To do this requires,

FIRST: The adoption of a standard by which the relations of cost between different ages shall be measured:

SECOND: An amendment to the law providing that no life insurance company shall give or contract to give life insurance for a less sum in hand, exclusive of expense money, than the cost, as determined by such standard and the actual age, to the date when the next premium is payable.

If a company under this law sold life insurance for just the sum which represented the cost by the standard to the next date at which a premium became due, it would be selling life insurance as absolutely without accumulation as can possibly be done.

The company would have in hand-of money paid for and held to meet the deathcost-simply the amount of that cost to the day when the contract and the risk must cease if a further payment was not made. If the actual cost conformed to the pre-calculated, on that date there would be nothing left. If it

was less than the pre-calculated cost, the excess would constitute a surplus protection to a certain minimum amount above which it could be made a credit on account of the next increased payment.

The New York Stipulated Premium Law, with an amendment compelling the annual advance in premium rate and permitting reduction therefrom only after there has been accumulated, in addition to the unearned premium, from the member's actual payments, a sum equal to the standard cost for one year at attained age, affords a good model for dealing with this class of insurance.

Under such a contract the rate of payment by each policy-holder would be advanced as he passed from one year of age to the next higher. THE STATE SHOULD NEVER HAVE PERMITTED LIFE INSURANCE WITHOUT ACCUMULATION UNDER ANY REQUIREMENT AS TO PAYMENT LESS THAN THIS.

THE PROPER USE OF ACCUMULATIONS.

It is not a question whether, under such a requirement, Life Insurance without accumulation would remain practically possible.

The State has no right to permit Life Insurance under conditions less than safe; and the above-named condition is the minimum under which Life Insurance without accumulation is safe.

Probably, excepting for a comparatively small amount of business covering needs recognized from the beginning as temporary in character, Life Insurance absolutely without accumulation on these terms would prove unattractive.

Indeed, absolutely non-accumulative Life Insurance can cover only a very narrow field, particularly among a people who have for a generation or more been fed upon tales of the investment nature of Life Insurance.

It held its place only because in the absence of law it was possible for a very considerable period to avoid the increase in price

from age to age which is necessary to equity and fair dealing under this form of insurance.

As the law of increase in cost made itself felt with increasing force-as in the absence of accumulation it was bound to do-the tendency of Assessment Life Insurance, towards rates providing for accumulation and in the direction of permanent uniformity, has steadily increased.

The cowardice of managers of companies, who have refused to protect the accumulative portion of premium payments on new business against misuse by application to meet the deficiencies of payment on business paying non-accumulative rates, has too often rendered these advanced rates simply a temporary delusion and the initiatory step to new disappointments.

When new business is placed upon a rate which pays more than immediate cost, it is for the purpose of providing for those paying such rate, through accumulation, means of meeting future natural increase in cost.

It is not and, honestly, it cannot be for the purpose of enabling the association to continue

to furnish to those who are paying non-accumulative rates life insurance at less than cost.

Yet, through the ignorance and cowardice of managers, this is exactly what has been done in the great majority of cases; and, through the ignorance or greed of the policyholders, where it has not been done, but where, instead, there has been an honest purpose to distribute properly actual cost, a cry of indignation has arisen and the forces that should sustain the management in its course have been appealed to to destroy.

Every legislature will be told by those whose cry is "Destroy" instead of "Reform," that old policy-holders who were paying nonaccumulative rates for their insurance, have been called upon for increased assessments.

Had the law been what it should have been from the start, instead of the managers of a few companies having the courage to do what is right and brave the storm that it called forth, the managers of all companies carrying non-accumulative Life Insurance would have been COMPELLED equitably to distribute cost, and the scandals of the failures that have shaken public confidence could have been avoided.

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