The principle of mutuality requires that the burden of expense in life insurance should be borne by all the members equally; but, even with the most careful adjustment, the allowance usually made is considerably in excess of what is needed in the regular companies doing business on the "level premium" plan. It is customary in these companies to add to the net premium a percentage thereof to cover the expense account. This practice, though in harmony with the "commission system," is so clearly defective and so far removed from the spirit of life insurance mathematics, that it scarcely deserves even this passing notice. It is generally understood that these corporations combine the functions of the savings bank and life insurance company, and it is only by separating the two in our minds as far as possible that we can obtain a clear conception of the laws that should govern the apportionment of the expenses among the great variety of policies. While it is a comparatively simple matter to state the amount of either the insurance or savings bank element in a single policy, it is by no means easy, as things go, to classify the company's actual expenses on this basis. Fortunately, we can pretty accurately determine what these amounts should be in any particular case. In the first place, there are institutions in our midst devoted solely to receiving and conserving small sums of money; doing, in fact, exactly what our insurance companies are undertaking to do with the reserve and contributions thereto. These savings banks are required by law to make returns to the State commissioner, from whose official report we can get a very good idea of the expense attendant on doing this business. Confining ourselves to the city banks, where the conditions more nearly resemble those of the insurance companies, we find in thirty-eight combined institutions for saving in the State of Massachusetts a deposit in 1888 of $192,174,566, taken care of at an aggregate cost of $455,387, or about 24-100 of one per cent. The same ratio carried out for all the savings banks in Massachusetts gives a trifle over 25-100 of one per cent.; we may, therefore, consider ¼ of one per cent. as expressing pretty nearly the cost of receiving, paying out, and investing the savings of the people. We must remember in this connection that in the popular estimation, the savings bank is an important factor in the public welfare, and in the towns and smaller cities there are often found public spirited men willing to give their services to encourage this mode of saving; but public sentiment has not yet given to life insurance the place which it is destined, sooner or later, to occupy by the side of the savings bank. Hence the services of able managers can only be obtained by a liberal outlay of the corporate funds. A satisfactory adjustment of the matter of expenses will, perhaps, do more than anything else to bring about this recognition on the part of the public.