TRADITIONS OF THE MUTUAL BENEFIT
Excerpts from the address of Vice President E. E. RHODES in which he recalls two incidents from a rich experience
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My subject this morning is a long onelong in words and the story it-self is long in deeds. We are told that all life insurance companies are alike. I think I am fairly familiar with many of the life insurance companies that are doing business today. I know their officers, I know their past.. and I know their present, and I know that just as there are no two human beings whose faces are alike, so there are no two life insurance companies whose history and whose present coincide.
I think I should like to take you this morning into the home office of the Mutual Benefit as it was fifty gears ago. It was a small office. I think there were about fifty people in it at the time. My connection with it at its inception was very different from yours. Like other young men, I had ideals, but they did not lead me to the Mutual Benefit as your ideals have led you to it. You knew the company when you came with it. All that I knew about it when I went with it was that I had heard that they wanted a young man in their mathematical department. It wasn't life insurance that appealed to me. I knew very little about life insurance. It was the word "mathematical" that led me there to ask for a job.
I saw Mr. Dodd, and I can see him today as he was then. Many of you know him only by his picture. I will just say this about him, that the young man who had ideals found them in Mr. Dodd.
I met Mr. Miller and for practi-
call)- the whole time that he lived after that, I was by his side. I am not entitled to the credit you have given me. They are.
There are two incidents which stand out in my memory. I have told them to some. I would like to tell them to you.
One happened shortly after I was given some responsibility. A case arose involving the treatment of a policyholder. I saw there were two ways of treating it, one to the advantage of the company, the other to the advantage of the policyholder, and in the brashness of youth I took the case down to Mr. Dodd. He heard my story but instead of telling me what to do he asked me what I would do, and I told him how I would treat it. It happened to be the way that was to the advantage of the policyholder, and he said "Why?"
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I replied that I thought it was the right way. And I can see hint today as he swung around in his chair and said, "Young man, you go back to your desk and don't you ever come to me again to know how a policy-holder shall be treated when there is a right and a wrong way."
The other incident happened the day that I was given my first official title. M . Miller and I had been working late at night, and I think it was around midnight when he said, "I think we had better stop, but there is one thing I want to say to you, and that is this: I have carried you now as far as 1 can. From now on you will have to stand on your own
BOSTON'S DEGROAT
Honored a Tice President
See page 16
feet. And there is just one thing I want you to remember. If you are going to be an actuary, you will al-low no pressure. no matter from what source it comes. to lead you to abandon the course that you know to be right."
An institution, it has been said, is the lengthened shadow of a man. That is the Mutual Benefit. We have carried on the torch that they handed to us. Others will carry it on when we hand it to them, and it will be handed to those and only to those who will keep the Mutual Benefit what it has been.
18 THE PELICAN
