FUNCTION OF INSURANCE   5

them with food, clothing, and the other necessities of life, or even with education suitable to their station? He may live to see his children self-supporting, and to provide for the old age of himself and his wife, but what if his life shall be cut off while they are still unable to earn their own subsistence? * * *

It will not be denied that certain persons must and should be supported at the public expense, but the fewer there are of these, the better will be the morals as well as the finances of the community, and life insurance is continually reducing this dependent class. It is not the man who lives to old age, supports and educates his children and saves a competency, who contributes to the class who are applicants for public charity. But the one who is taken away while his children are infants and who has not had the time given him, no matter how affectionate and thrifty he may be, to provide for their needs, is a liberal contributor to the orphan asylum and the almshouse. He may avoid this danger by postponing marriage for such time as will enable him to accumulate a sufficient sum to insure the comfort of a family, but neither morality nor the public welfare will be best served by the establishment of such a principle. There is but one way by which he can follow the course which nature intended him to take, and that way is open to him through life insurance. By the payment of comparatively small sums at convenient intervals, he can relieve himself of the responsibility of the distress which would fall upon his dependents in case of his premature death, and he can, moreover, provide for his own future in case he should survive the time when, from physical weakness, he shall become incapacitated from earning his own subsistence.

In what direction and to what extent life insurance promotes the best family life it is difficult to prove. That it tends to increase the sense of responsibility which leads to a thoughtful appreciation of affection and duty cannot be doubted. That man who enters upon his married life without consideration not alone of the probabilities, but also of the possibilities, will find himself weighted with a burden which he cannot transfer to another, and which will consist both of the necessity of self-denial and anxiety for the future. The first will develop and improve his character, will stimulate his ambition and increase his efficiency, but a combination of the two will dishearten and impede him and tend to cruelty, intemperance, and divorce, for he will seek to transfer to others that for which he alone is responsible.

Life insurance makes immediately available the future savings of a lifetime, and it is this element of its operations which is its most common and prominent characteristic. But its mission can-not be fully gauged without an understanding that it has another feature less used but not less useful. It has been shown that in a large number of human beings belonging to a known class, a law of mortality has been found to exist, and this has been used through