dent that this course can be offered and furnished to 1,000 different candidates throughout the United States at an expense of less than $500. The course itself forms a convincing and cumulative argument in favor of the company, which can, therefore, afford to furnish it even to the agents of other companies if requested, or to those who have, to begin with, but a very slight interest in the subject.

The value of such a course as an educator on the special policies and practices of the company is easy to see. The lessons can make a strong plea for annual or deferred dividends, return premium or investment contracts, as the company may desire. They can explain and emphasize those policies which the home office most wishes to push and they furnish an especially convenient manner of introducing and starting any new policy the company may be just putting out.

Now, do not misunderstand me as advocating this correspondence course as a complete means of making a life insurance man. Of course you and I both know that the only way to make a life insurance man is by personal contact with some other life insurance man. The only way you can develop an agent really and thoroughly is to work with him and give him your ideas by word of mouth and to let him see how the business is done in the field. But I am agitating a system which shall make it easy to reach, interest and begin the development of the life insurance agent. In my own agency they always held agencies' conventions. We developed the material by every possible means after we had taken it.

In conclusion, let me reiterate that this plan reaches and fertilizes the prospective agents wherever they may be; it stimulates their interest in the business; furnishes them a working idea of the company's policies in a practical manner; and directs a large majority of the newly budding agency material into the hands of the company which offers such facilities. I confidently affirm that the company which first opens up this plan as a home office institution, announces it widely and develops it in a practical manner, will secure wide-spread prestige and an enormous benefit in every part of the country. It will assist its general agents by furnishing

them with fresh men. Such a company will be offering something more valuable than bonuses, prizes or extra commissions. It will have something with which to offset the extremely large commission offers which are frequently made by unwise managements. Finally, it will open its arms in an easy and a natural method to all new material with a welcome to engage in its work.

What company will make this inexpensive and very promising experiment?

At the conclusion of Mr. Dwiggins' address he was accorded a vote of thanks for his very able paper.

At 12:20 p. m. the morning session adjourned.

AFTERNOON SESSION.

The afternoon session of the convention was called to order at 2:40 by President Dolph.

Mr. A. W. Childs, Manchester, N. H.-As a delegate from New Hampshire I desire to announce the death last evening of Colonel John P. Linehan, insurance commissioner of New Hampshire. Colonel Linehan was a good friend of underwriters' associations and a good, loving man, and I move that a committee be appointed to pass suitable resolutions to be sent to his family.

The motion was carried.

President Dolph-I will announce the committee later with your permission.

We are highly favored in having with us this afternoon a man who has attained high rank in his chosen profession, and is an elert and active official of one of the most progressive and successful companies in the business.

He came from an old Boston family, and obtained his early education in that city. At an early age he yielded to the "wanderlust," broke home ties and went to sea. In spite of the fact that at the age of 16 he was made the mate of a ship, his yearning for knowledge conquered, he returned home, fitted for and entered the Harvard Medical School. About this time the Civil War broke out, and leaving his course unfinished he went to the front and served with distinction as a surgeon in the Union Army, enlisting as a private, returning as a staff officer.

At the close of the war he returned to college and obtained his degree. After graduating from the Harvard

Medical College he studied medicine in Vienna, Paris and other European centers, and then returned to the United States and settled in Cleveland, O., where he became a professor in the Cleveland Medical School, and later health officer of that city, incidentally acting as examiner for the company with which he has been identified for nearly thirty years, for many years at the head of its medical department.

The best evidence we have of his ability is the low mortality enjoyed by his company. He is a keen student of his business and is respected by all who know and love him. I know you gentlemen will extend a hearty welcome to the medical examiner of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance] Company of Boston, Dr. Frank Wells. [Applause.]

Dr. Wells-Mr. President and Gentlemen: I beg you will consider that what I have to say to you this afternoon I alone am responsible for and not the company

that I represent. And I desire also to apologize to my many friends of the press who have asked me for an advance copy of my manuscript in order that they might report it. I have been obliged to return the answer to them that I am not in the habit of writing out an address, whether rightly or wrongly, and must depend on the spur of the moment for what I say. Besides all this it cannot make very much difference what a medical director says on the subject of life insurance. The matters which are laid before you in the careful and thoughtful papers which have been presented here are of more practical interest to you gentlemen and the business, commercial and insurance world, than anything that the medical directors can say to you.

Mark Twain tells a story that many years ago he was at a husking bee in one of the western states in the latter part of November, when there had been a light fall of snow on the ground. He had a most delightful time. The girls were pretty; there were a great many red ears;

the supper was delicious; but he said unfortunately they served the cider out of a whiskey barrel from which they had forgotten to take the whiskey, and he said it was a wise Providence that sent another fall of snow to cover up his footsteps as he zigzagged home. [Laughter.] And I beg you gentlemen will throw the mantle of charity around the mental zigzag which the medical director may make this afternoon.

It certainly is a very great honor for me or for any other medical director, and certainly a great privilege to be able to appear before you, you who are the important factor--I won't say the most important factor-but an important factor-in this great business of life insurance. You are certainly the bones and sinews of the organization, without which no company can expect to succeed. The office sometimes seeks the man. The man very seldom if ever seeks insurance, unless its advantages are presented to him by you gentlemen who are acting as agents for the various life insurance companies.

There is no need for me to lay before you the character of the business in which you are engaged, but I beg you to consider, consider earnestly, consider truly, that it is one of the most magnificent, one of the most uplifting forms of business that a man can possibly be engaged in. Faith, hope and charity; the greatest of these is charity. And it is that work which you are doing today in presenting the policies of life insurance to those who are so widely scattered over the country. You who have put on the books of life insurance companies in the United States alone over twelve billion dollars in the way of policies. It needs patience. It needs perseverance. It needs a zeal and an intelligence which command the respect of every one. It is not everybody who is fitted for this business of life insurance. It takes a peculiar talent, a peculiar knack. I myself would be an awful failure at it. If I should go in and ask a man to take out a policy and he should say, "I do not want the policy," I should say, "You know what you want," and I should leave. How much of a success would I make? [Laughter.] So it is your patience, and when an agent says, "Doctor, I am persistent," I say, "Let me shake hands with you. I am a bit that way myself, and now let us see who has the pull."

This business is uplifting in the extreme. There are mistakes which are committed, mistakes which can be pardoned, which can be overlooked, but misdemeanors never. Now, to my mind the standard of life insurance reached its height about seven years ago, but due to the great competition which exists among the various companies, the pushing and the rushing and the forcing for business, there have been a number of things done which we will call mistakes, mistakes which have led to legislative investigation, which legislative investigations are hurtful to a certain degree to the whole business of life insurance, the public forgetting that as a whole life insurance companies are conducted in the interests of the public and to protect their rights.

The reason in my mind why these mistakes are committed by the agency force of the companies is a failure to recognize what is the proper and the paramount and the important factor in our business. I recognize that you are the men behind the gun, but I also recognize that there are those behind the men serving the gun whose interests must be considered. It is not you gentlemen, it is we officers of the company; but before you comes the applicant; before the applicant comes the company; and before the company comes the policyholder whose life must be protected in every way that is possible for us to do. Who has made the company? Who has made it possible for you to exist, for me as an officer to exist? It is not your money; it is not my money; it is the premiums paid by the policyholders who have a right and it is equity that they should expect as fair a return in the way of dividends as it is possible for the company to make. This is not only a life insurance business, but it has become a great financial enterprise, and certainly they all should expect, as they would from investments elsewhere, a fair return for the money invested.

Gentlemen, with this in your mind, think of what is going to remedy these mistakes. I say plainly, honesty. Honesty is the best policy. I am not preaching a sermon to you, but I say that while honesty in your mind is the best policy (and so it is) try to be honest for honesty's sake. Don't become a Jones. You don't know who Jones is? I will tell you. Jones is a poker player and