their entire existence! With this fact before him, how in the name of heaven any sane man can be induced by an old system company to enact the role of sucker surpasses my comprehension. Five years ago the net assets of the largest old line life insurance company in the world amounted to $165,000,000, of which more than $158,000,000 was legal reserve. Had a shrinkage of 10 per cent occurred in the value of its investments its reserve would have been impaired and the corporation declared insolvent. So long ago as 1878 the Union Mutual Life Insurance Co. acknowledged over the signatures of its general officers that it had collected from its policy holders more than $45,000,000 "beyond the necessities of our business." It felt so badly about this that it proceeded to raise the cost of management from $5 to $11.57 on the $1,000 and shove up the premium something more than 20 per cent! It is believed that the gutta percha conscience of the general officers is now reasonably easy--that "the necessities of our business" are not on a parity with the ability of the corporation to yank the legs of the guileless yap. In 1873 this company paid in dividends $29 on each $1,000 insurance in force; in 1895 it paid--despite the increased cost of premiums--but $2.16. All the old line companies, so far as I know, have been increasing premiums and cost of management while decreasing dividends. "Loading" is another scheme by which all old line or legal reserve companies rob the people. "Loading" means simply the placing of a sufficient burden on the patron to freeze him out before maturity of his policy and enable the company to pocket all he has paid in premiums. The idea of the old liners is to squeeze a victim dry and get rid of him--to "load" him until his financial back is broken. That the system is proven by the fact that only one policy in seven is ever paid. Six out of every seven people who insure in the old line companies pay heavy premiums for a longer or shorter period and never receive back a cent. They lie down under their "load." By such methods these systematic blood-suckers acquire those vast assets that make them so "solvent." By such practices they are enabled to pay $75,000 salaries to their presidents while the chief magistrate of the Republic must worry along on less money. By the pernicious system of "loading" a patron is charged four times as much for operating expenses at 60 years of age as he is charged at 25, although it costs the same to collect his premiums and furnish a receipt therefor. The idea is that the older he grows the more likely he is to prove a loss to the company, hence his burden is made too grievous to be borne. Life insurance should be a public blessing instead of a bane. Properly applied it would well-nigh eliminate pauperism. As matters now stand it is too often a promoter of poverty instead of a preventative. To shelter one family the old line companies turn two or more into the street.