Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOME FEATURES PECULIAR TO LIFE INSURANCE. The contract of insurance is called a policy. The word is from the Italian word for lottery ticket. The monetary consideration for the insurance is called a premium, which word, in Latin, means "bonus" or "prize." The fixing of rates of premium in all branches of insurance was at first necessarily pure guess-work. In some cases, fortunately, the rates were guessed high enough or too high, in which latter case nothing was required but to adjust the premiums suitably; and in either case there was no interruption of the successful course of the business. In other instances, the first rates were guessed too low, and, such is the perversity of human nature, the displeasure and distrust of men were visited on those forms of insurance, instead of merely upon the poor guessing. This was because failure attended the first companies that essayed such branches of insurance. Life insurance premiums, fortunately, were guessed high enough by the first regular company, the "Old Equitable," of London, that undertook whole life insurance for a level premium. On the contrary, the prices of life annuities were guessed too low; and, if the institutions guaranteeing them had not been solvent governments and life insurance companies which earned on their life insurance policies sufficient profit to offset annuity losses, the sale of annuities would doubtless have been seriously checked. The rates for sickness or health insurance—it is known by both names—were also guessed toolow at first, and the business has suffered from the results of that circumstance to this day. In all branches of insurance, it has come to be recognized, though in some much earlier than in others, that proper rates of premium are to be found by combining statistics and by appl...