An assessment company may need funds in hand to relieve its members of an assessment when otherwise they might be overburdened, because the death rate fluctuates in different years. Or again, in case of a depleted membership from any cause, the assessment company would need funds in hand to supply any deficiency in the proceeds of an assessment below the face of the maturing obligation. For either purpose a comparatively small sum is required, while the level premium company must pile up tens of millions of overpayments to cover the requirements of the principle on which it conducts its business. It is susceptible of mathematical demonstration that one or two millions of dollars of reserve is adequate to perpetuate any well conducted assessment company for all time, however large or small it may be, while the spectacle is presented to us of level premium life companies holding fifty to one hundred millions of accumulations belonging to their policy holders, from which no possible benefit, in most cases, will ever accrue to them. We therefore emphasize the proposition that a system of insurance that relieves the insurer of one half the pecuniary burden he is compelled to bear under the level premium system, is one that is worthy of fair treatment on the part of a discriminating public, and that the people cannot afford to have impeded in its usefulness by ignorance, prejudice, or moneyed monopolies. We repeat the claim for assessment insurance that it is _natural_ as against _artificial_ insurance. It is pure insurance as against insurance and banking combined. It is within the comprehension of ordinary minds. It is adapted to the wants of the people, because they can easily avail themselves of it, and as easily discontinue it without material or considerable loss. It is within the reach of a much greater proportion of the people on account of its small comparative cost, and the ease with which payments can be made in small amounts. More than sixteen hundred thousand of the citizens of this country are now availing themselves of its advantages, as against about six hundred thousand in level premium companies while the former represent more than thirty-seven hundred millions of insurance, as against about fifteen hundred millions represented by the latter. The disbursements of assessment companies to families of deceased members reach the munificent sum of more than twenty-two millions of dollars annually. The national organization of Mutual Benefit Assessment Associations of America is exerting a most healthful influence in elevating the standard of those companies that comprise its membership. It embraces organizations from all of the principal States of the Union, and its influence is strongly on the side of scientific and conservative methods and practices.