24 BUSINESS OF LIFE INSURANCE

than this sum, the remainder was held and applied with future assessments to meet future claims, no assessment being called whenever the funds in the treasury enabled the society to pay the claim without recourse to a levy. If the proceeds of one assessment were not enough to pay the claim in full, it was provided that only so much as was actually realised should be paid.

Commercial solvency was thus assured for the society beyond peradventure. It could not by any possibility owe more than it could pay, for the simple and sufficient reason that it promised to pay only what it could collect.

But, of course, that was very different from what the members were led to expect. In the first place, after the society grew big enough to pay a claim in full, the members considered the question settled for all time that their certificates were good for the face at death. In the second place, after the society had been operating a few years they came to the conclusion that there was a normal death-rate that could be maintained and would keep the cost from in-creasing beyond certain limits, the new members, "new blood," they called it, keeping down the average age and thus limiting the cost. In support of this they quoted the experience of the regular companies, which often show a more or less stable death-rate of 12 or 15, for instance, per 1,000 members.