Excerpt from History of the Prudential Insurance Company of America: Industrial Insurance, 1875-1900

It has justly been said, by a great French writer on English history and civilization, that Whoever attentively considers the English turn of mind will be struck by the fact of a twofold nature on one Side practical ability, and on the other the absence of general ideas and elevation of mind on purely theoretical questions, and, whether we turn to works on history or juris prudence or any other subject, we rarely find that the great fundamental causes of things have been investigated. These remarks of Guizot apply with special force to the history of life insurance and in particular to that modern branch of the business which is today, the English-speaking world over, known by millions of working people as Industrial Insurance.

With this idea in mind, the following sketch has been pre pared as a contribution towards a better study of'the all-important problem of life insurance for the masses and a better knowledge of a form of insurance which, though familiar to millions of the industrial population, is practically unknown to even the most thoroughly informed students of sociology and political economy. While Mr. Spencer could speak of Friendly Societies as the most familiar instances of co-operation among working people, and rightly included certain other bodies of kindred natures, chiefly burial societies and Industrial Assurance Societies doing for the poor what the more conspicuous institutions for averaging the risks of fire, accidents, etc., do for the better off, T it is only too true that this form of insurance, of saving and thrift has almost completely escaped the notice of the economist and been practi cally ignored by writers on what Mr. Spencer has so well defined as forms of social structure.

Richard T. Ely, Problems of to-day, p. 100. T Principles of Sociology, Vol. III., p. 556.

Industrial insurance differs from ordinary level-premium life insurance in the following four essential points: first, the premiums are payable weekly, instead of being payable quar terly, semi-annually or annually; second, the premiums are collected from the house of the insured by an agent of the company, instead of being payable at the office of the company; third, the amounts of insurance are adjusted to the unit pre mium, instead of the premium being adjusted to the amount that is, in Industrial insurance certain amounts of insurance can be purchased for a premium of five cents per week or multiples thereof, while in Ordinary insurance the amount is in round numbers and usually in multiples of one thousand dollars; fourth, every member of the family can be insured for a small premium, while in Ordinary insurance, as a rule, only the head of the family is insured for a proportionately large amount.

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