ASSESSMENT LIFE INSURANCE 25

These expectations have been rudely disappointed, and the institutions which could not in the nature of things become commercially in-solvent have miserably failed, unless reorganised. This result, too, was only to be expected. The faults of the plan made it self-limiting. The members were only getting that sort of protection cheap which can always be had cheap in any class of companies, viz., temporary insurance, not extending into old age; and the failure to limit the insurance by contract to the period before old age supervenes proved in the end the Nemesis of the mistaken societies. Their members confounded short term insurance with whole life insurance.

Let us examine the plan somewhat closely. Its unfairness strikes one immediately. Protection is given an entrant at 40, 50 or even 60 or older in some associations, at the same rate of assessment as at age 18 or 20. As all the money is being at once expended for the payment of death claims, and as the insurance is therefore without provision to meet the in-crease of cost in later years, it is evident that these members should pay that year in proportion to the cost at their present ages, i. e., say according to the American Experience Table, in the ratio of $7.81 per $1,000 at age 20, $9.79 at age 40, $13.78 at 50, and $26.69 at 60.

I have said "in the ratio," for, of course, in