All of the old life insurance policies of every kind and character are based on contract, and it was supposed that the rates at entrance in a fraternal order constituted a contract between the member and the supreme body of the order. Many of the courts of the several states have so held, but it was for the Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum to defy reason and common sense and to claim that they were the autocrats of the order. All insurance should be like a deposit in a savings bank, that can hardly be lost. The Royal Arcanum, however, has depended upon lapses. Thirty-five is the age usually taken for illustration in insurance. At that age the average of lapses per 1,000 lives is 37 per cent plus. In May, 1905, there were 305,083 members in the order. That would mean that out of 305,083 members if all were of the age of 36, in any year, 111,000 would lapse. The average policy in the Royal Arcanum is $2,231.67 and out of that there would be lost by lapse, $826.70. If all the members were 36 years of age, on the whole $680,848,000 insurance in force there would be lost by lapse, at thirty-six years, $251,923,760 annually. Now in honest insurance there should be no lapses or forfeitures and in the insurance of the future there will be nothing of the kind. But on this plan, no matter how long one has paid, or how much he has paid in, if he stops paying, he loses all. Misfortune or accident may compel him to stop paying, but no matter what may be the cause, he loses, and other persons dying quickly have had the benefit of the money he has paid in. A member who entered in 1879 at the age of 36 will have paid in on September 1, 1905, about $800, or $30.72 per year. A person insured at the sum of $3,000 would have to live to the age of 133 to pay that sum out at the rate for the first 26 years. But assume the insured has paid $800 to October 1, 1905, and remains in the order. He pays $97.20 the first year of the new rates, $103.68 the second year and $192.96 the third year and the same sum each year thereafter. His expectancy is 12.81 years at 63. If he lives out his expectancy, he will have paid into the order, $3,277.12, or $277.12 more than he will receive. But suppose he should live till 85 years of age, he will by that age pay in $5,205.72, or about $2,205.75 more than he can draw out. Will any man join an order of that kind where he shall forfeit all by the failure to make a single payment? So long as he can get into a company which will give him paid-up insurance, extended insurance, or a cash-surrender value, he will not.