It is the purpose of this article to fairly treat the subject under consideration and to set forth such claims only as can be sustained to the satisfaction of candid and unprejudiced minds.  It will not be assumed that the science of Assessment Insurance is perfected; on the contrary, our most advanced thinkers upon the subject are those who see most clearly its defects, and are laboring most assiduously to correct them.  Grave obstacles have been encountered in their endeavors to perfect the system.  Those who have written upon the subject in the public press have been largely such as have given it but a cursory study, or such as have been totally unfit to discuss it from an impartial standpoint by reason of preconceived notions or prejudices in favor of the level premium system of insurance, if, indeed, they have not been retained for a consideration by that gigantic moneyed monopoly.

So largely has prejudice controlled in the consideration of the subject, that those who have sought judicious and stringent legislation to correct abuses, and to bring the business under equally careful and official supervision as that given other forms of insurance, with a view to making it permanently subserve public interests, have been more than once defeated in their laudable endeavors, because they insisted that no legislation could meet the necessities of the case that did not contemplate it as a permanent institution.  Great advances have been made however in the last three or four years, and much that was objectionable has been corrected.  Wise legislation has been secured in many States.  At the last session of her legislature, Massachusetts signalized an important step in advance, by enacting a law whose provisions indicate an intelligent comprehension of the subject on the part of her legislators, unsurpassed by those of any other State.  It has already begun to correct existing evils, as its advocates foresaw it would do.

Several companies dishonestly and incompetently conducted have found it impossible to longer prey upon a too confiding public.

The collapse of fraudulent concerns has furnished an occasion for the enemies of the system to cry out against the system itself, but thinking men are not deceived thereby.  As was recently remarked by a distinguished ex-insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts, “Assessment Insurance has come to stay.”  There is not, as has been claimed by its opponents, anything inherent in the system that fore-dooms it to early and inevitable collapse.

Assessment insurance is natural insurance as against artificial.  In the early establishment of life insurance companies, everything was assumption, there was little or no experience to guide in formulating the principles upon which the business should be conducted.  There was partial information, it is true, upon certain general facts pertaining to longevity or to mortality laws, under certain conditions, but nothing that could give substantial data upon which to base mathematical calculations for the establishment of a science.  Under those conditions, rates of premium were fixed for insurance at the different ages which the experience of many years has shown to be very much higher than is required to meet reasonable expenses, and losses occurring from policies maturing by death.