ASSESSMENT LIFE INSURANCE 29

aggregate cost—while now the actual cost of their protection is in the ratios of $9.79, $26.69, $61.99 and $144.47, respectively. This unfairness also bears yet harder upon the new members who are assessed the first year at correct ratios as among themselves but very incorrect in comparison with the old members.

Such a plan would, of course, by starting out the first year with a fair division of cost and gradually departing from it as it was longer continued, tend to give the society a longer lease of life than the other. But it is also plainly not of a permanent character and such a society has within it the seeds of necessary dissolution, unless it can readjust its rates upon a fairer basis.

Evidently both of these plans would fail to pass muster if submitted to the crucial test of a sound and permanent plan, set forth in the last article of this series. A knowledge of the applicability of that test would have rendered it impossible for any man to accept the assessment plan as permanent.

There is a third form of assessmentism which has nothing in common with these except that the right of unlimited assessment is retained though the premiums charged are in excess of the current cost and afford for a time at least some accumulation. Only too often this has been a cover for insufficient premiums, and these plans must be judged as all others by the ade-