judg- 
 ment; and he uses the nine-parts of judg- 
 ment to tell when to use the one-part of talk." 
 
 The truism cannot be too often told that a 
 salesman should know his own goods thor- 
 oughly, and those of his competitor as well. 
 It is quite important, however, that he should 
 learn the art of creating sales by playing-up 
 the strong points of his own goods, and not 
 the weak ones of his competitors'. 
 
 The way to be positive is to be positive 
 
 43 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 and not negative. Tearing-down, or traduc- 
 ing, is bound to be negative. Even where 
 actual comparisons are to be made, by the use 
 of legitimate adroitness, the negative exist- 
 ing on the opposing side can be shown by a 
 strong playing-up of the positive or superior 
 qualities of one's own article. 
 
 The psychology of the written and spoken 
 word, both in what is actually expressed, to 
 the sequential arrangement of ideas, is ex- 
 tremely important. Psychology is a great 
 aid in the study and discernment of human 
 nature. 
 
 A great many instructors on salesmanship 
 give the wrong " mind slant " to their stu- 
 dents by instruction in regard to how to shake 
 hands or look at an individual, incorporating 
 statements about the signature on the dotted 
 line, and other weakening and obsolete or 
 hurtful expressions. 
 
 A studied approach is a poor approach. 
 Inherent good breeding, not ball-room ethics, 
 will tell a real salesman how to approach 
 each client or customer. Originality of ap- 
 
 44 
 
SALESMANSHIP 
 
 proach, thought and expression in each indi- 
 vidual interview is the real way. No really 
 efficient salesman will shake hands until the 
 one on whom he is calling indicates a desire 
 or readiness to grasp his hand. 
 
 Furthermore, a keen, intuitive reader of 
 men will never stand near enough to his pros- 
 pect but that the other must take a step for- 
 ward, if desirous of a cordial handshake 
 greeting. 
 
 This unobtrusive method of approaching 
 men is advisable not alone because of the of- 
 fensiveness of breathing in one's face, but it 
 has to do with the very fundamental fact 
 that men of affairs many of them justly, 
 though some falsely hold a somewhat ex- 
 alted idea of the sacredness of the space, 
 about six feet in diameter, immediately sur- 
 rounding their personality. 
 
 The humor of this exclusiveness, in many 
 cases, does not alter the advisability of re- 
 specting it. 
 
 The old silk-hatted, rough-and-tough, Bill- 
 and-Joe type of salesman is rapidly giving 
 
 45 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 away to the quiet, gentlemanly, positive in- 
 dividual who, by concentration, study and 
 enterprise, becomes a dynamic force, with a 
 come-back that is stronger and more skilful 
 each time. 
 
 A Life Insurance agent should learn to 
 develop a dual-minded process of canvassing 
 a client. This means to acquire the faculty 
 of talking enthusiastically, forcefully and 
 convincingly about a proposition, and still 
 observe the client thoroughly, without his 
 becoming aware that he is being watched. 
 
 Here again, the instinctive, intuitive knowl- 
 edge of human nature, and a quick grasp 
 of what pleases or jars, rather than a cold 
 analysis or staring of men out of counte- 
 nance, makes for large and continued success. 
 
 Salesmanship is a great vocation, calling 
 for study in and out of one's particular line. 
 Life Insurance salesmanship rises to the 
 plane of a profession, and further discussion 
 of specific methods properly comes under the 
 three succeeding chapters. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SYSTEM AND EFFICIENCY 
 
 THERE is much scoffing at what is charac- 
 terized as overplaying of the words " system" 
 and " efficiency." In most instances those 
 prone to ridicule the words and their modern 
 application are the most in need of the things 
 these words imply. 
 
 Fathers and mothers, educational institu- 
 tions public and private, common school 
 and collegiate have been turning loose on 
 the public each year a few millions of young 
 men and young women who are wholly un- 
 fitted for the practical affairs of life. The 
 United States is sorely in need of speeding 
 up on system and efficiency, to co-ordinate its 
 internal force by a proper and adequate 
 union of man-power and natural advantages. 
 
 It is no idle statement to assert that the 
 waste in time, natural resources and lack of 
 scientific methods, of which the country is 
 
 47 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 guilty each year, is enormous, and far more 
 than we actually create in new value. 
 
 The Life Insurance business, because of 
 the newness and peculiar nature of the work, 
 has been conspicuous in its hit-or-miss meth- 
 ods in field work. The commission method 
 of remuneration was not conducive to the 
 control of agents along efficiency lines. But 
 wherever an individual for himself, or a com- 
 pany or manager, laid down time-accounta- 
 bility and reporting system along lines por- 
 trayed by the blank as printed on the oppo- 
 site page, better and increased results have 
 been realized. 
 
 During the last decade, the business has 
 been revolutionized and is constantly moving 
 to a higher level by the incorporating of sys- 
 tem and efficiency plans, and in instructing 
 the agent how to best employ his time. 
 
 In a real, up-to-date agency organization, 
 the manager makes it his business to know 
 when and how his associates start each day's 
 work, and just how they apply their activ- 
 ities during the day. Where a large number 
 
 48 
 
AGENT'S WEEKLY REPORT 
 
 The record of my work for week ending month 
 
 day year is given below: 
 
 I made .... return calls on Monday, .... Tuesday -, 
 
 Wednesday, Thursday, , 
 
 Friday, Saturday. 
 
 I made new calls on Monday, Tuesday, 
 
 Wednesday, Thursday, 
 
 Friday, Saturday. 
 
 I wrote applications, amounting to $ 
 
 insurance, of which $...... were Endowment, 
 
 $ Limited Payment Life, $ 
 
 Ordinary Life, and $ Term. 
 
 The Premiums for the week amounted to $...... 
 
 of which $ is Cash settlement and $ 
 
 Time settlement. 
 I have new premiums over-due amounting 
 
 to$ 
 
 / have. . . .renewal premiums over-due amounting 
 
 to$ 
 
 7 turned in during the week with those accompany- 
 ing this report a total of. . . .new records giving 
 
 age and date of birth. 
 Remarks . 
 
 Signed Agent. 
 
 (The office will be glad to have the Agent make any special 
 comment under "Remarks" which he may deem of assistance 
 to me in arriving at a comprehensive understanding of his work. 
 4 49 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 of men is congregated in one civic center, 
 they are, in some instances, and should be in 
 all, made to report at the office in the morn- 
 ing, just as the office employees. The gath- 
 ering in this manner, at an early hour, as a 
 morning identification with their real job in 
 life and their co-workers, gives a much 
 greater impetus for the day, and is more 
 business-like than to start off in an aimless 
 way, like a curbstone operator. 
 
 In this matter of system and efficiency, 
 too few connect the words, or that which 
 they imply, with results and accomplishment. 
 Any system or efficiency method which an 
 individual applies to himself, but which does 
 not raise him to a higher level in elimination 
 of lost motion and increased results, is the 
 wrong method, or there is something out of 
 joint with the individual. Frequently both 
 the plan and the individual are wrong, and 
 this is where the general agent or salesman- 
 ager comes in. 
 
 Notwithstanding the assertion made in 
 the opening of this chapter, it is true that 
 
 50 
 
SYSTEM AND EFFICIENCY 
 
 many overdo the application of system. In 
 such cases, system ceases to be efficiency. 
 Efficiency, in the Life Insurance business, is 
 systematic conduct of one's work in looking 
 after detail, employment of time and appli- 
 cation of energy. The injection of too much 
 detail means waste of time and misapplied 
 energy. Much can be drawn from the 
 " Key " appearing on page 52. 
 
 The statement has been made, in a previ- 
 ous chapter, that Life Insurance is in a twi- 
 light zone between a profession and ordinary 
 business. This is literally true, and because 
 of this fact, the successful operation of the 
 business calls for more than ordinary mind 
 development or mental efficiency. 
 
 The most capable producers and managers 
 are fairly agreed upon the absolute necessity 
 of time-accountability, systematic plans of 
 work, training for efficiency, and a much 
 wider diffusion of rules and instructions in 
 the realization of more directly applied 
 energy and results. 
 
 However, in the last analysis, they recog- 
 
 51 
 
SUCCESS 
 
 You can make 
 changes in your 
 work that will add 
 to your efficiency 
 and increase your 
 
 In getting off a 
 street car push the 
 button and then 
 walk to the rear 
 platform and push 
 it again to cinch the 
 car's stopping. 
 
 Most men only 
 push the button 
 once. Think this 
 over. Make sure in 
 
 each thing. 
 
 Be TTtorougJt. 
 
 Most men leave 
 the things undone 
 that impress the 
 other fellow the 
 most, or only do 
 half enough of what 
 they do. 
 
 Be strong on the 
 return. The re- 
 bounding force is 
 what makes you 
 plough through. 
 
 Ent husias m' 
 makes you arrive. 
 
SYSTEM AND EFFICIENCY 
 
 nize and acknowledge that what an agent 
 carries in his mind each day, which impels 
 him to action, in both the small and large 
 things, is of vastly more importance than all 
 the card systems and other memoranda 
 human ingenuity can devise. The mind, that 
 eternal structure for God's greatest handi- 
 work, is the all-powerful instrument for 
 greater system and efficiency in the business 
 of Life Insurance. The agent needs to cul- 
 tivate his mind, in and out of business, keep- 
 ing always a close association of this develop- 
 ment with the obtaining of increased results, 
 or, what is better, more expert and adequate 
 service to patrons. 
 
 It is not the purpose here to lay down any 
 prescribed plan for success. Such details as 
 " route work," ' joint work," and class and 
 individuals upon whom one should call, are 
 matters to be worked out by the individual 
 and his company or organization. 
 
 Agents, to become properly systematic 
 and efficient, should have a self-inaugurated 
 plan laid out to concentrate and not scatter 
 
 53 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 or dissipate their energy, and should ever 
 work to a higher level, not only in the qual- 
 ity of service which they render, but in grow- 
 ing to increased production, remembering 
 always that the way to grow to big things is 
 not to neglect the small ones on the way. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE STANDARDIZED REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 IT is not sufficient that the agent be actu- 
 ated by honorable motives, but, coupled with 
 high purposes there must be sound reason- 
 ing, founded on a careful study of Life In- 
 surance as applied to business and social 
 economics. 
 
 Life Insurance, considered from a true 
 perspective, is conservation of human life 
 the offset to man's earning power. Those 
 who carry its message to the people are en- 
 gaged in an important work. 
 
 The selling of a Life Insurance policy, 
 under proper conditions, is not merely col- 
 lecting a premium or obtaining a signature. 
 These things are important incidents to the 
 transaction, but they should be accompanied 
 by a service predicated entirely on conditions 
 that are best adapted to the signer and payer. 
 
 To have the sale of a Life Insurance policy 
 
 55 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 accompanied by such suggestions, recom- 
 mendations and control as will conform to 
 the principles laid down, requires a standard- 
 ized representative. 
 
 A standardized representative is one who 
 has embraced the Life Insurance business, 
 specializing in that one vocation. He is one 
 who serves an apprenticeship and builds, 
 by study and hard work, to the point of 
 knowledge and experience where he will be 
 equipped to guide and serve each individual 
 for the latter' s best interests, considered 
 singly and in relation to general principles 
 of economics. 
 
 The Life Insurance agent meets with all 
 classes of people. He must be acquainted 
 with the foibles of people up and down the 
 social and business scale. It is his proper 
 function to guide and control people, indi- 
 vidually and in groups. If sales are obtained 
 by tricky, bull-dozing or begging methods, 
 the transactions are not healthy ones, the 
 agent is an undesirable representative or citi- 
 zen, and his life is short. If people are im- 
 
 56 
 
STANDARDIZED REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 pelled to embrace the benefits of Life Insur- 
 ance through a method of guidance and 
 they need to be guided, and should be im- 
 pelled, or even compelled to act by a superior 
 understanding and finesse wholesome and 
 cumulative results follow. Such transactions 
 can only be the work of a standardized 
 representative. 
 
 Existing laws for appointing, and the 
 practice of companies and managers in se- 
 lecting agents, have permitted an undue 
 number of agents who are unfitted, in mental 
 equipment and training, to engage in the 
 business. 
 
 There are two important conclusions to be 
 drawn from the foregoing statement. In the 
 first place, laws should be enacted which lay 
 down an educational standard for those who 
 engage in so important a work as the busi- 
 ness of Life Insurance, and, secondly, only 
 the very highest standards should be applied 
 and maintained in the selection and training 
 of agents. 
 
 Incident to these things is the fact that 
 
 57 
 
ntage 
 Renew 
 ersion 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 3 5 o 1 
 U ^ nS ^ 
 
 00 OS O 
 
I 
 
 II 
 
 s a 
 
 S-g 
 
 <u o 
 
 59 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 it is highly incumbent upon educational in- 
 stitutions a duty they owe the public sup- 
 porting them that all such institutions make 
 a wider diffusion of the principles and prac- 
 tices of Life Insurance an important part 
 of their programs. 
 
 Furthermore, there is great need, and 
 abundant opportunity for substituting the 
 standardized representatives for the riff-raff 
 already engaged in the work, and, while the 
 insurance in force looms large, in black-and- 
 white figures, the amount as sold is only a 
 small percentage of the actual protection 
 that could, and should, be carried by the 
 people of the United States and Canada. 
 
 The evolution of the Life Insurance agent 
 during the last generation, and especially 
 the last decade, is both interesting and re- 
 markable. Those who are acquainted with 
 conditions thirty and forty years ago, and 
 even some who know rural conditions to- 
 day, are familiar with the country lawyer, 
 with his " Three-ninety " office equipment, 
 and the doctor, with his rusty instruments, 
 not even fit for operating upon a pig. 
 
 60 
 
STANDARDIZED REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 To-day, even in the most remote com- 
 munities, there is found the keen country 
 lawyer, in his neat, book-lined office, and 
 this lawyer gets the best business in his com- 
 munity, and reaches out into surrounding 
 territory. 
 
 His competitor, with the " Three-ninety " 
 office equipment, and real estate, fire insur- 
 ance, life insurance, job-lot aspect of his 
 office, is city justice, and probably wears a 
 celluloid collar. 
 
 In like manner, the physician of the new 
 school living in a rural community has an 
 up-to-date office, and is equipped to serve 
 humanity with neither rusty instruments nor 
 dusty mind. This physician, like the lawyer, 
 is consulted in all important and critical cases 
 in his immediate community, and each year 
 draws a circle of greater circumference in 
 extending his more modern practice and 
 service. 
 
 The evolution of the Life Insurance agent 
 is in the same direction. A wonderful ad- 
 vancement has been effected in recent years. 
 
 61 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 The reorganization and standardization is 
 going forward with each succeeding year. 
 
 The Life Insurance agent of the right sort 
 a much abused individual has a place, 
 and a very important one, in the world's 
 work. His services, given to the policy- 
 holder by personal contact in the field, are 
 almost as necessary as the business itself. 
 
 Religion, medicine, laws, education and 
 banking, as great principles, have little force 
 without the ministering angels and master- 
 minds, representing these great callings, 
 dotted over the world in close contact with 
 the people. 
 
 Life Insurance is an absolute analogy in 
 logic, and has been so proven in practice in 
 most of the enlightened countries. Wher- 
 ever the business has been attempted with- 
 out the representative in the field, no results 
 worth while to the people have been attained, 
 and where the non-standardized representa- 
 tive, or the weak, unreliable agent has pre- 
 vailed, only inadequate results and poor ser- 
 vice have been the outcome. 
 
 62 
 
STANDARDIZED REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 In the two succeeding chapters it will be 
 seen that there is ample opportunity for the 
 standardized agent to advance to official and 
 managerial positions. However, with the 
 broadening of the protective features of Life 
 Insurance, in touching the people from so 
 many different angles, in the home or busi- 
 ness, there is not much advancement, if any, 
 over the place of the standardized representa- 
 tive in the field, in attainment of prestige, 
 profit or service. 
 
 Finally, it should be borne in mind by the 
 individual at the threshold of his life's work 
 whether college graduate or otherwise 
 that to become a standardized representative 
 in Life Insurance there is not just the op- 
 portunity, nor the necessity, but the abso- 
 lute demand that such individual broaden his 
 mind, by reading standard literature, and 
 otherwise liberally indulging in self -culture, 
 in storing information in regard to industrial, 
 economic and sociological conditions, to- 
 gether with a wide fund of knowledge about 
 the Life Insurance business itself. 
 
 63 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GENERAL, AGENCY on ORGANIZATION 
 METHODS 
 
 AT a meeting of agents in a large Eastern 
 city not many years ago, a General Agent, 
 whose Organization had adopted somewhat 
 advanced methods, was asked: " Where did 
 you get your ideas on Agency building? " 
 He said, in replying, " Before I became Gen- 
 eral Agent I worked for two others, and 
 whenever I am confronted by a knotty prob- 
 lem, I try to remember what they did, and 
 then do exactly the opposite." 
 
 Dotted over the country, there are a goodly 
 number of Agency Organizations that have 
 incorporated system and efficiency methods 
 into their business to such a degree as to 
 make some of them almost models. How- 
 ever, all over the territory there is more than 
 abundant opportunity for exercising prac- 
 tical ideas and imaginative genius, in Organ- 
 
 64 
 
GENERAL AGENCY METHODS 
 
 ization building, in methods of selection and 
 training of agents, departmentizing, and the 
 scientific arrangement of office floor plan. 
 
 This chapter of the book is difficult be- 
 cause of the different plans under which com- 
 panies operate in the field. Some companies 
 operate under the General Agency plan, put- 
 ting a man in control of the field on a com- 
 mission basis, with very broad discretionary 
 powers so long as he conforms to right stand- 
 ards and the rules of the company. Others 
 place salaried managers in control of states 
 or districts, without any commission compen- 
 sation whatever. Then some companies have 
 a manager who is on a salaried basis and 
 whose duties and restrictions are more akin 
 to an exclusive salaried representative, but 
 who is allowed a commission, under certain 
 conditions, and a bonus for business written 
 by his entire organization. 
 
 As a still further handicap in adequately 
 covering the situation, there is a very wide 
 line of difference between companies in the 
 amount of territory given to a General 
 
 5 65 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 Agent, or salaried manager to supervise. 
 Naturally, the same broad business policy 
 which should dominate an organization con- 
 trolling a large civic centre, or a large ter- 
 ritory, would be like Lincoln's monkey- 
 weighed down with too much tail for an 
 organization controlling only a small city or 
 limited rural district. 
 
 It is the purpose to visualize what is prac- 
 tical in a good-sized organization, to show 
 the business-building possibilities for an in- 
 dividual with ambition and a constructive 
 mind. The natural presumption is that a 
 man will not be given a managerial position 
 until he has learned methods of system and 
 efficiency and become a standardized repre- 
 sentative, as outlined in the two preceding 
 chapters. If a man is starting in the retail 
 or wholesale trade, or undertaking a manu- 
 facturing proposition, he first gets a plant 
 or building in which to operate. So the first 
 thing necessary for a manager is an office; 
 an office scientifically arranged, with a proper 
 
f\ 
 
 n 
 
GENERAL AGENCY METHODS 
 
 floor plan for the best convenience of cus- 
 tomers and the health and efficiency of 
 employees. 
 
 The diagram of the floor plan of a real 
 office, given on the accompanying insert, 
 shows a very practical arrangement of three 
 thousand and fifty square feet. 
 
 The arrangement and equipment of an 
 office, in behalf of the public, agents, de- 
 partment heads and clerks, is very important. 
 Both have been much neglected It is not 
 necessary to be extravagant to conform to 
 an arrangement which is both practical and 
 attractive. Neither must an office be very 
 large, or as large as the one here illustrated, 
 to avoid the appearance of a hodge-podge 
 arrangement. 
 
 It is necessary, in Organization building, 
 to have agents. That is the main purpose 
 of a manager or General Agent's position. 
 Selecting men, therefore, is the all-impor- 
 tant thing, because they not only build the 
 business, but are the ones who are nearest 
 the public, to protect and give them service. 
 
 67 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 If the secret of selecting men were known, 
 and could be copyrighted and sold, the pos- 
 sessor of the secret would have John D. 
 Rockefeller and Copper King Clarke look- 
 ing like door-step beggars. It is not know- 
 ing who to hire and who to fire, or when to 
 hire and when to fire, that is the cause of 
 great worriment, not only in the Life Insur- 
 ance business, but in every other line. 
 
 If a General Agent has really earned his 
 job, he is a very good judge of human nature, 
 up to~a certain point. He knows, by a lib- 
 eral knowledge and use of psychology, and a 
 limited knowledge and use of phrenology, 
 how to size up men. As to their immediate 
 thoughts and disposition, he is an adept, but 
 he has not acquired occult power which will 
 enable him to look forward to next week, 
 next month, next year or the year after, and 
 know, with any degree of certainty, what 
 will then be the " mind slant " of an 
 individual. 
 
 There is probably no test which can be ap- 
 plied with any degree of certainty, and the 
 
 68 
 
GENERAL AGENCY METHODS 
 
 only formula worth giving, if any be at all 
 worth while, is the ordinary admonition that 
 men should be selected to engage in the Life 
 Insurance business by a limited phrenological 
 test, in observing the shape of their head, 
 ears, neck and contour of features. Men 
 should never be employed unless they pos- 
 sess industrious, gentlemanly qualities, and 
 indicate a strong leaning toward the business. 
 
 Agents, who give promise of conforming 
 to the standards and suggestions contained 
 in the five preceding chapters of this book, 
 should be employed that is, because they see 
 an opportunity, are fit to begin, enter at 
 the right time and in the right way, and give 
 promise, by exercising constructive salesman- 
 ship, and by system and efficiency, of be- 
 coming standardized representatives. 
 
 It is absolutely necessary to inculcate in 
 agents the idea of service, or the altruistic- 
 side of the business that an individual can- 
 not take more out of a thing than he puts 
 into it, in honest, manly effort. 
 
 69 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 Agents should be thoroughly equipped to 
 judge properly in giving each policyholder 
 the right policy, best suited to the client's 
 needs. It should be borne in mind that some 
 agents work better in pairs, and that some 
 should, or should not do " route " work (that 
 is, work by prescribed rule in canvassing a 
 district, or building) . 
 
 All agents should be held to a reporting 
 system, after some such fashion as illustrated 
 by the blank in Chapter IV, page 49. All 
 should be held to strict accountability in the 
 matter of time. This does not mean that the 
 freedom which the business gives should be 
 taken away. It means that there should be 
 such time of arriving at the office in the morn- 
 ing, and accountability during the day, as 
 is necessary to attain success and give the im- 
 pression to associates and clients of business- 
 like standards. 
 
 Agents must be taught their responsibility 
 in regard to both clients and company in 
 the collection of premiums ; that their obliga- 
 tion is just as great to the policyholders and 
 
 70 
 
GENERAL AGENCY METHODS 
 
 companies in future premiums as in the first 
 one. 
 
 Their fiduciary responsibility is great, and 
 in all cases moneys received from policy- 
 holders should be kept entirely separate from 
 personal funds. Above all things, they 
 should be taught the iniquity of rebating; 
 that they can only conform to moral stand- 
 ards and legal enactment by an absolute ad- 
 herence to the practice of collecting full 
 premiums, to the last cent, in every single 
 transaction. 
 
 Rebating has the same effect upon the effi- 
 ciency of the agent as an immoderate use of 
 liquor. He may be inspired momentarily 
 by success, thus disreputably attained, but he 
 suffers reaction in proportion. He soon is 
 incapable of attempting a difficult transac- 
 tion without the use of this false stimulant, 
 and finally is incapable of doing anything 
 creditable to his calling. No matter what a 
 man's views may be as to the use of liquor, 
 if he is honest with himself, he knows that the 
 
 last thing he should attempt is an important 
 
 71 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 transaction when using it in any form. Also, 
 that a hard, effective day's work can never be 
 performed after a night of the bowl. So, 
 whatever the rebater's moral obliquity, or his 
 disregard of law or the interests of his client, 
 he is simply digging his own grave. It is 
 impossible for anyone to rebate in Life In- 
 surance and not hang himself in the long run. 
 
 The rebater is not a person to be feared 
 in competition any more than a burglar is 
 to be feared at noonday. He moves stealthily 
 and in the dark, and has no chance with a 
 man who works in the open. His days are 
 numbered, just as are the days of every dis- 
 honest man. 
 
 Reflect upon the scope of the dishonesty 
 of a rebater. The poor drunkard, who saps 
 his vitality by drink, in a sense only injures 
 himself. The rebater in Life Insurance in- 
 jures himself, his competitors, trails the 
 business of Life Insurance in the mire, de- 
 bauches his client, making him a lawbreaker, 
 and jeopardizes the validity of the insurance 
 he sells. 
 
 72 
 
GENERAL AGENCY METHODS 
 
 The taker of a rebate is equally culpable 
 with the giver, under the moral law, and is so 
 regarded in most states by statute. It is 
 only in a very exceptional case that an agent 
 cannot show a client his moral and legal re- 
 sponsibilities in seeking, or accepting a re- 
 bate, because the vast majority of men want 
 to do the right thing from the standpoint of 
 law and moral standards, and they are all 
 afraid of anything that clouds the title of 
 their insurance. 
 
 The departmentizing of a field organiza- 
 tion has great possibilities in adding to the 
 growth and development of the whole, and 
 each individual agent, by in some measure 
 following the diagram shown in frontispiece. 
 The executive needs a corps of assistants who 
 are capable and alert, through whom, or with 
 whom, he directs and serves the various de- 
 partment heads and those in the agency 
 proper. They all create business, with re- 
 sults to the public and themselves, as shown 
 by diagram. 
 
 The suggestion in regard to departments 
 
 73 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 is, of course, too comprehensive for small 
 organizations, but is a goal toward which 
 all should work. An organization should be 
 so departmentized that no class of people, 
 from the common laborer to the skilled ar- 
 tisan, or the humblest clerk to the general 
 manager, or leading professional men, will 
 be neglected. 
 
 Department heads shoulpl, of course, be 
 selected because of their familiarity, by ex- 
 perience in real life or in insurance work, 
 with the class of people toward whom their 
 activities are to be directed. Departmentiz- 
 ing is comparatively new in agency-building, 
 but, in service to the public and in training 
 of agents, is successful wherever tried, and 
 is sure to be incorporated more and more with 
 each advancing year. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOME SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE LIFE INSURANCE 
 BUSINESS 
 
 IN the United States, where Life Insur- 
 ance has attained its greatest growth and 
 usefulness, the business is comparatively new. 
 The first regular company was incorporated 
 in 1835, but no real business was transacted 
 by any company until 1843. While most of 
 the older and larger companies now doing 
 business in the country were organized in the 
 next twenty years, the real growth has been 
 in the last half-century. 
 
 The slow growth at the start was due to 
 lack of public trust and understanding, and 
 unscientific methods in field work, together 
 with conditions in, and following the panics 
 of, 1870 and 1893. 
 
 There was, as well, internal, company 
 weaknesses not in any sense due to the lack 
 
 of stability of Legal Reserve Life Insurance 
 
 75 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 most of which are now eradicated, and the 
 nature and causes of which it is not the pur- 
 pose or province of this book to discuss. 
 
 During the last generation, especially the 
 latter half thereof, Life Insurance has taken 
 its true place in the sun of business affairs. 
 
 In several instances, Life Insurance has 
 been referred to as the conservation of human 
 life. In this regard, it has not been properly 
 presented to the public until more recent 
 years. 
 
 The conservation of human life is a con- 
 servation problem of great magnitude, and 
 Life Insurance is the most important angle 
 of life conservation. It should be borne in 
 mind that an individual is, in reality, only 
 a human machine, and a frail one at that, 
 and as such has a definite, but perishable 
 value which must be insured against loss by 
 death or wearing out in old age. 
 
 A better visualization in the minds of the 
 public and its representatives, is not alone 
 responsible for the greater growth and de- 
 velopment in the United States. This is 
 
 76 
 
SIDE-LIGHTS ON LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 proven by the fact that in Canada, where, 
 on a smaller scale, business, in geographic 
 extent and in other ways, is conducted more 
 as it is in this country, one finds Life Insur- 
 ance developing proportionately as on this 
 side of the border. 
 
 The United States is made up very largely 
 of a free-thinking, individualistic class. Both 
 here and in Canada, the greatly extended 
 territorial conditions and enormous resources, 
 with the resultant development and multi- 
 plication of fortunes and business enterprises, 
 and necessary credits and hazards, naturally 
 demand more Life Insurance than in older 
 and more compact countries. The virility 
 of the two classes of people carrying for- 
 ward any worthy enterprise is no small fac- 
 tor, but the reasons are fundamental and not 
 superficial. 
 
 It will be interesting, therefore, to note 
 if there is not an increase in the sale of Life 
 Insurance following the present war, in re- 
 habilitating and business-building in those 
 countries engaged in the conflict. 
 
 77 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 The building of a Life Insurance com- 
 pany, or the great fabric of Life Insurance, 
 as exemplified in many standard companies, 
 is an interesting study. With a large army 
 of agents gathering clients and premiums 
 from every city, hamlet and countryside, 
 there are created small rivulets, streams and 
 rivers of liquid capital, flowing into a mighty 
 ocean of never-evaporating funds, which are 
 re-distributed whenever and wherever most 
 needed. 
 
 Even in times of extreme panic, when 
 other financial institutions have been com- 
 pelled to lie down, Life Insurance assets have 
 remained liquidable. Some of the small rivu- 
 lets ceased to exist, because of the financial 
 drought, but the big streams and rivers never 
 ceased to flow. 
 
 The writing of what is commonly called 
 " Business Life Insurance " has reached the 
 stage of an established practice in the last 
 decade. This means the insuring of the 
 active one, or ones, in a business those who 
 exercise the driving power and give a busi- 
 
 78 
 
SIDE-LIGHTS ON LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 ness its vital forces the policies being pay- 
 able to the concern, which pays the premiums. 
 
 A policy of this nature, which matures by 
 the death of the insured, or on his attaining 
 a certain age, is a valuable asset in business 
 because the money paid into the business, in 
 either case, represents a transfer of invest- 
 ment capital to commercial funds a healthy 
 transaction for a business. Moreover, the 
 money may come in time of financial stress 
 when most needed. 
 
 Business men, large and small, all over the 
 United States, are being attracted to the 
 advantages of this modern practice, which 
 is sound from every standpoint. It is a sub- 
 ject which can only be adequately treated in 
 an entire book. 
 
 Life Insurance, in addition to the modern 
 practice just outlined, is constantly meeting 
 the needs of the public in giving more elastic 
 benefits in the way of income or instalment 
 policies, to cover the requirements of both 
 beneficiaries and insured. 
 
 Beyond this, insurance people are rapidly 
 
 79 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 awakening to the fact that Life Insurance 
 is the most practical means whereby employ- 
 ers can create a welfare fund, or indulge 
 in bonus or profit-sharing practices with their 
 employees and their families, from the day 
 laborer to the high-salaried business manager. 
 It is a boon alike to the employer, in solving 
 an important problem, and to the wage 
 earner, in affording a better life for his fam- 
 ily, in the event of his death, or for himself 
 in old age. 
 
 There is only the attempt, in this chap- 
 ter, to give a few salient points in regard to 
 a business which could only be adequately 
 covered in a work as large as the Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica. Agents over the United 
 States, in recent years, have adopted the slo- 
 gan, emblazoned on a button carried quite 
 generally in the lapel of the coat, "The 
 Greatest Thing in the World." Undoubt- 
 edly, in its amelioration of mankind, in the 
 gathering of funds, as herein outlined, and in 
 the method of re-distribution of such funds, 
 Life Insurance is the greatest business insti- 
 tution known to mankind. 
 
 80 
 
SIDE-LIGHTS ON LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 It seems quite unusual, even though there 
 has been some blindness on the part of Life 
 Insurance representatives themselves, at the 
 home office and in the field, that there should 
 still be so much public ignorance and antag- 
 onism toward Life Insurance. 
 
 With the absence of Federal control, which 
 should be the prevailing system in the regu- 
 lation and organization of companies, the 
 multiplicity of state laws results in great 
 handicaps and annoyances to companies and 
 much additional expense to policyholders. In 
 no other single business is there so great and 
 legitimate community of interest of seller, 
 buyer and state. 
 
 Much has been accomplished by insurance 
 interests coming together in a clean, whole- 
 some combination for educating the public, 
 and in the correction and solving of prob- 
 lems common to all. There is still a much 
 greater work to be done along this line. The 
 people, on the other hand, only make it the 
 harder for the insurance interests, and the 
 more expensive for themselves, by remain- 
 
 6 81 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 ing in an attitude of antagonism, or passive 
 co-operation, in permitting excessive taxa- 
 tion laws and other unreasonable statutes, 
 not conforming to standard provisions, to be 
 enacted or remain upon the statute books. 
 
 The people, more than the companies or 
 agents, are interested in the elimination of 
 unnecessary taxation laws. They should co- 
 operate in securing sane laws to prevent the 
 organization of spurious companies, so many 
 of which are allowed, through lax laws and 
 easy-going supervision, to prey upon the 
 public. 
 
 The people are vitally interested in hav- 
 ing each state pass an agency qualification 
 law, requiring an examination on the funda- 
 mentals of Life Insurance before licensing 
 agents. 
 
 Life Insurance is protection for benefici- 
 aries and the old age of the insured. Policies 
 should not be sold or mortgaged. The people 
 should recognize that their interests suffer 
 by not keeping policies in force, and should 
 co-operate with agents to reduce the large 
 
 82 
 
SIDE-LIGHTS ON LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 ratio of lapses. Reducing the number of 
 policies that are sold for cash, or mortgaged, 
 means more protection and cheaper insur- 
 ance for the policyholders. 
 
 Life Insurance is most important to all 
 classes of people because it permits them, 
 under a safe and practical plan of co-opera- 
 tion, through money earned from the sweat 
 of their own brows, to indemnify themselves 
 against the known and unknown hazards in- 
 cident to death and old age, thus allowing 
 them to be independent of any charitable or 
 paternalistic institution. 
 
 Mention has been made of the fact that 
 Life Insurance is an under-done, rather than 
 over-done, business, as some are prone to 
 think. There are ample statistics and figures 
 to prove the assertion that the business is 
 only in its infancy, and that the amount of 
 protection actually carried by the people is 
 totally inadequate, but the decision of the 
 author to abstain from the use of figures and 
 dry statistics will not be broken down here. 
 
 However, some very easily understood 
 
 83 
 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 comparisons will serve the reader's purpose. 
 The total amount of sound Life Insurance 
 carried in the United States does not reach a 
 grand total of twice the value of the agri- 
 cultural output of the year 1916. If all 
 policies in force fell due at this date, January, 
 1917, the total amount paid to policyholders 
 would not pay the wages of all classes for the 
 year 1917. 
 
 The total assets of all companies, at the 
 close of 1916, are about equal to the value 
 of the animal production of the country 
 during 1916. The total assets, at the close 
 of 1916, are less than the value of manufac- 
 tured products of the year, after deducting 
 the cost of production. The amount paid to 
 policyholders for the same year is not far in 
 advance of the value of the potato crop, and 
 the hay crop for 1916 will have a total worth 
 of nearly twice the amount paid to policy- 
 holders. 
 
 When it is reflected that a wage earner 
 should carry an amount of Life Insurance 
 representing, to a fair degree, his present 
 
 84 
 
SIDE-LIGHTS ON LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 worth, the pronouncement here made, as to 
 the inadequacy of protection carried, is easily 
 shown to be in accordance with fact, not- 
 withstanding that a consultation of the 
 records will show figures difficult for the 
 ordinary mind to grasp. 
 
 However, the United States is a wealthy 
 nation, grown to the billion dollar figures, 
 with incomes considered now as meagre which 
 a generation, or indeed a decade, ago were 
 thought ample or even fabulous. 
 
 At any rate, the amount of sound Life In- 
 surance carried is only a small percentage of 
 what the whole should be, and is inadequate, 
 considering the property value of the insur- 
 able lives. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DOES IT PAY TO ADVERTISE? 
 
 IT is the purpose of this book to deal with 
 the development of a Life Insurance agent 
 in his individual capacity. 
 
 In discussing the subject of advertising, 
 what constitutes advertising and the evolu- 
 tion of advertising for the individual should 
 be the lines followed. 
 
 The first step in advertising, for a Life 
 Insurance agent, is the establishment of a 
 well-ordered plan of publicity through his 
 own personality, in gaining the favor of those 
 with whom he comes in contact. 
 
 Word of mouth and shoe leather are con- 
 veyances for the beginner. This does not 
 mean walking about in an aimless way and 
 acquiring the reputation of being loquacious. 
 It has been pointed out, in a previous chap- 
 ter, that an agent should know when to talk 
 and when not to talk. 
 
 86 
 
DOES IT PAY TO ADVERTISE? 
 
 However, the new recruit must indulge 
 in a liberal amount of shoe leather, and in- 
 terview a large number of people in such 
 manner as will draw those interviewed to him, 
 and compel them to be interested in him, and 
 the thing he is doing. 
 
 It is hard to decide where to start and 
 where to stop in the matter of personal ad- 
 vertising or publicity through the personal 
 equation, in connection with attending social 
 functions and joining clubs and societies. 
 
 It is a matter of common knowledge that 
 many agents depress their worth by over- 
 doing both the social and club side. It is a 
 safe rule to follow that where one would not 
 otherwise be welcome, it i& folly to seek 
 admittance for business motives. 
 
 It is almost equally hazardous, among 
 natural associations and affiliations, to push 
 one's business, in any calling, and made the 
 more risky in the Life Insurance business 
 because of the actual prejudice or aloofness 
 towards its representatives. 
 
 Therefore, the Life Insurance agent has 
 
 87 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 a natural handicap which can only be over- 
 come by a superior, or more subtle, method 
 of approach. 
 
 The law of compensation, however, which 
 is undoubtedly very just in all things, works 
 in all lives to the advantage of the individual 
 who recognizes this condition, and properly 
 deports himself when engaged in actual 
 work, or in meeting with people socially. 
 
 The things that a man does when at busi- 
 ness, during business hours, are far more im- 
 portant in business-building than those he 
 may do, or attempt to do, outside of busi- 
 ness. It is the intention to convey the idea 
 that an agent, by active, earnest endeavor, 
 should put himself in the very best relation 
 with those with whom he comes in contact, 
 at all times, but more especially in a busi- 
 ness way, during the business day. 
 
 Any advantage to accrue from the social 
 side should, and must, of necessity, be some- 
 thing acquired as a result of a slow growth 
 and development, by never intruding beyond 
 natural limitations and because of a gradual 
 
 88 
 
DOES IT PAY TO ADVERTISE? 
 
 realization, on the part of those with whom 
 he comes in contact, that he has the good 
 sense and breeding to leave his business for 
 discussion at opportune times and fitting 
 places. 
 
 Acquaintanceship through social contact is 
 not valuable unless allowed to take ample 
 time for measuring one's worth and ability. 
 
 Furthermore, as an individual advances in 
 his life's work, there comes a realization that 
 it is far more satisfactory to be entirely inde- 
 pendent socially, and to seek only those asso- 
 ciations that are congenial, thus avoiding the 
 expense and weariness of exacting social 
 duties. 
 
 However, the important thing is that the 
 agent, in his initial work, must, through the 
 personal equation, accomplish the first step 
 in advertising by getting in the right rela- 
 tion with his immediate public. When this 
 situation has been established, and a consecu- 
 tive, paying business realized, the use of 
 printers' ink should be started. 
 
 It is not necessary to enlarge upon the 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 value of the rightful use of printers' ink 
 in advertising. The judicious, scientific use 
 of printers' ink is the best known means of 
 business-building, and as such is used by in- 
 dividuals, corporations, and even nations, 
 practically everywhere on the civilized globe. 
 
 The business of advertising has become a 
 wonderful institution in the United States, 
 and has become, through its representatives, 
 a potent factor in the growth and economy of 
 marketing various commodities. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing, it has played 
 an important part in standardization and a 
 resultant elimination of fraud and deceit in 
 business. 
 
 A partial step has been made, with very 
 satisfactory results, by agents combining in 
 a non-partisan or institutional advertising 
 campaign, to educate the public on the prin- 
 ciples and practices of Life Insurance. 
 
 Wherever this has been introduced, the 
 agents have found that they were working 
 in a better prepared field, in their individual 
 solicitation and in their own publicity cam- 
 paigns. 
 
 90 
 
DOES IT PAY TO ADVERTISE? 
 
 Undoubtedly the time will come when all 
 standard companies and agents will combine, 
 under some master-institutional campaign in 
 the use of printers' ink, because such action 
 is sure to create a more intelligent public 
 opinion and eliminate waste problems com- 
 mon to all companies. It will bring about 
 a more desirable community of interest be- 
 tween those three important factors to all 
 world problems the State, the Public and 
 the Institution. 
 
 Predicated upon experience, the absolute 
 assertion can be made that it does pay for 
 the agent to advertise through the personal 
 equation; then as an individual agent, by 
 the use of printers' ink ; or as a manager, in 
 a broader way ; and, finally, under some col- 
 lective or co-operative plan with competing 
 companies or agents but, it must be remem- 
 bered, in any campaign of advertising, one 
 must learn to walk before trying to run, and 
 it is necessary to have ammunition and range 
 before firing a gun of large calibre. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE WOMAN IN LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 IT is useless to theorize and sentimentalize 
 in raising objections to women in business, 
 and in their taking a place wherever in the 
 world's work their desires or necessities may 
 lead them. This does not mean that it should 
 not tear men's heartstrings and give them 
 a feeling of shame to see, in the early hours 
 of morning and the late ones of night, women 
 and girls, careworn and haggard, jostling 
 with men for place or seats all too fre- 
 quently standing room in a street car going 
 to and from the hardships of active business 
 life. 
 
 Two classes of men are responsible for 
 women now bearing the relation to business 
 and public affairs expressed in the opening 
 sentences of this chapter. The selfish ones 
 who never look after anyone but themselves, 
 and who literally drive women to work be- 
 
 92 
 
WOMAN IN LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 cause of their brutal habits or disposition; 
 and the ones who, from complacency or in- 
 capacity, fail to supply adequate support 
 and protection. Usually, wherever unkind 
 statements are heard about " skirts " in busi- 
 ness, they will be found to emanate from 
 one of these classes of men. 
 
 Hard and irreconcilable as it is to con- 
 template a woman's canvassing, she never- 
 theless has a place in the field, and women 
 agents are increasing at present with a 
 considerable degree of rapidity. Compara- 
 tively few canvass men, but some do almost 
 entirely, and with creditable success. 
 
 Without comment as to the present, or 
 predictions for the future, it is sufficient to 
 leave this phase of the question to the ca- 
 pabilities and inclinations of the individual 
 woman who engages in the work. 
 
 Women have a real place as Life Insur- 
 ance agents in writing policies for their own 
 sex. The insuring of women of all classes 
 and conditions is a very necessary part of 
 the Life Insurance business, and is made 
 
 93 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 more practical by the work of women agents. 
 
 It is superfluous to enumerate the classes 
 of women that should insure, because it is 
 just as necessary and practical for all those 
 who are engaged in gainful occupations, 
 financial women or wage earners from the 
 highest to the lowest, to insure as it is for 
 men of every class. It is not so much of 
 an axiom that housewives should insure, with- 
 out more careful analysis. 
 
 Among the great rank and file, it is crim- 
 inal for men not to be adequately insured, 
 and almost as bad for the women not to 
 carry Life Insurance protection also. Even 
 rich married women should take insurance 
 as a means of better directing the future 
 care of their loved ones, or the disposition 
 of their estates. 
 
 The wife is a partner in every household, 
 with responsibilities resting upon her shoul- 
 ders just as great, and often greater than 
 those carried by the husband. The loss, by 
 death, of her property value and tender su- 
 pervision, has meant disruption and result- 
 
 94 
 
WOMAN IN LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 ant pauperism and suffering in countless 
 homes. In all such cases, had Life Insur- 
 ance protection been carried, the evils result- 
 ing from the death of the home keeper would 
 have been greatly minimized. 
 
 There are several women's departments of 
 large agencies, and a few agencies employ- 
 ing only women agents, and writing women 
 risks exclusively, that are making marked 
 successes. There is ample proof and experi- 
 ence to back the evidence that the insuring 
 of women by women is a business of large 
 proportions considered in its national aspect. 
 
 No special rules are applicable to this large 
 branch of the business of Life Insurance. 
 The same rules of conduct, methods and effi- 
 ciency measures apply as in the case of the 
 regular agents. It is a great work, to be 
 conducted in the ordinary practical ways. It 
 offers splendid opportunity as a means of 
 livelihood for women who will undertake the 
 work along lines suggested in the chapters 
 of this book, with the aid of other material 
 and training, of which there is an abundance 
 
 95 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 for all purposes. A woman, just as a man, 
 should weigh all the pros and cons before 
 going into the work, and then go in to stay. 
 
 It is probably true that women are nat- 
 urally, because of their domestic leanings, 
 more gifted than men in the matter of de- 
 tail. For this reason, the opportunity is 
 great for women in office work in the Life 
 Insurance business. It is a business of in- 
 finite detail. In conducting the affairs of 
 agencies, much opportunity is afforded to 
 increase business and enhance service to 
 policyholders by more prompt, thorough and 
 courteous handling of detail. 
 
 The work of women, in the capacities of 
 assistants, secretaries, clerks, stenographers 
 and cashiers in offices, is playing an impor- 
 tant part in improved conditions. This does 
 not mean that a man should not be efficient 
 in detail or feel an aloofness toward it, and 
 many lose the chance for bigger things be- 
 cause they are not good soldiers in the smaller 
 ones. Everyone in the office should be alert 
 for new business, and in taking best care of 
 
 the old. 
 
 96 
 
WOMAN IN LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 It is not the intention to picture women 
 as mere machines in office work or business 
 management. Some of the most conspicu- 
 ous successes in business life are made not 
 alone with the help, advice and co-operation 
 of a good woman in the home, but with the 
 aid and co-operation of a woman who is an 
 associate in business. Many such exercise 
 executive ability and intuitive judgment of 
 the very highest order, and make for them- 
 selves places of great value. This is true 
 in every line of business, and especially so 
 in Life Insurance. 
 
 Woman's intuitive knowledge or judg- 
 ment is undoubtedly better than man's. It 
 is particularly valuable for a woman, if she 
 can go into business life and assume respon- 
 sibilities and still retain her womanly qual- 
 ities and graciousness of manner. The more 
 she is able to do this, the higher she will 
 rise in her executive or secretarial capacities. 
 
 Genteel consideration for others in busi- 
 ness is a much neglected fundamental; one 
 of the great moral fibres to be injected into 
 
 7 97 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 business is more of the niceties of life. Too 
 many men and women, especially the former, 
 have one set of ethics for the drawing-room 
 and ball-room and another for business life. 
 This country needs to speed up on good man- 
 ners, not just because there are so many 
 women engaged in active affairs, which is a 
 sufficient reason of itself, but because it is 
 good business. 
 
 As pointed out in the opening of this chap- 
 ter, the advent of woman in business is a 
 reality. She should, and does, have a place 
 for her activities in Life Insurance, covering 
 a wide range of duties and accomplishments, 
 and those who are disposed to labor seriously 
 and efficiently should be, and are, welcome 
 in the work. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 RECAPITULATION 
 
 IN summing up the chapters of this book, 
 the sequential order in which the material 
 has been given will not be followed. In fact, 
 so far as the first six chapters are concerned, 
 the order will be exactly reversed. 
 
 In the arrangement of chapters, the idea 
 was to build from opportunity to company, 
 or from the outside to the inside, whereas, 
 in the recapitulation, the company is taken 
 as the fountain-head, which is in accord with 
 the facts, building out to the opportunity. 
 
 The unsophisticated reader should not be 
 misled by any criticism which has been made, 
 and his rightful, wholesome respect for the 
 scientific accuracy of Legal Reserve Life 
 Insurance, and its fundamental stability, 
 should not be weakened. 
 
 Neither should any suggestions as to what 
 might have been in building work, or reforms 
 
 that can be inaugurated in the future, be 
 
 99, 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 construed as carping criticism or antagonis- 
 tic reflections upon home office management. 
 
 The purpose of this book is constructive, 
 not destructive, and any criticism and all as- 
 sertions, pro and con, which have been, or 
 will be, made are dominated by an abiding 
 conviction that only good can accrue in tell- 
 ing the truth, where so much praise is due, 
 and where faults, so superficial in kind, can 
 be easily eradicated if held up to the search- 
 light of public opinion. 
 
 The facts are that the chief exponents of 
 the Legal Reserve system of Life Insurance 
 in the United States and Canada present a 
 record for accomplishment, at the home office 
 and in the field, which compares very favor- 
 ably with, if not excels, that of any set of 
 corporations in the history of organized busi- 
 ness-building. 
 
 The proportion of broad minded, big 
 minded, high minded individuals dominating 
 home office policies, constitutes both a tribute 
 to the institution of Life Insurance and the 
 
 manhood of the two peoples. 
 
 100 
 
RECAPITULATION 
 
 Even to the uninitiated reader, it must 
 be palpable that Life Insurance is a great 
 equalizing force, and in principles and prac- 
 tices thoroughly ingrained in the body-politic 
 of this country. 
 
 It is well said that Life Insurance is or- 
 ganized thrift. Characterizing the business 
 in this manner is not putting it in opposition 
 to other saving or fiduciary institutions. The 
 purposes of Life Insurance and every other 
 fiscal institution, from the Federal Reserve 
 Bank to the smallest cross-roads bank, are 
 identical. The more of all such concerns that 
 serve the people with intelligence and in- 
 tegrity, the better for the people and the 
 country. 
 
 Life Insurance, in its dual capacity of pro- 
 tection and organized thrift, embraces func- 
 tions of service enjoyed by no other insti- 
 tution. 
 
 Then, it should be borne in mind that an 
 individual business, or principle, can have all 
 kinds of merit, and still exert very moderate 
 influence, or none at all, without organiza- 
 tion, co-ordination and push behind it. 
 101 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 Life Insurance companies are permitted 
 to indulge in an educative campaign, collec- 
 tively and separately, through the medium of 
 advertising, and field organizations and indi- 
 vidual agents can do the same thing down to 
 that best and most scientific of all publicity, 
 the individual equation, by personal contact 
 of the single agent in his daily work. 
 
 So we find field organizations endeavoring 
 to select standardized representatives who 
 will work with system and efficiency men 
 who are, or should be, exercising an advanced 
 method of salesmanship, and who have not 
 just " happened " in the business, but who 
 carefully selected it as their vocation, at the 
 right time, in a rational manner, because they 
 saw the opportunity for service, growth and 
 development. 
 
 The more prominent organizations, in 
 order to carry the message of Life Insurance 
 to every class of people, have reduced their 
 operations to a statistical basis, checking each 
 year's production, and showing the number 
 written in each classification here published: 
 
 102 
 
RECAPITULATION 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 
 
 Housewives 
 
 WOMEN 
 
 Salaried 
 
 Business 
 
 ( Protestant ..,( Players 
 Clergymen < _, Al .. Theatrical J _ J 
 
 | Catholic 1 Investors 
 
 Educators 
 
 Physicians 
 
 Lawyers 
 
 Insurance 
 
 Dentists 
 
 Osteopaths 
 
 Railroads 
 
 Grain 
 
 Flour 
 
 Lumber 
 
 Farmers 
 
 Wholesale 
 
 Retail 
 
 Capitalists 
 
 Manufacturers 
 
 Public Officials 
 
 Brokers and Bondsmen 
 
 Bankers 
 
 Real Estate 
 
 Contractors 
 
 Implements 
 
 Automobile 
 
 Engineers 
 
 Miners 
 
 Artisans 
 
 Telegraph 
 
 Telephone 
 
 Minors 
 
 Common laborers 
 
 Miscellaneous 
 
 Systematic checking each year of the work 
 of an agent and entire organization with re- 
 
 103 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 sultant thoroughness in carrying the message 
 of life insurance to every class in a scientific, 
 intensive manner, means better training of 
 agents and enhanced service to the Public. 
 It is organized thrift with a vengeance. 
 
 Life Insurance, Printers' Ink and Trans- 
 portation are the great Public business con- 
 veyances to comfort, enlightenment and 
 progress. Toward all three of these, espe- 
 cially Life Insurance and Railroads, there 
 exist Public ignorance and antagonism to 
 an unreasonable degree. 
 
 Publicity, Education and Corrective 
 measures on the part of Life Insurance, with 
 open minded interest on the part of the Pub- 
 lic, will have a wholesome effect on existing 
 conditions. Insurance interests are moving 
 up grade in broader, saner, more efficient 
 and economical conduct of the business. It 
 is up to the people, especially the younger 
 generation, to do their part in a thorough, 
 open-minded consideration of a subject of 
 such vast importance in its general aspect 
 and as a vocation. Only intellectual con- 
 
 104 
 
RECAPITULATION 
 
 tempt should be accorded one who in a seri- 
 ous mood speaks lightly of sound Life 
 Insurance. 
 
 Finally, the attempt has been made to give 
 a human interest flash-light of Life Insur- 
 ance as a principle; to dress Company offi- 
 cials, and especially agents, in a more attrac- 
 tive garb, and at the same time show real 
 development possible for the agent and what 
 that means to the Public. That there is great 
 opportunity for business-building and ad- 
 vancement for the ones who will respond to 
 the things of conscience and efficiency 
 training. 
 
 The author cannot refrain, after the labor- 
 ious but pleasant hours spent in writing this 
 vocational treatise, from indulging in a part- 
 ing word to those worthy readers who have 
 persevered to the end. 
 
 The nature of a person's vocation is not 
 the all-important thing; it is what one makes 
 of his Life Job that counts, and that means 
 what they put into it and take out of it. 
 
 The efficient life is too commonly regarded 
 
 105 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 as necessary work, and mere money getting 
 instead of a pleasurable pastime in rising to 
 a higher level. The person who does any- 
 thing, no matter how humble or exalted the 
 job, is a poor equation in the World's work 
 unless he sees in daily toil something beyond 
 the immediate crust or bag of gold. 
 
 Success is not just eating three meals a 
 day, paying one's debts, joining a Church, 
 or amassing a fortune. It is so doing and 
 living in beautifying the immediate task, and 
 in touching other souls and lives with sun- 
 shine and inspired endeavor, as will make 
 them enlist in a mighty army of sincere, earn- 
 est, capable workers for that better day when 
 greed, squalor and cruel aggrandizement 
 shall have forever perished from the earth. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE LIFE INSURANCE 
 AGENT AND THE LAYMAN 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE AGENT AND THE LAYMAN 
 
 AT the time when these words are being 
 written there is transpiring the most cruel, 
 destructive war in the history of the world. 
 It requires considerable optimism and pro- 
 phetic vision to look forward to a reasonable 
 fruition of a sane, peaceful, interdependent 
 relation between nations and peoples. How- 
 ever, there would be little in life to make it 
 worth living were we to believe that man, the 
 highest tangible exemplification of the Crea- 
 tor's handiwork, was not moving to a higher 
 level in things of the heart. 
 
 There is a powerful undercurrent of senti- 
 ment and belief, not just by impractical 
 idealists, but in the minds of stalwarts, 
 among the laymen and those high in public 
 life, that there is an interdependent relation 
 to be carried to a higher plane between indi- 
 viduals, businesses and individuals, world 
 
 109 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 movements and the nations themselves. It 
 is the purpose here to emphasize to the lay- 
 man and agent, as well, the importance of 
 the business and the responsibilities resting 
 upon the shoulders of the laymen, that every 
 individual has a far-reaching responsibility 
 that is both selfish and unselfish. 
 
 Until recent years, as pointed out in Part 
 I, Life Insurance was commonly considered 
 as something apart from the ordinary busi- 
 ness, having to do only with death and the 
 protection of the home. It has now taken on 
 a much wider significance and brought down 
 to earth among the ordinary affairs of life 
 in the practice of Business Life Insurance, 
 Welfare or Profit Sharing Insurance, and 
 in the shape of various forms of Income 
 Policies. 
 
 To give the layman a better " mind slant " 
 of the practical, everyday nature of Life 
 Insurance, a short review of these three mod- 
 ern interpretations will be given. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 BUSINESS LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 THE greatest by-product of all is human 
 efficiency the potentiality of individuals en- 
 gendered beyond the usual or created where 
 there has been little or no earning power. 
 Without education for efficiency, there is 
 created an undue number of ne'er-do-wells, 
 paupers, mendicants, over-abundance of 
 criminals and a mass of individuals whose 
 minimum instead of maximum accomplish- 
 ment is attained. 
 
 These things are mentioned because effi- 
 ciency begets confidence, confidence inspires 
 credit and credit means business. They all 
 develop the individual equation the potenti- 
 ality of man power, the greatest of all values. 
 
 It is the importance of this earning power 
 of the individual that makes Business Life 
 Insurance possible and practical. 
 
 The increasing sentiment in favor of this 
 ill 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 form of Life Insurance is due to the logical 
 reasons which impel a business or enterprise 
 to -avail itself of this modern form of indem- 
 nity. It is perfectly sane and rational to 
 assert that the leading men in control of any 
 company, those who exercise the driving 
 power and give a business its vital forces, are 
 the most valuable asset of the concern. Indi- 
 viduals create property and enhance its 
 value. No one disputes the advisability of 
 fire insurance for property. Therefore, Life 
 Insurance on the individual payable to a 
 company is more necessary than fire insur- 
 ance for property. Fire may never occur, 
 death must occur. 
 
 A careful study of the subject of Cor- 
 poration or Business Life Insurance leads 
 to the conviction that the practice is founded 
 on broad, rational business lines. 
 
 First: Because it is logical to place a 
 definite property value upon a certain indi- 
 vidual or collection of individuals in relation 
 to an enterprise. 
 
 Second: Because the loss of their prop- 
 
 112 
 
BUSINESS LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 erty value by death may occur at the most 
 inopportune time in regard to financial con- 
 ditions, or in relation to the possibility of 
 securing a good substitute. 
 
 Third: Death may occur while some ex- 
 tension of operations is under way where the 
 one carrying them out is almost wholly re- 
 sponsible for their successful termination. 
 
 Fourth: It is frequently considered ad- 
 visable to acquire the interest of a deceased 
 member of a corporation or enterprise. 
 
 Fifth: In many cases men, themselves, 
 desire that their estates discontinue a finan- 
 cial interest in their business after death. 
 
 Sixth: Because of the sinking fund fea- 
 ture in an Endowment contract in the avail- 
 ability of its Cash or Loan Values in the 
 event of financial stress in general or in rela- 
 tion to strained financial conditions of a 
 single concern in particular. 
 
 Seventh: In the case of a Bond issue, an 
 
 Endowment policy can be purchased to take 
 
 care of the bonds at a certain period, or to 
 
 provide funds for their retirement in the 
 
 8 113 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 event of death of the leading head before 
 maturity of the bonds. 
 
 Eighth : The advantage as a credit propo- 
 sition. Every one knows that credit, if an 
 enterprise is a going one, is founded very 
 largely upon personality. Banks and indi- 
 viduals granting credit give the very strong- 
 est endorsement of this form of Life Insur- 
 ance. Bankers and money lenders want to 
 know that there is something coming into a 
 business to offset the loss by death of its 
 leading head or heads. Many firms have 
 been forced into liquidation because of the 
 calling in of their commercial paper on ac- 
 count of the lack of this very thing. 
 
 Ninth: Because property belongs to man 
 and not man to property. 
 
 Tenth : Because it conserves the property 
 value of the individual to the business, 
 whether he retires by death or because of 
 age limit. 
 
 Eleventh: Because of the effect on the 
 habits of men carrying large policies. A 
 man will, as a logical sequence, take better 
 
 114 
 
BUSINESS LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 care of his health and habits after taking 
 out a very large policy. 
 
 Twelfth: Because of the fact that the 
 finances of our country are divided into 
 investment and commercial funds. When a 
 death occurs calling for the payment of a 
 large Business policy, there is a permanent 
 transfer of investment funds to commercial 
 funds, which is always a healthy transaction 
 for the life of trade. 
 
 In addition to all the foregoing, it is 
 well to have in mind that a general applica- 
 tion of Business Insurance is, in reality and 
 effect, the same to a large extent as the pur- 
 chase of what is commonly considered per- 
 sonal insurance. The time is past when 
 any good citizen has a desire to die leaving 
 his family in comfortable circumstances 
 through the medium of Life Insurance and 
 his creditors in the lurch because of his un- 
 timely death. Life Insurance, payable to a 
 business, protects the creditor and, in effect, 
 results as a protection to the family because 
 of the perpetuation or proper sale of the 
 business. 
 
 115 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 There is too much of a disposition to float 
 with the current in the business of Life In- 
 surance. It is well to guide and control pub- 
 lic opinion when this guidance is dictated by 
 conscientious understanding. The practice 
 of Business Life Insurance has been more 
 among the larger concerns. That large busi- 
 ness enterprises are the only logical patrons 
 is a grievous error. 
 
 If Business Insurance is advisable and 
 necessary for the large, financially strong 
 concerns, it must of necessity be far more 
 important to the smaller and weaker con- 
 cerns whose management and prosperity are 
 more dependent upon one or two individuals. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WELFARE INSURANCE 
 
 THE greatest factor in business life is the 
 importance of all working for a wage keep- 
 ing fit mentally and physically and connect- 
 ing each working minute with the main pur- 
 pose of their life. 
 
 Crime, Mental Defectiveness, Drug and 
 Liquor Victims, Physical Unfortunates, In- 
 dustrial Incompetents, Social Parasites, all 
 are Welfare problems, because every one of 
 them is the result of poverty, or causes 
 poverty. 
 
 Astounding and incredible as it sounds, 
 these things are a tax on this nation to the 
 enormous total of over a billion of dollars 
 annually. 
 
 The present worth of a billion dol- 
 lars a year for ten years, at 4 per cent., is 
 $8,556,400,000. 
 
 This overwhelming figure, the present 
 117 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 worth of what we will spend (under present 
 conditions) in the next decade, is largely 
 wasted. This huge sum, for charities, public 
 and private, equals almost one entire year's 
 agricultural wealth productivity of the 
 country. 
 
 It would be interesting to cite, from the 
 meager national statistics, the number of 
 men, women and children in penal institu- 
 tions, almshouses, asylums, hospitals, train- 
 ing schools and other institutions of kindred 
 nature the number of old men and women, 
 widows and orphans working for wages, 
 enduring the hardships of the world's activ- 
 ities, instead of enjoying comfortable homes. 
 
 It is sufficient, however, to draw attention 
 to the fact that the number of all these is 
 so disgracefully and alarmingly large as to 
 constitute a severe indictment of the citizenry 
 of this nation. 
 
 This condition is due to incompetency, 
 inefficiency, and lack of far-sighted co-oper- 
 ation and unselfish, humanitarian dealing 
 upon the part of both capital and labor, 
 
 118 
 
WELFARE INSURANCE 
 
 employer and employee ; the only difference 
 being that the man upon the hilltop, with 
 more worldly goods, and supposedly of 
 greater brain power, should per se be ex- 
 pected to be the aggressor along construct- 
 ive, humanitarian lines. 
 
 Experience and observation show conclu- 
 sively that a horse, or even an inanimate ma- 
 chine such as a motor car or farm machinery, 
 must be in good condition in order to work 
 well. If the dumb beast and the inanimate 
 machine must be fit in order to work well, 
 what of the human mind and mechanism? 
 
 In other words, the " mental slant " is the 
 thing that is wrong, and it is the thing which 
 must be corrected if any reasonable fruition 
 of welfare problems is to be realized. 
 
 Mr. James Couzens said in a recent article 
 in the World's Work, "It is not charity 
 that is needed to make self-supporting and 
 self-respecting citizens: It is work, and a 
 living wage." 
 
 There is no attempt to preach the doctrine 
 of supreme accomplishment in the elimina- 
 
 119 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 tion of welfare problems, but there is the 
 contention that, outside of the really men- 
 tally and physically defective, there is an 
 alarming condition, and a widespread need 
 for efficient, constructive effort and humani- 
 tarian policies. 
 
 Gerald Stanley Lee, in Crowds, voices 
 these sentiments: 
 
 6 What really counts, and what finally de- 
 cides what men and women shall be, what 
 really gets their attention, unfathomably, 
 unconsciously, is the way they earn their 
 money. The feeling men come to have about 
 a fact, of its being what it is, helplessly, 
 whether or no the feeling that they come to 
 have about something, of its being immemo- 
 rially and innumerably the same everywhere 
 and forever, comes from what they are think- 
 ing and the way they think while they are 
 earning their money. It is out of the sub- 
 conscious and the monotonous that all our 
 little heavens and hells are made. It is our 
 daily work that becomes to us the real floor 
 
 and roof of living, hugs up under us like 
 120 
 
WELFARE INSURANCE 
 
 the ground, fits itself down over us, and is 
 our earth and sky. The man with whom 
 we earn our money, the man who employs 
 us, his thinking or not thinking, his ' I will ' 
 and ' I will not,' are the iron boundaries of 
 the world to us. He is the skylight and the 
 manhole of life." 
 
 Also, 
 
 " One sees these men everywhere one goes, 
 in thousands of factories, doing their work 
 without any draught we already have tall 
 chimneys for our coal furnaces ; we have next 
 to see the value of tall chimneys, great flues 
 to the sky, on the lives and thought and inner 
 energies of men. 
 
 1 The most obvious way to get a draught 
 on a man to get him to glow up and work- 
 is to cut through an opening in the top of 
 his life. 
 
 " Just where to cut this opening, and just 
 how to cut it in each man's life each man 
 considered as a problem by himself is the 
 
 labor problem." 
 
 121 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 This is also a welfare problem of great 
 magnitude. 
 
 Mr. Lee says further: 
 
 " If a man is a sane and sound man and 
 works hard, he must feel that everything he 
 does, every minute, is definitely connected 
 with the main through train purpose of 
 his life." 
 
 Ah! there's the rub! 
 
 The people over this broad land are more 
 interested in opportunity for industrial free- 
 dom and the exercise of equal business rights 
 and in earned reward through bonus, or 
 profit-sharing system and old age incomes 
 from the sources for which they have labored, 
 than they are in any paternalistic plan on 
 the part of the state or through the medium 
 of swollen fortunes. The people of the 
 country, as a whole, are anxious, in fact, their 
 pride demands, that there be a direct con- 
 nection between the sweat of their own brows 
 and their support, including old age, when 
 active employment must cease. 
 
 The population is made up of individual- 
 
 122 
 
WELFARE INSURANCE 
 
 istic, free, thinking people, and paternalism, 
 when once understood in its full import, is 
 contrary to the thought and traditions of the 
 nation. 
 
 In thinking of social insurance, or pater- 
 nalism of any form, in Life Insurance there 
 is immediately visualized the idea of a tri- 
 angle; the employee at one angle, the em- 
 ployer at another and the government at the 
 third. 
 
 With a law-enforced, subsidized insurance, 
 the employee's efficiency goes not the direct 
 route along one side of the triangle to his 
 employer but around the two other sides 
 through the government. Efficiency is rep- 
 resented by the idea that a straight line is 
 the shortest distance between two points. 
 
 Welfare Life (live) Insurance, bought 
 for the family and old age of the insured, 
 is connecting up with the employee or asso- 
 ciate along one side of the triangle the 
 short route and the efficient way. 
 
 Aristotle, when asked what he gained from 
 philosophy, replied, " To do, without being 
 
 123 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 commanded, what others do from fear of 
 laws." 
 
 It is very fitting to draw attention to em- 
 ployers of labor, and all those who work for 
 a wage, that the protective and profit-sharing 
 features of Life Insurance purchased for 
 employees is not only a better, more practi- 
 cal method than any law-enforced plan, but 
 is philosophically and psychologically sound 
 in doing something for employees in advance 
 of a law-enforced method, which is sure to 
 come, at least under present conditions. 
 
 To-day, we are assuming that there is too 
 much crime, too much tuberculosis, too many 
 people incapacitated by other diseases, too 
 many mental incompetents. That there are 
 too many old men and women too many 
 children, too many widows, enduring the 
 hardships of earning a bare living, and that 
 these things are largely due to poverty. 
 
 Nothing is so depressing as to visit a home 
 for the aged or to pass by an orphan asylum. 
 A gentleman walking along a driveway in 
 the outskirts of a large city met six little 
 
 124 
 
WELFARE INSURANCE 
 
 children, from five to ten years of age, and 
 in buying the flowers they had been gather- 
 ing, engaged them in conversation. He 
 asked them if they were all members of one 
 family. A sad expression clouded the face 
 of the eldest child, a little girl, and she 
 said, " No, we are from the Home up here," 
 pointing to a large house nearby an 
 orphan home. This is something which 
 should get under the vests of the officers, 
 directors and superintendents of the business 
 institutions of the country. She, poor little 
 child, did not know that they did belong to 
 one family, the great human family. Yes: 
 and to another family, a family all too 
 large those children brought into the world 
 whose heritage is crime, sickness, incompe- 
 tency, degeneracy directly traceable to 
 poverty and if you please unnecessary 
 poverty ! 
 
 The relation of this incident does not 
 
 emanate alone from criticism or pessimism; 
 
 it is to visualize a condition close to the hearts 
 
 of men and women in these United States. 
 
 125 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 The " mental slant " of the men upon the 
 hilltop has changed. Business men have 
 taken an account of stock and recognize the 
 necessity of knowing and considering the 
 " mental slant " of all those who work for a 
 wage. 
 
 It is all the more to their credit that there 
 is a moral fibre growing into the business 
 fabric of this country, wholesome in the ex- 
 treme. There is a preponderance of men 
 engaged in business to-day who are real 
 heroes in the world's work. They are the 
 men who carry religion and the exercise of 
 the Golden Rule into their dealings with 
 their fellow-men. Not the kind of religion 
 that warps the soul, prays on Sunday, lies on 
 Monday, and grinds down one's fellow-men 
 the rest of the week, but real religion deep 
 down in the soul, that makes the heart beat 
 for humanity, and recognizes and carries out 
 the brotherhood of man. 
 
 There is no system of finance ever devised 
 which approaches the usefulness of the sys- 
 tem of sound Life Insurance to prevent pov- 
 
 126 
 
WELFARE INSURANCE 
 
 erty Life Insurance in its general applica- 
 tion, and in its specific use by business con- 
 cerns as a welfare measure. 
 
 One of the great values of Welfare Insur- 
 ance is the effect upon the " mind slant " of 
 the employee and his family. It should be 
 borne in mind, in the practice of Welfare 
 Insurance, whether the form of procedure be 
 in individual policies or " en-group," that the 
 " mind slant " of the wage earner himself is 
 important, and his attitude of mind enhanced 
 by that form of contract which benefits him 
 during his own life. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 INCOME INSURANCE 
 
 IN the early practice of life insurance, it 
 was found that moneys left from Life Insur- 
 ance Policies were subjected to the same dis- 
 sipation as occurs in Estates left to depend- 
 ents from other sources. To avoid this evil 
 and secure to the beneficiaries under policies 
 the means of livelihood after death of the 
 breadwinner, Income Insurance was origi- 
 nated. The name " Income " implies the na- 
 ture of such policies or manner of payment 
 of regular contracts. Through the ingenuity 
 of Companies' able Actuaries, a great prob- 
 lem has been solved. 
 
 Under the present modern practice of the 
 Life Insurance Companies it is possible to 
 assure an income to any beneficiary or mul- 
 tiplicity of beneficiaries by eliminating en- 
 tirely the hazard of forfeiture to or dissi- 
 pation by the recipient or recipients of the 
 proceeds of a policy or policies. 
 
 128 
 
INCOME INSURANCE 
 
 Through income options in modern Life 
 Insurance contracts the insured can build a 
 monument in the mind of a dependent or 
 loved one in the shape of a payment on a 
 certain day of every year, or even month, as 
 long as the beneficiary survives. 
 
 The entire proceeds of a policy can be left 
 with a company at interest under a specified 
 arrangement offering conditions more ad- 
 vantageous than afforded by the ordinary 
 Trust. 
 
 This subject, like Business Life Insurance 
 or Welfare Insurance, is one that should be 
 treated in a book by itself. It is sufficient 
 here to point out that the manner of paying 
 such policies is almost limitless and offers a 
 medium of thorough and secure protection 
 for either a specified term of years or the life 
 of an individual which is not equalled by any 
 other system of finance. 
 
 9 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 LAYMEN'S RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 THE public are vitally interested in the 
 laws enacted in the several States as affect- 
 ing sound Life Insurance. They have a re- 
 sponsibility and interdependent relation to 
 the subject of legislation, and this responsi- 
 bility is a duty which every citizen owes the 
 State, himself and the business, and to shirk 
 this duty or to exercise it in an antagonistic 
 manner is the grossest kind of short-sight- 
 edness. 
 
 Life Insurance is a quasi-public institu- 
 tion, and only such legislation which is 
 founded upon the most extended practice 
 of community of interest should be in the 
 mind of any right-thinking citizen. 
 
 In the matter alone of taxation, the policy- 
 holders pay millions of dollars each year 
 above the cost of administration, and any tax- 
 ation above the cost of administration has 
 
 130 
 
LAYMEN'S RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 no foundation in reason, and is a direct bur- 
 den upon thrift and protection of the home. 
 The enactment of laws, whether taxation or 
 otherwise, which are burdensome and ex- 
 pensive to the Companies, are, in fact, more 
 important to the people themselves than the 
 Companies as corporate entities. 
 
 In Chapter XII reference was made 
 to the standardized representative in Life 
 Insurance. There is upon the part of Life 
 Insurance interests a genuine attempt to pro- 
 fessionalize and standardize service to policy- 
 holders, and the results to policyholders in 
 better arrangement give ample proof of 
 greatly improved conditions and that prog- 
 ress is constantly going on. This progress, 
 however, would proceed with far greater 
 rapidity if the people themselves took a 
 greater interest in Life Insurance and act- 
 ually learned and carried out their responsi- 
 bility and interdependent relation in the 
 premises. 
 
 Life Insurance, as has been shown in the 
 statements made throughout this book, espe- 
 
 131 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 cially in reference to its more modern prac- 
 tices, is not a thing apart from other ordi- 
 nary affairs of life it is very ordinary, very 
 practical, but very important. Any attitude 
 of aloofness, antagonism or disinterested- 
 ness on the part of laymen is the most 
 short-sighted policy, because the business has 
 now proven in itself great worth in the 
 United States and has become a part a 
 very great part of the moral and business 
 fibre of the country. 
 
 Disinterestedness, cumbersome legislation 
 and indefensible taxation add to the cost of 
 administration and marketing this very im- 
 portant product. Increased outlay in both 
 cases adds to the cost of insurance to the indi- 
 vidual policyholder. Then the public, by 
 exercising the same fine discrimination in 
 the purchase of Life Insurance which they 
 employ in buying any other important com- 
 modity, will aid the insurance interests in 
 eliminating the weaker representatives who 
 also add to the cost of insurance and lower 
 its professional dignity as well. 
 
 132 
 
LAYMEN'S RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 The people have seen to it, through legisla- 
 tion, that they had reasonable protection in 
 regard to those practitioners who were ad- 
 mitted to the practice of law or medicine or 
 who were allowed to do other things of less 
 importance. They are equally interested and 
 should exercise similar precautionary meas- 
 ures in securing the passage of such laws as 
 would make it impossible for any one to sell 
 or attempt to sell them Life Insurance 
 whose license to do this very important thing 
 was not predicated upon educational fitness 
 through standards laid down by the States 
 themselves. 
 
 A lack of understanding and co-operation 
 or recognition of the true nature of the prin- 
 ciples and practice of interdependence as 
 between employer and employee or between 
 the people, the State and any world move- 
 ment, or, in very fact, between nations and 
 peoples themselves, is responsible for a vast 
 majority of all the troubles and evils of man- 
 kind. 
 
 With this fact in mind and considering the 
 
 133 
 
LIFE INSURANCE 
 
 ramifying importance of sound Life Insur- 
 ance, there can be no reason other than short- 
 sighted supineness for the people in the 
 United States not exercising a far greater 
 spirit of interest and co-operation in so re- 
 markable an institution, interwoven as it is in 
 both their home and business life. 
 
 Finally, every policyholder should ever 
 keep in mind that the one best option in a 
 life insurance contract to exercise is carry- 
 ing the policy through to the end and without 
 ever passing a premium or borrowing money 
 on the policy. That the chief function and 
 all-important one to the insured is the select- 
 ing of his agent by the same standards em- 
 ployed in choosing a lawyer or a doctor. 
 

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