surance worthy of the name, and two
only. The one is by payments accurately adjusted to the cost of
insurance at each actual age, and which inevitably, unavoidably and
inexorably, must increase with the age of the person insured, and the
other is by level, or uniform payments extending over the whole duration
of life or for a stated number of years. The first is the natural system
and has been adopted _in part_, and imperfectly, by assessment
companies; the second is the artificial system, and is the one which has
been offered exclusively until lately, by all the regular life insurance
companies. Properly carried out, the one is as sound in theory and as
safe in practice as the other. In fact, the artificial premiums are the
exact mathematical or commuted equivalents of the natural premiums.

Until within the last decade, the level premium system was practically
the only one in use. Since then there have come into existence hundreds
of co-operative or assessment companies. These institutions have had a
wonderful growth. It is claimed that the number of members and the
amounts insured, double those, respectively, in the old or regular
companies.

Assessment companies do not, strictly speaking, grant insurance. They
are rather agencies, or trust companies, and their functions or
covenants are to make assessments upon survivors when deaths occur, and
to pay over the proceeds of such assessments to the beneficiaries of the
deceased members. There is no definite promise to pay in full, and no
obligation to pay more than the assessments yield. There is no capital,
no risk, no _insurance!_ It is a voluntary association of
individuals. There is usually but little if any penalty for
discontinuance of membership, and the permanence of such institutions
depends mainly upon the volition of their members. They spring into
existence suddenly by the voluntary association of a few individuals
without capital or personal risk, and as suddenly they may go out of
existence by the voluntary act or withdrawal of their members. A breath
may create, a breath destroy.

It must be evident then to the merest tyro, that the permanence and
success of assessment companies depend upon the most rigid observance of
those principles which science and sound business experience have
demonstrated to be fundamental. Among these principles may be mentioned
the following.

1. Rates of assessments or payments adjusted to the cost of insurance at
the actu