ance company, and it is
only by separating the two in our minds as far as possible that we can
obtain a clear conception of the laws that should govern the
apportionment of the expenses among the great variety of policies.

While it is a comparatively simple matter to state the amount of
either the insurance or savings bank element in a single policy, it is
by no means easy, as things go, to classify the company's actual
expenses on this basis.

Fortunately, we can pretty accurately determine what these amounts
should be in any particular case.

In the first place, there are institutions in our midst devoted solely
to receiving and conserving small sums of money; doing, in fact,
exactly what our insurance companies are undertaking to do with the
reserve and contributions thereto. These savings banks are required by
law to make returns to the State commissioner, from whose official
report we can get a very good idea of the expense attendant on doing
this business.

Confining ourselves to the city banks, where the conditions more
nearly resemble those of the insurance companies, we find in
thirty-eight combined institutions for saving in the State of
Massachusetts a deposit in 1888 of $192,174,566, taken care of at an
aggregate cost of $455,387, or about 24-100 of one per cent.

The same ratio carried out for all the savings banks in Massachusetts
gives a trifle over 25-100 of one per cent.; we may, therefore,
consider 1/4 of one per cent. as expressing pretty nearly the cost of
receiving, paying out, and investing the savings of the people.

We must remember in this connection that in the popular estimation,
the savings bank is an important factor in the public welfare, and in
the towns and smaller cities there are often found public spirited men
willing to give their services to encourage this mode of saving; but
public sentiment has not yet given to life insurance the place which
it is destined, sooner or later, to occupy by the side of the savings
bank. Hence the services of able managers can only be obtained by a
liberal outlay of the corporate funds. A satisfactory adjustment of
the matter of expenses will, perhaps, do more than anything else to
bring about this recognition on the part of the public.

In the case of the savings bank it is safe to say that for double the
present outlay a liberal salary could be paid to all the officers.
Following the analogy, we are led to infer that if this be the case in
s