You are reading a page from Life Insurance as a Life Work, by Hugh Hart
(1926)
Part of the American Term Life Insurance History Project
Term Life Insurance
CHAPTER XIII
IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
Service above self; he profits most who serves best.
—MOTTO OF EOTARY INTERNATIONAL.
Three laborers were breaking rock for the
foundation of a building. A passer-by
stopped to ask them what they were doing.
The first laborer said, "I am breaking
rock."
The second answered, "I am earning five
dollars a day."
The third replied, (<! am building a
cathedral."
Their answers were significant, for they
revealed three types of workers. The re-
sponse of the first laborer showed that he
was a drudge; that of the second, that he
was a materialist; while the reply of the
third set him apart from his fellows as an
idealist.
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
Selling life insurance is no proper voca-
tion for the drudge since he must needs have
constantly before him something tangible,
something of form and substance to work
with, because he is without imagination.
Life insurance, however, is intangible, with
no physical properties which appeal to the
wholly matter-of-fact worker.
Nor does life underwriting appeal to the
tastes of the materialist, who looks upon his
job merely as a medium for securing money.
The hope of financial reward is the dominat-
ing motive of the materialist's work. All
other considerations are secondary. Sell-
ing life insurance, being a personal service
vocation, quite obviously does not, except in
rare instances, provide the income which
this type Of character demands. Its finan-
cial possibilities are more than adequate to
satisfy the proper requirements of modem
life, or to gratify the ambition that is not
steeped in avarice; but to the man who is
willing to devote his talents to money-
making as the sole aim and purpose of his
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
life, life insurance will not provide a con-
genial field of endeavor.
To the extent that life underwriting is in-
compatible with the mental processes of the
drudge and the motives of the materialist,
it meets the requirements of the idealist and
gives complete opportunity for the play of
his ambition. The true idealist is as far re-
moved from the impractical visionary on
the one extreme as from the purely matter-
of-fact type on the other. He occupies a
middle ground somewhere between the two
where common-sense blends with imagina-
tion. How does life insurance make its ap-
peal to such a man ?
Let us return to the illustration of the
three laborers. The first had his mind cen-
tered on the routine task before him. He
should not be condemned for that. There
is a certain amount of drudgery about every
job, however important. Even the Presi-
dent of the United States is by no means
free from his share. For example, he must
personally affix his signature to thousands
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
of official documents every year. Nor can
the life underwriter entirely escape a cer-
tain amount of drudgery. He must do a
great deal of walking and talking every
day; he must read and study; he must reply
to innumerable questions, the answers to
which are to him uninteresting repetitions
of simple truisms; he must write letters of
explanation about the risks he submits.
The life underwriter who is a practical ide-
alist, however, recognizes this routine as a
part of a grand scheme of life—and so even
these tasks become invested with a certain
charm.
The second laborer was justified in look-
ing on the wages he received as an impor-
tant factor. So, also, the man who sells life
insurance should regard the financial re-
ward that comes from his sales as one of the
many compensations that accrue from his
work. The trouble with the second laborer
was that he did not see beyond his imme-
diate reward, as the first did not see beyond
his immediate task. Each lacked that
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
which, for want of a better term, we call
vision, and this lack of vision will chain
these men forever to tasks of drudgery. A
man cannot go ahead unless he first sees
ahead. This rule holds true to a surpris-
ing degree in the life insurance business.
The mere drudge never becomes a large pro-
ducer. He rarely sells a large policy.
Having little vision himself, he does not
know how to approach men of larger vision.
More obnoxious than the drudge is the
type of life insurance salesman who thinks
only of the commission he is to get from the
sale. It is just retribution that such men
rarely become important factors in the life
insurance business. When a man thinks
first of his own interests, it follows that he
will think secondly of his clients' interests.
Big financial returns are secured in life un-
derwriting not through selling clients once,
but by meeting their insurance needs in such
a satisfactory way, irrespective of the im-
mediate profit to the agent, that they be-
come permanent customers. The agent who
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
forms permanent contacts with men who
are growing more prosperous year by year,
thinking always of their insurance interests
first rather than of his own commission in-
terests, will discover that, in the long run,
he has far outstripped his more mercenary
competitors.
Cyrus EL Curtis, the great publisher, was
criticised by some of his colleagues when he
sent back an $18,000 check which he re-
ceived in the mail from a patent medicine
firm that wished to advertise in the Ladies'
Home Journal. The check had come at a
critical time in the financial affairs of the
Curtis Publishing Company, when sufficient
funds were not available to meet the current
payroll. But Cyrus H. Curtis had pre-
viously decided to accept no patent medi-
cine advertising, and he had not only the
courage to stand by what he thought was a
sound advertising policy, but he had the vi-
sion to see, far ahead of immediate profits,
more substantial returns that must accrue
eventually if the interests of his subscrib-
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
ers were always his primary consideration.
If the first two laborers illustrate types
of mind to be avoided, the third portrays
an idealism which is almost indispensable to
the success of the life insurance salesman.
Although the third laborer was breaking
rock, just as his two fellows were, his
thought was not on the laborious swinging
of the heavy hammer or its pulverizing im-
pact against the rock; nor was he thinking
of the pay envelope, whether it held too
much or too little; his imagination broke
away from the prison walls of his mind,
and winged its flight into a larger world
of accomplishment. He realized that each
stroke of the huge hammer against the
stone was part of an infinitely larger plan,
and that, humble as was his place in that
plan, it was necessary, useful, and honor-
able. His vision transformed the broken
stones around him into a temple which
should stand as a holy sanctuary dedicated
to his God. Thus the true idealist sees not
only the immediate work that he is doing,
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
but he beholds the perfected result of that
work.
The professional life underwriter regards
himself, not as a vendor of life insurance
policies, nor as a money machine coining
dollars for himself, but rather as an artisan
who is engaged in erecting a great cathedral
that shall render life more beautiful and
complete for others. Each policy that he
sells is but a stone placed on the walls of
that temple; he is only one of the workmen
on the great edifice; but he can conceive of
the blessings his handiwork will render
through long years after his own life is fin-
ished—as the multitudes come under the
protecting cover of his cathedral.
The life insurance idealist is above all
else an altruist and glories most in the con-
structive good that results from the forces
he sets in motion. He realizes that men
have work to do which cannot always be
completed during the span of their activity.
So he provides, through life insurance, the
means whereby they may project their eco-
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
nomic value into the future and thus make
sure that their dreams will become realities.
Is it a college or a hospital that a man is
ambitious to endow—if he lives'? The life
underwriter provides a plan by which this
philanthropist's wishes may be carried out
even if he is stricken down in the midst of
life. By adopting this plan, the man may
have the satisfying consciousness that his
hopes will be fulfilled by the life insurance
company, just as certainly as though he
himself were permitted to complete the
work.
Does a husband wish to give to the wife
who has shared his struggles the comforting
assurance that financial hardship will never
face her in the future ? The life insurance
counsellor will point the way.
Does a father desire above all things that
his son and daughter shall partake of the
"learning of the sages and the culture of
the ages'"? The agent for the life insur-
ance company can suggest a -method by
which the funds for their college educa-
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
tion may be provided. Even if the father
should die, therefore, his wish need not be
buried with him in his grave.
Does a son aspire to give to his mother
and father the blessed assurance that, in the
sunset days of life, the comfort that springs
from financial independence shall abide
with them, even though they are deprived
of his protection by the relentless decree of
death ? The task is almost a sacred rite for
the underwriter, for only through life in-
surance, in many cases, can this assurance
be provided.
Does a business man intend that no stain
of dishonored debts shall be transmitted by
him to stigmatize his children and his chil-
dren's children'? Does he hope, as well,
that the business to which he has conse-
crated his talents and his toil throughout
his long career, shall survive the financial
shock and strain of his death and stand a
sturdy monument to the sound policies on
which he builded'? The man with the rate
book can preserve his financial honor and
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
conserve the accumulated wealth of a life-
time.
The underwriter's task is a work of con-
structive patriotism, and patriotism is of
the very essence of idealism. What type of
patriotism could be found more construc-
tive than that which preserves the homes of
the nation, educates its children, under-
writes its motherhood, and stabilizes its
business institutions'?
With the development of a higher civil-
ization, the trend of popular desire has been
toward the attainment of three great na-
tional ideals: political independence, reli-
gious freedom, and economic independence.
Many wars have been fought to secure the
first two of these great ideals and the foun-
dation of our own country was brought
about partly by a desire to establish politi-
cal and religious freedom. It is a justi-
fiable American boast that we have attained
these two ends. But the third ideal—eco-
nomic independence—by which we mean
the capacity among the great bulk of our
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
citizens to enjoy an equitable share of the
good things of life, has not yet been fully
attained.
At the present time, life insurance is fur-
thering the attainment of economic inde-
pendence among the people of this country
perhaps more appreciably than any other
institution. Darwin P. Kingsley has de-
nned life insurance as "a great social com-
pact, which merges the individual into the
mass, and places behind the frailty of man
standing alone, the immeasurable strength
of men standing together." This immeas-
urable financial strength of life insurance
gives to fifty million Americans—almost
half of our total population—the assurance
of at least some degree of financial inde-
pendence for their dependents. The insti-
tution of life insurance and the work of the
underwriters are thus aiding our fellow
countrymen in the attainment of the third
great national ideal.
Perhaps in no way does the constructive
idealism of life insurance manifest itself
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
more clearly than through its moral in-
fluence on the characters of the great body
of the American people.
Two defects of character menace the sta-
bility of our American civilization. The
first is our tendency to be wasteful and ex-
travagant. The abundance of our resources
and the comparative ease with which money
is made, have caused us to pass lightly over
the homely virtue of thrift, so that we have
become the most prodigal people in the
world. This tendency must be corrected,
or it may eventually lead to national dis-
aster. As our population becomes more
dense, competition more keen, and the nat-
ural sources of wealth more depleted, we
shall have to find some means of correcting
our tendency toward improvidence. Life
insurance, by its very nature, teaches the
gospel of thrift and saving. Policyholders
of life insurance are, to that extent, converts
to thrift. The life underwriter lives by
preaching the doctrine of conservation as
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IDEALISM IN LIFE UNDERWRITING
opposed to the doctrine of extravagance
and waste.
The other defect of American character,
one for which our foreign critics justly
chide us, is the tendency to become ma-
terialistic. This tendency is one of the
attendant dangers of commercial success.
The motive behind the life insurance idea,
however, is an unselfish desire to protect
those we love. The great bulk of life in-
surance carried in this country has been
purchased by those who had little expecta-
tion of getting any financial benefits from
it themselves. The burden was voluntarily
assumed for the benefit of others. Buy-
ing life insurance is altruism translated
into practical terms. This almost universal
adoption of an altruistic plan in America is
a helpful antidote against the growth of
materialism. The underwriter, as he pro-
claims the altruistic principle that a man
should make an unselfish sacrifice year by
year for the sake of those dearest to him, is
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inculcating an ideal that is indeed salutary
to the development of American character.
One hundred sixty-eight thousand apos-
tles of thrift and altruism make up the field
forces of the institution of life insurance in
America. They are helping to bring about
the economic independence of the American
people; they are strengthening the fibre of
American character; they are contributing
to the development of American ideals.
Theirs is a practical and a constructive mis-
sion. Their vocation is surcharged with
idealism. This idealism rests on a sound
economic foundation and yet is so exalted
that it makes men forget what money can
do for them in the thought of the wondrous
things that money can do for those they
love; it is an idealism that does as much as
human power can do to transform the dis-
aster of death into the beauty of life.
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