THE INSURANCE OF CHILDREN. 
ARGUMENT OF JOHN D. LONG BEFORE THE COM- 
MITTEE ON INSURANCE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS 
LEGISLATURE, APRIL 4, 1895, ON THE BILL TO 
PROHIBIT INSURANCE OF CHILDREN UNDER TEN 
YEARS OF AGE. 
AMENDED COPY OF STENOGRAPHIC REPORT. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : 
You have the testimony before you. You will look at it 
with judicial fairness. Mr. Reed on one side and myself on 
the other are counsel employed and paid. But none the less 
it is our duty to argue the case with fairness and care. 
He will say that he stands alone, arrayed against great 
corporations. Yet every lawyer knows that there is no de- 
fendant so easy to attack. He will seek to divert attention 
from the real issue by drawing pictures of the many-storied 
and capacious buildings which insurance companies have erected 
and in part occupy in Boston and New York and Newark, and 
of the decoration of their ceilings and the carpets on their 
lioors. But it will occur to you that if such ad captandum 
suggestions have any bearing at all, they weigh against all 
successful and well-managed corporations, railroad corpora- 
tions, banks, savings banks, fire insurance companies, and the 
old line life insurance companies which every witness on either 
side of this case has commended, as well as these industrial 
insurance companies which are here attacked. And it will 
also to you that the most economical and business-like 
thing such corporations can do is to invest their capital in val- 
uable city real estate and to build thereon the most attractive 
and largest possible accumulation of stores and offices for 
rental, and that in no other way can they better serve the in- 
terest of their constituents and make them secure. 
We meet the issue fairly, honestly and squarely. We 
meet it first by the representatives of these corporations, who 
give you, as they have already given to the State in their re- 
ports, all the facts, concealing nothing. Dr. Wells of the 
John Hancock, Mr. Fiske of the Metropolitan, and Mr. Dry- 
den of the Prudential Company have stated the circumstances 
under which these companies have grown, what they are, and 2 
what are their methods. We have also filed on our side peti- 
tions circulated by men who are interested in our system, to be 
sure, but just as petitions have been circulated by agents of 
the other side. We have also published Mr. Fiske’s address 
in the newspapers. You are aware, of course, that when this 
case began, it began with a sensational appeal to the public. 
Our newspaper friends, always seeking to interest the public, 
presented the sensational side of the case with headlines, with 
suggestions of child murder, since then abandoned and with- 
drawn, and with cases of starvation, extreme poverty, hard- 
ship, suffering ; and thereby a sentiment was at first created 
against us in the community, which thus got its first impres- 
sion of child insurance. It was as if the general public had 
never heard of the system of adult life insurance until an in- 
stance of murder for realizing on a $10,000 policy was an- 
nounced to them. In such a case the first impulse would be 
to denounce all life insurance. 
When we came to present our side, of course we had only 
dry statistics to present; there was nothing to catch the eye. 
Not only had the other side been set out in glaring headlines, 
but people had begun to write to the newspapers letters full of 
mistaken impressions and erroneous inferences. It seemed 
to us therefore proper, and we submit it was proper, that we 
should have Mr. Fiske’s statement published in the Boston 
dailies ; we would have been glad to have had it published 
broadcast everywhere, but that was enough to bring it before 
the public; and the result has been a decided change in the 
public sentiment. 
One word with regard to myself. I receive now and then 
a newspaper communication criticising me for my appearance 
here. Good ladies, unfamiliar with the issue, meet me with the 
fear that I am opposing the cause of the little ones, for whom 
my heart is as tender as theirs. I think I recognize my duty not 
only as a lawyer but also as a citizen; even a lawyer, especially 
if he has been in public life and feels his responsibility to the 
public, acts with some consideration. It has been my habit 
almost at every session of our Legislature to decline large re- 
tainers in cases where I could not appear because I did not 3 
believe the petitioners had a good case. I do not appear be- 
fore you here simply as counsel; I appear before you under 
a strong and clear conviction. I believe that this legislation 
asked for is wrong, is illogical, and is such as no legislative 
body ought to pass. If I were a member of the House or of 
the Senate, I would vote against it, if I voted alone. My 
heart is warm for the children. I am a vice-president of the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; I have 
spoken on their platform; I have pleaded for their cause ; I 
have represented them at their gatherings; I am one with them 
in the general purposes which they have in view. In this 
particular instance, I, in common with a good many others of 
their members and officers, differ from their secretary. 
CHARACTER OF TIIE INSURANCE COMPANIES. 
What are the corporations which are attacked here ? One 
of them is a Massachusetts corporation, the John Hancock 
Company. And who are its officers? Among them are Mr. 
Samuel Wells, a man of tne highest character; Mr. John Carr, 
President of the First National Bank, and Vice- President of 
the Home for Little Wanderers; Thomas F. Temple, well 
known and respected in this community, Register of Deeds, 
and for a long time Chairman of the Overseers of the Poor; 
Daniel Needham, just dead; Franklin Haven, President of 
the Merchants’ National Bank; Edwin B. Holmes, present 
Grand Master of the Masons, one of the largest charitable 
organizations in the State ; Medical Director Dr. Wells, who 
has largely devoted his life to charity among the poor; and 
other well-known gentlemen. If such men have been delib- 
erately engaged in a matter which is inhuman and an outrage 
upon the lives of little children, then it will be a surprise to 
this community. I do not believe this committee is prepared 
to put such a stigma upon them. Of the other two companies, 
one is the Metropolitan of New York, known everywhere for its 
promptness and stability, its credit and great resources ; and 
the other is the Prudential of New Jersey, so strong in the 
confidence of the people of that State that in one city, we are 
told, its policies exceed the population. Ask your own Mas- 4 
sachusetts Commissioner of Insurance what is the character of 
all three of these corporations. 
TWO POINTS OF VIEW. 
There are two ways of approaching a matter like this, — 
one is a consistent, fair, and logical way; the other, it seems 
to me, is manifestly the reverse. The other side start with 
exceptional cases, and rarely exceptional cases. Out of 
100,000 cases of child insurance, they select not more than a 
dozen, — cases, too, all based on hearsay, shown moreover to be 
not only exaggerated, but not even in point,—and yet on 
those they ask you to legislate with regard to a whole system, — 
on those and nothing else. 
Let me give you an illustration. Mr. Atkinson was here 
the other day. If 1 am not mistaken, Mr. Atkinson, who is 
a leading authority in fire insurance, was also in some way 
favorable to what is now a system in this State, — and that is 
the Employers’ Liability Insurance System. It is a good 
system. If an employee is hurt, there is an insurance fund on 
which his employer, if liable for the injury, can call. Such an 
employer, if thus insured, is not ruined if his employee gets a 
judgment against him for three or four thousand dollars for 
injuries. It is a good thing, as I think we all admit. But 
suppose Mr. Reed had come here with a crusade against 
Employers’ Liability Insurance, and had begun by arguing that 
when you insure an emplo3Ter against liability for injury to his 
working men, you take away from him, as Mr. Atkinson ar- 
gued against child insurance, all sense of responsibility, 
so that he does not care whether he provides sufficient machin- 
ery, good staging or good tools or safe boilers, feeling that 
the insurance company will take care of him. Suppose Mr. 
Reed had then described, and our friends of the newspapers 
had put in great headlines in the newspapers, how he was 
present at nightfall in the home of a working man, the wife 
preparing supper for the return of the father, who was soon 
coming to sit at table with %her and the little ones. A knock 
at the door, and men come in bringing on a shutter his dead 5 
body, — dead perhaps by reason of the explosion of a boiler, 
dead because his employer has not exercised the care which 
he would have exercised in the supervision of his machinery if 
he had not been insured. Or the picture of a boy, fourteen or 
fifteen years of age, who in the morning gladly tells his mother 
that he has a chance to work and to earn money, and in the 
afternoon comes home, with his right arm gone, caught in the 
sharp knives of a cutting machine and taken off, — and all 
because his employer was insured, and did not take the 
trouble to warn him, or to look out that the machine was 
properly safeguarded. 
Would you say that was a fair way to present the work- 
ing of the employers’ liability insurance? Even if there were 
such cases would you not say, “ Meet the incident evil by 
legislation, but do not abolish the system, because it is a good 
system ” ? 
INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE A SYSTEM 
What, then, is the way to approach the present issue? 
Here is a system which has not been concocted in a night; it 
has grown up out of the great interests of human nature and 
the best feelings in the human breast. I suppose if there is 
any sentiment that is imbedded in the human heart, it is re- 
spect for our dead; and that respect, to their credit be it said, 
you find nowhere stronger than among the poor. Do you 
know what it is to be poor? Are you associated at all with 
the poor? Have you some poor girl working in your family 
at three or four dollars a week, and parting with most of that 
in order to share it with her even poorer kinsfolk? Such 
people make any sacrifice for their own, and especially do 
they make sacrifice in honor of those who are taken from 
them. The whole city of Boston thrilled the other day with 
the story of a poor woman from New York, utterly unknown, 
who died at the Adams House; and Mr. Steve Brodie was 
showered with congratulations because he stepped forward 
and saved her from what? — from a pauper’s grave. Every- 
body thanked him because there is this instinctive feeling 
against being treated as a pauper and buried as a pauper, 6 
especially an instinctive horror against one of our own lying 
in a pauper’s grave. 
Out of that feeling years and years ago came the burial 
societies which once existed in England. But such a burial 
society has around it no safeguards of law, no assurance of 
collecting its assessments, no certainty of stability. If its 
treasurer is dishonest and runs away with its funds, every- 
thing is gone. It followed that protection and safeguard were 
sought by incorporation and legislation; and then came these 
societies, — societies which grew up in England forty years ago 
and in this country twenty years ago, the Prudential there, 
the John Hancock, Metropolitan and Prudential here, and they 
have gone on from small beginnings, increasing and increasing 
as the public interest has demanded. Mr. Reed will tell you, 
as if it were a reproach, that their growth has been in the pro- 
portion of two millions assets in 1879 to twenty-two millions 
in 1894. But it will occur to you that there could be no better 
evidence that the system meets a popular want and is showing 
the substantial reliance that can be put upon it. 
I will not weary yon with figures because you have them 
from Mr. Dryden and from Mr. Fiske; but I will mention a 
few. There are 7,000,000 persons old and young in this 
country insured in these three great American companies, to 
say nothing of a few smaller and local ones ; there are policies 
representing $766,000,000, which is an average of only about 
$100 to each person insured, showing you that it is genuinely 
industrial insurance and of so small an amount in each case 
that it does not offer a premium for neglect, for cruelty, for mur- 
der, or anything of the kind. It is a little nest-egg; it is 
a bit of something laid up for a wret day. There are also 
40,000 persons employed by these companies, — in this 
State I think some three thousand persons, more or less— good 
people, honest people, your constituents, your friends and 
my friends, people who are in as honorable business as the 
book canvasser, or the collector of money for religious societies, 
or the seller of sewing machines or organs or anything else, — 
worthy, reputable, decent people. 
EXTENT OF BUSINESS. 7 
In the Union at large there are 1,500,000 children under ten 
years of age insured. In Massachusetts there are 500,000 
persons old and young insured in these three companies. 
That is more than one fifth of the whole population of the 
State. And of those, 100,000, in round numbers, are under 
ten years of age. 
Now, gentlemen, bear in mind that out of that great 
body of half a million people, one fifth — more than a fifth — of 
all the people of this State, including 100,000 children, not 
a human being has been before you to cry out against this 
system, not one ! Is not that something? Have you thought 
of it, that out of half a million of people not a human 
being affected by a policy has been near you to ask for this 
legislation, while thousands have petitioned against it, and 
some of them haye appeared in person before you? 
In England there were 4,150,000 children under ten 
years of age insured in the year 1890 ; and the same year 
there were paid out in England and in this country nineteen 
millions of dollars of insurance to policy-holders. That is a 
growth of twenty years here and forty there. In other words, 
gentlemen, this is a system before you— a system just as 
well established as the railroad system, and it has grown 
up in the same way. The convenience of travel requires a 
railroad system; and yet the railroads time and again kill 
innocent people, men, women, and children; while it is ad- 
mitted now, and the research and experience of years show 
that this system of child insurance has never killed a human 
being. It is a system as well settled as fire insurance ; and yet 
one third of all fires are incendiary, and accompanied sometimes 
by loss of life; yet nobody thinks of abolishing fire insur- 
ance or railroads. It is as well settled as the electric lighting 
system; and yet every day you hear of some poor work- 
man caught on an electric pole, and falling senseless and dead 
to the ground. It is as well established as electric railways, 
which crush to death so many children in your streets, while 
child insurance has never taken a life. Yet you do not abol- 
ish electric cars. It is as well established as employers’ 
liability insurance. It is as well established as general life 8 
insurance, which every one of Mr. Reed’s witnesses approves, 
and yet life insurance often leads to murder, which child in- 
surance it is now admitted never does. The day before 
yesterday you read in the newspapers of a man in Connecti- 
cut murdered for the insurance on his life. Here in Cam- 
bridge jail you have a woman sentenced for life for the murder 
of her husband for insurance. In other words, in adult in- 
surance with its large policies there is temptation. They run 
all the way from one thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. 
But in child insurance, where the average policy is $28, not 
a human being, it is admitted, has ever lost life in consequence 
of being insured. It is just here that the suggestion yester- 
day of Mr. Atkinson against child insurance, that it offers 
the temptation of profit, is entirely answered by the fact that 
there is no profit in a sum so small that it pays nothing 
above the last expenses ; and by the further consideration that 
if the element of profit is an argument against insurance, 
the only insurance it applies to is the old line general insur- 
ance, which nobody thinks of attacking. 
Child insurance, then, gentlemen, being such a system, 
so long established, and so largely demanded and availed of 
by the people, think of the utter wildness and inconsider- 
ateness and craze of asking to wipe it all out with one stroke 
of the legislator’s pen! You are asked to wipe it out, pro- 
vide no substitute or amendment, and deprive the governor 
and the mayor and every other citizen of the right of insur- 
ing his little boy, and thereby providing a fund for him against 
the time he is twenty-one years of age. He could not then 
even insure his son in an old line company, and thus secure a 
fund of four or five thousand dollars to be paid him if he 
survived till twenty-one, or to his mother if he did not. Is that 
logical? Is that good legislation? Will a committee be led 
to anything of that kind ? It would wipe out not only child 
insurance, but this whole system of industrial insurance. 
Why? What is industrial insurance? Industrial insurance is 
the insurance of the whole family of an industrial worker. 
The system is incomplete unless the whole family are insured. 
If the industrial worker could insure a thousand dollars on 9 
one child or member of his family, he could hardly afford to 
insure the rest; but the small expense of child insurance he. 
can meet. The family is a unit. It is all bound up together. 
If one member is taken away, the debt which follows from 
the last expenses and. funeral is a common burden unless there 
is this little fund from the insurance, a little something on 
hand, to meet immediate necessities. Strike out the children 
under ten and you have stricken down the whole system, for 
there can be no full industrial insurance, that is family insur- 
ance, if a large part of the family is excluded. 
THE JOHN HANCOCK. 
One of the companies now attacked is a Massachusetts 
corporation, managed and represented by as eminent and true 
citizens as are in the Commonwealth, as my brother Ileed will 
cordially agree, — the John Hancock. It is a company which 
to-day keeps a reserve of $G,000,000 on hand for the benefit 
of its policy-holders, and last year it distributed in dividends 
$125,000 to all its insured. It is obliged to pay cash sur- 
render values amounting to many thousands of dollars during 
the year. And now legislation is proposed which will cripple 
one of the cleanest corporations in the State. But it is worse 
than that. That company is organized under the laws of 
Massachusetts. Cripple it here, and you cripple it everywhere. 
You will drive it out of business not only in Massachusetts, 
but in the Union, because you have impaired its charter. If 
you were asked to act in the interest of the Metropolitan or 
the Prudential, rival and foreign corporations, and therefore 
affected by your legislation only in this State, and if their 
rivalry were not an entirely generous and friendly one, you 
could not do them a better service than to strike down 
the John Hancock. 
Then, too, if you pass this bill, it is a serious ques- 
tion whether you do not destroy the value of every one 
of the present policies on the lives of the 100,000 Massa- 
chusetts children under ten years of age that are insured. 
Why? Because these are term policies. If this law goes 
on the statute book, then not one of those children whose 10 
policy lapses can take out a new policy. You have thus caused 
a lapse that is a lapse with a vengeance. 
On the question of insurable interest I do not propose 
to spend a moment. I am addressing gentlemen who are 
familiar with insurance law ; some of you are lawyers. The 
Supreme Court of the United States has decided that there is 
an insurable interest in a child. 
BENEFITS. 
Gentlemen, let us come to the benefits attending child 
insurance. The best argument in favor of it is that the sys- 
tem exists. You cannot imagine a system recognized by 
forty years of legislative consideration, and showing this 
steady and immense growth, unless it is a benefit. A system 
which wras damaging the community would have run into the 
ground years ago. You can explain this great growth only 
on the ground that it meets a want and that it confers a 
benefit. The first great benefit is that it teaches thrift. As 
I said on the opening day, Ben Franklin would have welcomed 
such a thing ; it is something that he would have established 
if he had lived in our century. Your savings bank, of course, 
is an admirable thing; but people do not put five cents into 
savings banks. If they do it for a few weeks, they do not 
continue to do it. You can get these little contributions only 
by constant calls, by the interest of somebody who will go 
about and see that they are paid. If poor working people 
put into a savings bank five cents a week, it would take two 
years to accumulate five dollars, and if a child dies the first 
year or the second year, what is five dollars? Industrial 
insurance is an entirely different system from the. savings 
bank system. They are both good. There is no competition 
between them. The deposits in the savings banks have not 
fallen oft', but have increased, while industrial insurance has 
also grown. 
Here is another benefit. Is not the doctor called a little 
sooner, and is he not a little readier to come to the sick child 
if there is a fund of this kind ? Mr. Reed has said that we 
are caring for the dead child and not for the living one. But 11 
have you thought whether the living children are not better 
cared for, a life sometimes saved, because it is known that this 
fund exists?— especially when, as often happens, several chil- 
dren are sick and, while one is taken, others pull through and 
are helped through by the proceeds of this resource, which you 
will remember are always paid by the insurance companies 
within twenty-four hours, and only to the family policy-holder. 
The great benefit of these policies is of course that, as I 
have already said, they rescue the family from the horror of a 
pauper’s grave, in one contingency, or from the weight of debt 
incurred with its heavy interest for the last expenses, in another. 
It is a false philosophy which does not see a general moral ele- 
vation in thus inducing self-support in these emergencies rather 
than dependence on the public poor-fund. The industrial 
people themselves feel this very keenly. As Mr. Edward 
O’Donnell so intelligently put it, it is with them either debt or 
insurance; and the insurance they will have. You cannot stop 
them from paying tribute to their dead until you blot out of their 
hearts their love for their children, — and God forbid that a 
Massachusetts Legislature take any step in that direction. Need 
I urge what a boon it is, when the little one is lying dead, 
for the mother to feel that it will not lie in a pauper’s grave ; 
that it will not be an object of public charity; that the family 
self -respect will be kept by paying out of its own purse the last 
tribute, with decent ceremonies and appointments? Put your- 
selves for a moment in such a mother’s place. 
You have, therefore, a system which justifies itself by its 
own growth. You have inculcated the habit of saving; you 
have the accumulation of these little funds; you have some- 
thing to meet the contingencies of the last sickness. Bear in 
mind that out of these 500,000 industrial Massachusetts peo 
pie, there are many of them just as sensible, just as hard- 
headed, just as sharp, and just as ecomonical as you are. 
They7 do not waste money on funerals. Where the child is a 
little older, so that there is more money than the $15 of the 
first year, there is in many of these cases not only money 
enough to pay the funeral expenses, which are economical gen- 
erally, but also something for the doctor; and sometimes they 12 
are able to lay aside so that if the next child be taken sick 
there is a small fund to meet the expenses of its sickness. 
Noav, Avhat harm has been done? Forgive me: it does 
seem to me, in attacking a great system like this, a system 
which does so much good and employs so much labor, print- 
ers, typewriters, agents, young men and young women in hon- 
est work all over the Commonwealth, as if the grounds sug- 
gested for overthrowing this great system, uoav that the 
suggestion of child murder is all disaArowed and abandoned, 
are comparatively petty and inconsiderate. 
THE CHARGE OP CHILD MURDER ABANDONED. 
I say since the charge of child murder has been aban- 
doned. Do not forget, however, that the petitioners did start 
with that charge, although they had no more reason for it 
then than they have now when they so zealously disavow it. I 
will not charge them with maliciously seeking to deceive the 
public, but had that been their purpose they could hardly have 
been more effectual. A falsehood will go a hundred miles 
Avhile the truth goes one. If I dared to utter publicly here a 
slander of any gentleman in this room, it would run through- 
out the community; it would be put in headlines, and his 
character Avould be damaged. I might to-morroAv appear be- 
fore you and say that I disavow the imputation ; but the harm 
is done. PNerybody knoAvs that when the prssent inquiry was 
started, it was started as a crusade to preseiwe the li\'es of 
children from murder, from starvation, from neglect which 
caused their murder. That is uoav disaArowed,—disaArowed 
because it is not true, and because the history of forty years 
shows not one case, although adult insurance shoAvs case after 
case. Yet an article appeared the other day in the New York 
World, AArhich I understand Mrs. Atwood and some others on 
that side aided in preparing; which was published AA'ith head- 
lines and woodcuts ; and which practically renews the charge; 
and in AArhich not one word is put in from our side —not one of 
these alleged cases explained ; and the impression one would 
get from reading it is that Massachusetts is engaged in per- 
mitting murder by the starvation of little children for the profit 
of the insurance on their lives. 13 
In that way public sentiment was, to start wdth, poisoned. 
When I went home the day after this investigation began a 
good lady said to me : “ Is it possible that you can have an 
insurance of two or three thousand dollars on the life of a child ? 
Is not that a temptation to crime?” “My dear woman,” 
said I, “is that your idea of child insurance? Are you aware 
that at five cents a week you can get but $15 insurance on a 
child the first year, and that the average paid by one of these 
companies on all its child policies is only $28?” “Oh, no, 
I knew nothing about that; that puts a different phase on it 
altogether; that is no temptation.” 
I met one of the distinguished petitioners whose name has 
been reiterated here, and I said, “What did you understand 
when you signed that petition? Did you understand you 
could insure a child’s life for any amount? ” He said, “ Yes, 
I supposed so.” You have also the printed letter of Mr. ,T. War- 
ren Robinson, another petitioner, who now publicly withdraws 
his name from the petition, and says that the man who circu- 
lated it regrets that he did so. So there are thousands who 
have either signed petitions, or have been biassed in this matter, 
because they did not understand it. 
FUNERALS. 
Let us come to the charges, if we can find them. The 
first one is a charge of expensive funerals. We asked one of 
Mr. Reed’s witnesses how much these funerals cost. I under- 
stood his reply to be, five dollars for the grave, five dollars for 
the hearse, five dollars for the carriage, five dollars for the 
undertaker, and then some other little expenses. 1 suppose 
you could not have a funeral for much less than $25. And 
remember that so long as people have hearts, you are going to 
have that expense whether there is any insurance or not. 
The statistics that we put in show that undertakers’ bills are 
often larger than the insurance money received, — with the 
doctor’s bills added certainly larger. So that Mr. Atkinson’s 
point is gone. There is no profit in the death of the child ; 
there is no temptation; and of course there is no murder of 
children, as there is sometimes of adults, for the insurance 
money. 14 
But what is the use of wasting time over this matter of 
an expensive funeral? It is ridiculous and absurd to ask the 
Legislature to legislate on the cost of funerals, — not on the 
cost of the funeral which the rich man on Beacon Street shall 
pay, for he does not insure in this way, but on the cost of the 
funeral which the poor laboring man shall pay. You will find 
not only O’Donnell and Taylor here, but an uprising throughout 
the State of the great industrial population, if you attempt to 
dictate to them how much they shall pay in tribute to a dead 
child, how much they shall give as the token of the love and 
affection which they bear it. Good God ! that is paternal gov- 
ernment run into the ground. For very many of the poor it must 
be either insurance or debt or a pauper burial, and it is ridic- 
ulous to ask the Legislature of Massachusetts to legislate how 
much a man shall pay for a funeral, especially wrhen you have 
before you the figures which show that since 1880 the number 
of pauper funerals has diminished nearly one half. Why di- 
minished? Because people, through this system of thrift, pay 
the expense of their family funerals, and save the city or town 
from paying it. 
Comment is made here because perhaps some poor woman 
once in her lifetime rides in a hack. Thank God she can. Pity 
the cause, but you will not censure her for riding at the funeral of 
her child, even if it cost something. The self-respect is worth 
the cost. I remember, when a boy in a country village, one 
beautiful morning in June, wdien the dew was on the ground 
and the birds were singing, a man gave me a drive in his new 
chaise, — and you know what a chaise was in those days to 
a country boy. I rode a mile, and then I ran back so happy 
that my feet hardly disturbed the dew on the grass. Suppose 
some old Pumblechook had said to me that I would have been 
better employed picking up chips ! Poor Mrs. Coakley, who 
was brought here by Mr. Reed the other day, said that her 
time was worth fifteen cents an hour. But it was not lost. 
She will remember as long as she lives that she appeared 
before an august Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, 
and that she was questioned by my handsome and melodious 
friend, the counsel on the other side. There is something 15 
more than a money value in having now and then a lift out of 
the ordinary routine. 
THE CHARGE OF NEGLECT. 
But the main charge, really the only charge, is neglect, — 
neglect that leads to the injury of insured children because they 
are insured. I meet it square in the face. Not one such 
case has been substantiated. Mr. Reed and Mr. Atwood 
would not at first give us the names in these cases so that we 
could investigate them and show the facts. Mrs. Leach 
never has given us one, — Mrs. Leach, who has had a 
confinement practice larger than that of any physician in the 
world hitherto, — one a day ! Mrs. Atwood and the other 
young lady, Miss Frenyear, at last gave us some twelve cases, 
of which we have investigated all that their notes enable us to 
find. And it turns out that not one of them, horrible cases as 
some of them are of cruelty and neglect, is attributable to the 
fact that the child was insured, — not one — not one ! 
Especially also bear in mind the turning and convincing 
fact, not only overwhelmingly shown by the statistics that have 
been put in, but not contraverted by the other side, that the 
death rate is less among insured children than among non- 
insured. 
HEARSAY EVIDENCE. 
Before I take up these cases, let me call your attention to 
the fact that the testimony on which they rest is almost with- 
out exception hearsay testimony; that not one of them has 
been presented by testimony which would be heard for a mo- 
ment in any court of justice; and that the women who pre- 
sent them are biassed by their zeal and also by their interest. 
For there is here a little conflict of interest. Things were 
running smoothly during the booming times, and charitable 
organizations got enough money. Poor people had work. But 
the hard times came, and many families that were paying five 
cents a week for insurance, and could pay it easily enough ordi- 
narily, have not been able to do so since then. Societies like 
the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children do not get money now as freely as they did. Their 16 
agents are good people, but they are paid, just as our agents 
are paid. The societies find their money falling off, and a con- 
flict of interests ensues. 
Then there is the usual error in statement. Did you ever 
hear two women quarrel over a domestic bone of contention; 
or have you known a boy whipped in school, and try to reconcile 
the boy’s story and the teacher’s story ? Certainly you cannot 
get the truth from hearsay. Of course these people mean to 
tell the truth, but they are liable to the imperfections of 
human nature. Mrs. Atwood and Miss Frenyear are zealous 
people; and see into what mistakes their zeal leads them! 
Miss Frenyear told us there was one family in which there 
were seventeen policies in existence. AVhat idea did you get 
from that statement? Was it not that the seventeen were all 
in force at once and that the family was paying premiums on 
them all? But it turns out that that is not true at all,— 
that there were three separate successive sets of policies, all of 
which one after another lapsed, and on which the woman paid 
nothing, so that she had insurance for a part of the year with- 
out paying a cent. As fast as one set lapsed, the agent re- 
newed them, thus giving the woman every chance, and showing 
humanity rather than greed ; for the company wras liable for 
four weeks after every issuance even if the premium was not 
paid within that time. 
Another instance of error in hearsay: Mr. Fay wrote to 
Mr. Gerry a letter in which he said, “ Mr. Fiske says you 
have been convinced of the value of this insurance.” Mr. 
Fiske, as you know, said nothing of the kind. Another : Mrs. 
Atwood said the Finn children were insured. She now admits 
they were not. She was mistaken, and yet but for our cor- 
rection would have left you under a -wrong impression. Mrs. 
Atwood also said she never knew of child insurance in thrifty 
families ; and yet we have shown you a list of streets in wrhich 
this insurance obtains among the worthiest families. Senator 
Maccabe so remarked in reference to one of the East Boston 
streets. 
SPECIAL CASES. 
Now, let me take up these cases. Take case testified 17 
to by Mrs. Atwood, book 2, page 20. She testified that 
the family was one of the filthiest she had ever known, and 
that she had spent dollars trying to clean up and make the 
house habitable for the children, who were always sore-eyed 
and diseased. Two rooms were in a very filthy condition, and 
the father and mother were both drunken. The most she said 
the husband had earned was $4 a week. Now, we show by a 
reputable physician, Dr. Brechin, that he examined those 
children and found every one in a perfect condition except one 
who had sore eyes. See how the spirit of exaggeration had 
come in. One child had sore eyes, and Mrs. Atwood im- 
mediately generalized that they were a sore-eyed family. He 
found the floors clean, and that the family occupy three rooms, 
for which they pay $2.50 a week rent. He was told by the 
father that he earned from $10 to $15 a week, and he said he 
had made at times $20 and $25 a week. A boy sixteen years 
old in the family said that he worked and earned from $5 to 
$7 a week, and sometimes a little more ; and another boy, who 
goes to school, earns from $2 to $3 a week after school hours, 
doing errands. Mrs. Atwood said she had never known the 
family except when they were in the depths of poverty, and 
that the children had been neglected ; while Dr. Brechin’s testi- 
mony shows that considerable money was earned by the family, 
and that when the child died three months ago there were four 
physicians in attendance and every care was given to it. 
Yet that was one of the pitiful stories; but tell me what 
in any event it has to do with the matter of child insurance. 
case 2. 
Take the case book 2, page 22. Mrs. Atwood said that 
the child was very filthy and neglected ; that the mother drank 
daily, and the child was left to board on Tremont Street, and 
an agent called one day and induced the mother to insure the 
child. From December 1st the mother had done nothing for 
the child. At the end of four weeks after the insurance she 
disappeared, leaving the child behind her. But it appears 
from Mrs. Atwood’s own testimony that the child was neglected 
for some time before it was insured, as well as alter ; that after 18 
the insurance the child was given to the Alassachusetts Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. And here again, 
even if there was anything wrong, it is in no way due to 
insurance. 
TIIE CRESSEY CASE. 
Come to the Cressey case,— and I was amazed at Mr. 
Reed’s spending so much time on it, bringing forward Officer 
Mann and Otlicer Nash and the Daily Traveller of two or three 
years ago to show what ? I ask your attention especially to 
this case, because it has made a great sensation. Suppose it 
is shown that this family was one of the worst and most 
drunken families in South Boston — that its members have 
been arrested, and have been drunk, wretchedly, filthily, mis- 
erably drunk. You can find a great many cases of wretched- 
ness and fdth and poverty existing from that cause. Mrs. 
Atwood left us the impression that the two children of that 
family who died were insured. Otherwise, of course, it is 
not a case in point. But it turns out that the two children 
who died were never insured at all, and the one child who was 
insured is still living. 
Well, it does seem to me, with all respect to my friends on 
the other side, that there is something almost malignant in at- 
tacking these companies with such a case as that. It is unfair, 
it is unjust. Of course it is a terrible case of filth and drunk- 
enness and misery; it fills the public mind with disgust, the 
public mind all the time being under the false impression that the 
children who died were insured, when in fact they were not in- 
sured at all. You know perfectly well that those children would 
have suffered under any circumstances, insurance or no insur- 
ance. So far from their dying from starvation for the sake of 
an insurance which did not exist, we have here, and Dr. AVells 
has shown you, certificates from the City Registrar’s office, con- 
firmed also by an affidavit of Dr. John McDonald, certifying 
that one child died from cholera infantum and the other from 
convulsions. Airs. Atwood says that the child which is still 
living was three years of age ; it turns out that it is one year 
and nine months old. 19 
What has that case to do with child insurance? The only 
child in that family that was insured is still living and in good 
condition, and the children that were not insured are the ones 
that died. 
CASE. 
A case, which my brother Reed said we have not met, 
we could not meet, because Mrs. Atwood told us that the 
present whereabout of the parties is unknown. 
Here is a case which Mrs. Atwood dwelt upon yesterday 
or the day before. In this case we furnish you with a letter 
from the woman herself, who says she never received assist- 
ance. But take Mrs. Atwood’s own statement, and what is 
it? It is a case of wretched drunkenness. The father, she 
says, is a maniac when in liquor, so that his children are 
then in danger of death at any time as well as his wife. She 
says they live in fear of being killed by this drunken maniac, 
— a good fellow when he is sober, but a maniac when he is 
drunk. What then has child insurance to do with the misery 
there ? Suppose, in order to keep alive some of the policies 
that were taken out when times were better, there is a payment 
now made of a few cents a week. It is the little pittance 
got out from the father which even if it were not paid for 
insurance would go not for food but for strong drink. The 
man earns about $13 a week when he works. The misery or 
neglect there certainly is not due to childj insurance. Indeed, 
in such a family insurance would seem to be a good thing. 
CASE. 
THE FINN CASE. 
You come next to the Finn case, where two children, two 
and a half and one year old, died, it was claimed, of starvation ; 
and yet we show you certificates from the registrar’s office that 
one died of meningitis, and the other died of tubercular men- 
ingitis. That is also the statement made by one of the physi- 
cians, Dr. Conn. Since then he is said to have said something 
to the contrary. But I prefer his official return at the time to 
any hearsay report of what he has said since then. But 
waiving him, you have the statement of Dr. MacDonald, the 
other physician, sworn to before a justice of the peace, to the 20 
effect that the children died of meningitis. But what after 
all does the Finn case amount to? When Mrs. Atwood gave 
that case to us she supposed the children were insured. It 
turns out that the children were not insured. So no matter 
what they died of, so far as the argument is concerned; — 
whether they died of neglect, or starvation, or what-not, — 
they were not insured; and yet we had to face in the news- 
papers— and that is one of the very things which have 
counted against us — this very Finn case. 
CASE. 
Here is a case of the young woman who has gone to 
the Western Islands. But there also we have the certifi- 
cates of Maria Lawrence, Julia Rose and Caroline Rose, 
sworn to before the Portuguese Vice-Consul, that the child 
was well treated, that there was no neglect; and we have the 
certificates of the physician, Dr. Monterro, that the child suf- 
fered from rachitis and bronchitis; and we have all those 
certificates here before you. Nothing due there to insurance. 
This is the case in which Mrs. Atwood said the doctor refused 
to give a death certificate; and yet yesterday we produced 
the death certificate signed by the doctor, Dr. John Dane. 
CASE. 
Then you have the case of the two children, insured 
in the Metropolitan Company, who died in the summer of 
1894. Mrs. Atwood said that the mother said they died of 
starvation, and that the doctor said the children died of starv- 
ation. And yet the Portuguese consul testified that the 
mother said she never allowed the children to go without 
food, that when she could not pay the insurance for one week 
she let it go for two; that she never stated to Mrs. Atwood or 
to Mr. Durao, or to anybody else, that her children died of 
starvation. And here you have the official certificates from 
the registrar’s office that they did not. 
How can you account for such gross misrepresentation, 
not intentional falsehood of course, but hearsay and exaggera- 
tion. The moment we examine the case, the charge is proved 
utterly unfounded; and no wrong, even if there was any, 
which there was not, is due to child insurance. Take the 21 
whole list of cases and in not one of them is any fault due to 
the fact that the child was insured. 
CASE. 
Here is a case. Mrs. Atwood said the mother died after 
being insured for one year in the Metropolitan for $125, died 
of pulmonary trouble, and the company paid but $29; had 
three children insured at five cents per week, and an older 
brother was paying the insurance on the lives of the children, 
and they were in a most destitute and neglected condition. 
But we showed you by the affidavit of Daniel Collins, who is 
twenty-seven years old, and the stepson of the woman referred 
to, that his half brother received the full amount due accord- 
ing to the terms of the policy; that no assistance has been 
asked for to pay the insurance of the children, and that they 
are provided for, and never have been and are not now 
neglected ; that he and his stepbrother are both working and 
require no aid from any charitable organization, and are able 
to pay their own bills. 
ROACH CASE. 
There is the Ella Roach case. The mother had a little 
baby, and they said she gave its age as eleven months. We 
investigated that and produced a certificate signed by the city 
registrar, showing that the child was thirteen months old, 
and that the claim was paid in full. 
That is the way these cases petered out. In other words, 
the moment the other side came down from generalities to 
specific cases which we could look up, we proved by the 
records, not by hearsay, that the charges were unfounded. 
SHAWMUT AVENUE CASE. 
Take the Daniel Holmes case, in Shawmut Avenue, 
which was so much exploited as a case of exposing a 
sick child at an open window,—what has become of that? 
Dr. Heber Smith was the first witness ; and Dr. Heber 
Smith, if his general testimony went for anything, was 
rather in favor of child insurance, in so far that he doubted 
whether it increased the death rate, saying that he would 
not charge the poor with loving their children less. He got 
a report of the Holmes’ child from Helen Mack, and it 22 
made so little impression upon him that he never made the 
slightest complaint about it. Helen Mack, not a physician, 
but a student, went to see the child? How came she to go? 
Why, it was because the matron in charge of the child 
sent for her. Does that look like neglect? Mrs. Tyler, 
the woman in charge, a colored woman, went to the 
dispensary and asked for a physician, and Helen Mack 
was sent, and the next day the child was better. The third 
day it was worse. Miss Mack told Dr. Smith that the window 
was partially open, so Dr. Smith says; she tells us here, the 
window was wide open. There were smoke and vapor from 
the kitchen ; the door was open and the child had kicked off 
the clothes. Miss Mack cannot be too much relied on in 
this matter, because she evidently has not the case clear in 
her mind. See how she is mistaken. She says there was 
snow on the ground on the 15th of October; and there was 
no snow that month. She says there was no fire in the room ; 
her brother says there was. She says it was a cold, windy, 
dusty day, and the record shows that the thermometer on that 
day was at 64. She made no complaint, never thought of 
instituting any criminal charge, and when she was asked why, 
said, “I am afraid if we did, that we should have to complain 
of all the people in the district.” In other words, this child 
was treated the same as all the other children were treated. 
Mr. Reed gave us the impression that this was a 
baby farm. What is the fact? It is not a baby farm. 
Mrs. Tyler is an industrious, hard-working woman, and 
this case has been thoroughly investigated by Mr. Dugan, 
the Police Inspector, who went right from here there. 
He found it was not a baby farm, found the child 
could not have been exposed at the window as described, 
found the woman had followed directions to give the child 
borax and honey, and found also that no insurance had ever 
been paid because the company very properly recognized that 
Mrs. Tyler not being a relative, had no insurable interest. 
And what is more, though Mr. and Mrs. Tyler received no in- 
surance money, the husband was so interested in the child that 
he himself incurred the undertaker’s bill, and has been paying 
it at a dollar a week since. What becomes then of this charge ? 
Mr. Dugan, a sworn inspector of this city, tells you there is 23 
nothing in it that justifies any criminal investigation. Dr. 
Smith, when it came to his notice, did not consider it as 
a criminal case; and he said that there was an habitual cai'e- 
lessness in carrying out the recommendations of physicians 
with this class of people. 
CHARGE OF STARVATION. 
Another case of exaggeration is in regard to the matter 
of marasmus. Mrs. Atwood told you that there were 248 
cases of marasmus in four months in 1893, from the begin- 
ning of July up to the end of October. She meant to imply 
to you that 248 had died from starvation, which, as was said, 
would be a reproach to Boston, or any other community. 
But how thoroughly and how clearly Dr. Wells disposed of 
all that. The State statistics do not show a single case of 
starvation during that time. Here is a certificate from Mr. 
Davis, the Secretary of the Health Department of Boston : 
“ I have made comparison between the figures and ratios 
used by Dr. Wells at the hearing on child insurance, March 
22, 1895, with the tables of deaths published by this Board, 
and I find them to be exactly as published in 1893.” 
Here is also a certificate from Dr. Durgin, whose name 
is of very great weight in this community : “ Health De- 
partment, March 28, 1895. In answer to your inquiry, I 
have to say that the records in this office fail to show any 
deaths by starvation in this city during the year 1893.” 
But Mrs. Atwood comes again and now says she finds she 
was mistaken, and that there were 303 deaths, of which 13 were 
adults, and all but 28 of the rest were under one year, — that 
is, under the insurable age; that is, she finds 28 cases, which, 
if they were insurance cases, would be affected by this bill, 
— cases of children who she claims died of marasmus and 
leaves you to infer starvation. But out of those 28 she can 
find but one case where she even thinks there was insurance. 
Is not that reducing things to a pretty fine point? But you 
will remember also that marasmus is not starvation primarily. 
You have learned what marasmus is. Marasmus does not 
mean starvation as a cruelty, and a matter of neglect. A 
rich person’s well-fed child may die and be recorded as dying 
from marasmus. Why? It may have pneumonia, it may 24 
have some other disease which reduces the child to a condi- 
tion where it cannot eat, and then marasmus or inanition 
follows, not as a cause of death but as an incident or result 
of the cause. I need not waste time upon that, it is too 
plain. 
EVIL NOT DUE TO INSURANCE. 
Mr. Read said, not in these words but substantially, to 
many of our witnesses, “ Suppose that although your system 
is a good one, we show you that 500 or 100 children have 
died from its effect.” He might as well have said, supposing 
he had shown 100,000 or 10,000 cases, for he has not shown 
500; he has not shown 100, he has not shown fifty, he has not 
shown twenty cases, he has not shown one case where the 
child has died or been brought to its condition of wretchedness 
and misery as the result of child insurance. He has shown 
cases, as can be found in any city, especially in our large ones, 
of wretched poverty, cruelty, filth and neglect. Any of us 
can find case after case of suffering little children, making the 
most piteous appeal, beaten, neglected, injured, wronged, 
outraged; and if you leap at once across the truth and say 
that all this is attributable to child insurance, then there 
would be something in his argument. But to what is it 
attributable? One case he gave us was that of a cruel step- 
mother, a row in the courts about a child, a quarrel between 
friends of the child and the step-mother and hard-hearted 
father, which would have been the same, insurance or no 
insurance. Case after case, almost all of them, are cases of 
drunkenness, of a man able to work, a good fellow when 
he is sober, but accustomed to drink, wasting his wages, the 
mother perhaps drinking, the whole family perhaps drinking, 
and of course the child suffering and neglected. Cases of 
filth; cases of shiftlessness ; semi-criminal cases. But not a 
single case where the neglect of the child was not attributable 
to the habits of the parents. 
Are you going to apply a rule here which you do not 
apply in the case of other systems? We point you to the 
electric cars, and the children they kill. A little child in 
Hyde Park day before yesterday ran across the street with a 
cent in his pocket to buy candy—a deaf child—and returning 
was crushed by a car. That death is directly due to the 25 
existence of the electric car system, and yet you do not pro- 
pose to abolish it. 
The deaths which result from adult insurance ; the 
deaths and physical injuries which result from the railroad 
system; the deaths and physical injuries which result from 
the electric light system, are all due directly to those systems, 
and yet you do not propose to abolish them. 
Why then abolish child insurance ? 
If there is anything to correct on the line of this inquiry, 
though none has been shown, I will agree to draw a bill in 
five minutes. I should like a chance to submit one. 
AN ATTACK ON ALL INSURANCE. 
The truth is this whole attack is an attack upon all 
insurance — all adult insurance and old line insurance. Let 
us see what the grounds of it are. First, extravagance in 
funerals. But that is encouraged much more if a person is 
going to get a thousand dollars insurance or ten thousand dol- 
lars insurance; which can be done in other insurance, but not 
in industrial child insurance. Second, the temptation to make 
a profit out of death. That applies a thousand times more to 
adult insurance and old line insurance, where five thousand 
dollars or ten thousand dollars can be acquired. It is urged 
that this industrial child insurance takes away money which 
would be spent for food in poor industrial families. But 
those who claim this, if logical at all, should not only prohibit 
insurance on children under ten years of age, but still more 
on people over ten years of age. Why? Because more money 
is taken which might be spent for food in the case of those 
over ten years of age, than in the case of those who are under, 
for in the former case the amount of insurance is larger and the 
rate is higher. If you are going to that extent, you must forbid 
fathers and mothers from having insurance for the benefit of 
the family they may leave. Nor in this connection must it 
be forgotten that if there is a tendency to economize on food 
to save money to pay for insurance, there will in case of debt 
incurred for the last sickness and burial of a child be just the 
same tendency to economize on food to save money to pay 
the debt and stop the interest. 26 
Yes, gentlemen, it is an attack on all insurance, and I 
come back to the fundamental principle on which I started. 
Do not be carried away with a few exaggerated cases which 
have no relation to the matter in hand, but look at the length 
and breadth of this matter; y ou cannot stop at ten years of 
age, you must stop all industrial insurance; and if you act on 
Mr. Atkinson’s ground of temptation of profit, you must 
stop all insurance whatsoever. 
Next comes the suggestion that these companies make 
money. So do railroads make money, so do electric cars 
make money, so do electric lighting companies make money. 
It is fortunate they do, otherwise we should not have the ben- 
fit or convenience they confer. But did you ever consider 
that if industrial insurance is unusually profitable, the field 
is open and everybody else can go into it? Here are three 
great companies, and there are eight or nine smaller ones, 
all competing with one another; and competition keeps down 
prices. If it is a good system, it is fortunate that it is run by 
responsible and successful companies who are amenable to 
law and are held under the safeguards of law. The John 
Hancock pays back its surplus in dividends, $125,000 last 
year. The Metropolitan Company is a stock company, which 
is limited to seven per cent, profit, of which its investments 
pay five, so that only two per cent, are its direct business 
profits. If any other company can do the business better or 
cheaper, it will have the field. That is regulated by the law 
of competition and trade. In other words, you must either 
have this system, resulting from the experience of years and 
regulated by law, or else you are brought where Mr. Taylor 
brought you, to the Socialistic system of having the State 
provide what now corporate enterprise provides. It is an 
economic truth that either the State must assume all provision 
for social needs, and you thus establish the Socialistic system, 
(everything done by the State and at the expense of the 
State), or else you must leave matters to well-regulated, well 
safeguarded private or corporate effort. In other words, the 
State must run your railroads ; or you must have a corporation 
with capital enough to run them, and then hold that corpor- 
NECESSITY OF INSURANCE COMPANIES. 27 
ation, by your laws, strictly to its duty to the public. So in 
this matter of industrial insurance, as Mr. Taylor and Mr. 
O’Donnell said, either the State must furnish it; or else these 
and other like companies must furnish it; and it is a great 
deal better to have these companies under the law than to 
have irresponsible individuals. Why? Because your ’"'.di- 
vidual is held to no safeguard ; he is not obliged to make 
any return. If individuals combine in clubs they may have a 
dishonest treasurer running away with the funds. What you 
want is the absolute security which you have in all these great 
companies, and let me again remind you that one of them — 
the John Hancock — is one of our own Massachusetts institu- 
tions, which, instead of being attacked, and reproached, and 
stigmatized, ought to be honored and respected as one of the 
great beneficial agencies of this Commonwealth. 
LAPSES. 
Talk has been made.about lapses ; I do not care to go 
into that because you have the facts from Mr. Dryden. Of 
course, there are lapses. Every opportunity is given the in- 
sured to avoid a lapse ; four weeks are allowed, during which 
the policy is good though no premium is paid. Bear also in 
mind what these policies are. These are not like the ordi- 
nary life insurance policies in the old companies ; they are, 
as you said, Mr. Chairman, term policies, like fire insurance. 
My house is insured for a year; it does not burn down, and 
yet, though I have put out $20 or $30, I have not lost it, 
because I have had insurance during that time. 
So these are term policies, and if the child does not 
die, yet as Mrs. Coakley said, she does not regard 
that as a cause for regret; and, while she has paid five cents a 
week, she has had her insurance during that time. She has 
had qjiid pro qiio. And the lapses are not a loss to the pol- 
icy holder so much as to the companies who do everything 
to prevent them. Mr. Dryden gave you the figures,— fifty 
per cent, lapse the first year. That is when very little has 
been paid. Most of that lapse is in the first two months. If 
a lapse occurs in four weeks, nothing has been paid ; if it 
occurs in six weeks, there has been ten cents paid, five each 
week for the last two weeks. The second year the lapse falls 28 
to sixteen per cent. ; the third to five, and then it dwindles 
down to two. Whenever there is a policy well started, prac- 
tically nobody suffers from lapse. Indeed the lapse rate in 
industrial insurance corresponds to the lapse rate in the old 
line companies. It is not a specific feature attaching to 
child insurance, and if an argument at all, as it is not, is an 
argument against all life insurance. 
I will call your attention also to this fact, with which you 
are familiar, that the largest proportional expense to the in- 
sured child is the first year. You pay five cents a week the 
first year, and get $15 in case of death ; but from that on up 
to over ten years of age you pay no more, while the value of 
your policy increases, until after ten years of age it is $115. 
Of course the great risk of life is in the first two or three 
years. Between one and two years of age there is a great 
probability of death. After that it constantly diminishes 
until you approach the adult age. 
A PRINCIPLE AT STAKE. 
Gentlemen, I have been considering this matter very 
rapidly. I have been considering it with reference to these 
special cases; I have also tried to call your attention to the 
system as a system of insurance. But there is something 
more at stake here than a mere matter of insurance. There 
is at stake one of the most sacred principles with which a 
Legislature has to do. It is the fundamental principle that each 
American citizen shall have the same right to mind his own 
business and manage his own affairs and make his own con- 
tracts which others have. You are asked here to discriminate 
against citizens of this Commonwealth because they are poor. 
As O’Donnell put it, you are asked to put them under the 
guardianship of charitable institutions. Because a woman is 
poor, because she prefers to pay five cents a week, and to have 
a fund to bury her child, rather than to put it in a pauper’s 
grave, or rather than to incur debt and pay heavy interest, 
you are asked to declare as law that she shall be put under 
the guardianship of a charitable institution. Two or three 
zealous members of the Massachusetts Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Children have assumed a dozen 
cases of hardship, and although even these have been 29 
exploded, yet on the strength of them, they ask that 500,000 
citizens of this Commonwealth shall not have the privilege of 
industrial insurance in their families; that 100,000 children 
of these families who are now insured, under ten years of age, 
shall not henceforth be insured ; that if any working man has 
two or three children under ten years of age, and wants to 
insure a few dollars on their lives, he shall not have the right 
to do it. When I put this to Mr. Fay he said, as he could 
not help saying, that he thought 1 ought to have that right, 
and that you ought to have it, and that more than half the 
people in the Commonwealth ought to have the right to 
insure their children if they please. What then is the infer- 
ence? The inference is that he and these zealous women who 
are with him, and who are carried away by a one-sided and 
partial view of this matter, undertake to say that there is a 
class in this community that shall be put under guardianship, 
that shall be deprived of the rights of American citizens, 
that shall not be allowed to make contracts of insurance; 
that a rich man may put a $100,000 on his own life, $50,000 
on his wife’s, $10,000 on his child of eleven, but the poor 
working man shall not have a fund of $28, when his little 
child of three or four dies, to pay the funeral expenses and 
the expenses of the last sickness and the doctor’s bill. 
You cannot stand for a moment on any such principle as 
is in this bill. If so, you must forbid agents from canvassing 
for the sale of books, because that takes what might be spent 
for food; for the sale of organs ; for the sale of the sewing 
machine. You will not commit this Commonwealth to class 
legislation. You will not commit it to a discrimination be- 
tween poor and rich; no committee of Massachusetts should 
do that. 
Think for a moment. Suppose you pass this bill, and 
abolish this system, what is the result? No child under ten 
can be insured. You have forbidden it. It cannot be done. 
You may thus abolish these industrial insurance companies, 
but you cannot wipe out one of the strongest instincts of human 
nature. For consider in what form it will then express itself. 
What will you have? You will have your little burial 
societies again; you will have cropping out in the com- 
NO SUBSTITUTE PROPOSED. 30 
munity something of the same movement which you had in 
the bond investment craze two or three years ago. You will 
have irresponsible people, little guilds, little clubs; and very 
quickly the alarm will be sounded and it will be said to you: 
This won’t do; there must be safeguards; there must be 
legislative provision ; capital must organize by incorporation ; 
and in short you will come right back again to this same 
system. Prohibit child insurance, and again you will have 
pauper funerals, asyou had them in 1S79, before this system was 
in vogue, and when there were nearly twice as many as now. 
And, by the way, you know that this significant reduction, which 
has taken place in the number of pauper funerals since child in- 
surance began, indicates an advance in the self respect and moral 
elevation of the community. Prohibit child insurance ; the child 
dies; the father and mother have been unable to get insurance 
with which to bury it; they are living from hand to mouth ; they 
have not a dollar to spare, not a dollar laid up, and the result 
is either a pauper’s grave, or else debt. Then what an appeal 
there will be to your charitable organizations. Then, when 
your associated charities go about, and enter a family, and 
the little one lies dead, and the appeal comes, “For God’s 
sake don’t let this child be buried in a pauper’s grave,” you 
will find a greater strain on your associated charities than 
you have now. Why ? Because this great insurance fund 
has been wiped out, and you have nothing in its place to 
meet that prayer. No, let us not go back to the old system 
of pauper funerals. If we do, will these five or six thousand 
petitioners, these good men and women, that are here praying 
for the passage of this bill and the prohibition of child insur- 
ance, make good the deficit. Will Mrs. Atwood then, when 
she goes into a poor home, and sees a young child lying dead, 
and the father and mother with their hearts full and in tears 
at the thought of laying it away in a pauper’s grave,—will Mrs. 
Atwood go round and pass the hat ? Is that to be the glorious 
result of prohibiting child insurance, that we are to chip in 
and give a quarter apiece. People may do it once, but they 
will not continue to do it. They will sign their names to 
petitions, but will not pay hard cash. Did not officer Mann tell 
us of that wretched family in South Boston, where there was 
no insurance, the child lying unburied, and the attempt to 31 
raise money among the neighbors to bury it, and how it 
failed. Mr. Read would abolish this insurance, which is the 
result of a system, of which for forty years people have been 
availing themselves, and which is the growth of their own 
necessities, and not the mushroom growth of a night,—not the 
thought of a capitalist, but a response to their own demand,— 
and what does he give you in its place? Nothing. 
Do not forget that our work is among the worthy poor. 
You are dealing in this matter with the great body of industrial 
people. Look at such a man as the paper carrier Stevens, 
who when he saw Air. Read’s opening statement, wrote me 
of his own motion asking to appear here. He earns $1301' 
$15 a week,— a reputable, straightforward, honest man, and 
he pleads with you against this bill, telling you he has six 
children, they are insured, and he claims the right to insure 
them. And O’Donnell asked the same right. What does he 
care about the corporations? His instincts are against them ; 
but he wants this right. 
WITNESSES IN FAVOR OF CHIED INSURANCE. 
We brought swarms of witnesses here from Lowell, from 
Lawrence, from Springfield, from Boston, from Worcester, 
from Fall River—everywhere. What an array we have given 
you! You had not time to hear even a small part of them. 
Some of our witnesses, it is true, three or four out of the scores 
who were here, were once — years ago—insurance agents, 
clergymen, like Mr. Gumbart and Mr. Temple, reputable and 
worthy clergymen. When they were boys, like many other 
boys, starting out to earn a dollar in order to enter the 
ministry, they may have canvassed for books, or solicited 
insurance ; but they are high-minded men and their testimony 
is all the better because they know something about insurance. 
If they had seen fraud then, and if they, as agents visiting 
families, had found that they were oppressed, they would today, 
occupying the responsible positions they do, have borne testi- 
mony against us, but they know to the contrary, and that child 
insurance is a benefit, they have seen its good results and they 
speak for us—no, not for us, but for the poor. 
Here is the Rev. Edward A. Horton, Secretary of the 
Unitarian Sunday School Union, head of the Benevolent 32 
Fraternity of Churches, formerly pastor of the Second Con- 
gregational Church, read his earnest letter in our behalf. 
One of the newspapers, at the early part of this hearing 
said it would venture the prediction that no clergymen would 
appear on the side of child insurance, and here we have them 
by scores. Rev. Robert McDonald, of the Warren Avenue 
Baptist Church, says: “This system engenders thrift and 
cultivates the spirit to save.” 
Nicholas J. Dill, Recorder of Albany, seven years con- 
nected with charitable organizations, and with criminal pro- 
cedure, writes a strong letter in its behalf. 
Edward Frothingham, General Agent of the Boston 
Provident Association, writes the following letter : — 
Office of the 
Boston Provident Association, 
Charity Building, Chardon Street, Room 32. 
Boston, Febr’y 18, 1895. 
Dear Dr. Wells : 
As I shall not be able to attend the “ hearing” to-morrow, 
I venture to write my views in regard to a few points concern- 
ing the insurance of the lives of children. 
I can only say that I have been much shocked at the im- 
putation that any parents would kill their children by unnat- 
ural treatment in order to get the insurance money. Such 
people may exist, but there can be little doubt that the inves- 
tigation made by first class companies would prevent them 
from taking risks in such families. 
To prove that cruelty to children is increased by life in- 
surance would be a difficult matter without absolute confes- 
sion on the part of the parents themselves; and it would be 
difficult to prove that parents who are cruel to their children 
whose lives are insured, would not be equally cruel, were 
their lives not insured; while the advantage of life insurance 
of children of worthy parents cannot be ignored. 
In one sense, it is philanthropic — it encourages parents 
to thrift. They know that ten or fifteen cents a week must 
be saved and paid regularly. Without this incentive the 
money would probably, in very many ca«es, be wasted in dis- 
sipation. 
With twenty years of experience among poverty stricken 
families, I have never met with an instance of cruelty to 
children, because of their lives being insured. 
My visitor, Mr. Cowing, of South Boston, writes, he 
cannot recall any incident that has caused him to suspect that 
children were being ill treated in a manner which would in- 33 
dicate an intention on the part of parents to terminate their 
lives because of their insurance. 
And yet Mr. Cowing admits that he thinks quite forty 
per cent. (40%) of the children he aids have their lives in- 
sured ! 
It should be said that Mr. Cowing is a professional vis- 
itor at South Boston, giving his whole time to the care of the 
poor. Very truly yours, 
Edward Frothingham, 
Gen'l Agent. 
Rev. E. W. Phillips, of Worcester, City Missionary 
Society and Pastor of Hope Church. Pastpr for nearly four 
years. Among factory and wage earning people of all 
nationalities. Never heard of a case of neglect or ill treat- 
ment or heard any such suspicion suggested for the sake of 
securing insurance. 
Rev. Robert F. K. Stratton, Pastor St. Paul’s M. E. 
Church, Lowell, one of the largest churches in Lowell. 
Cannot conceive of any abuse of privilege. Speaks of the 
change proposed as outrageous. Let the poor people have 
the privilege of insurance and laying by a little with which to 
bury dead when bereaved rather than have them distressed. 
Resolution of Boston Typographical Union: 
“ Resolved, that it is the sense of this meeting that the 
passage of such a law as they seek to obtain, a law limiting 
the age of children, would be a detriment to the interest of all 
working men and a reflection upon their intelligence.” 
Thos. T. Stokes, President of the Associated Charity 
for the whole of South Boston, which has about 80,000 
inhabitants. Has also had great experience among the 
charities of England. “ Sorry it is impossible for him to 
attend hearing.” He does not believe in the attack on child 
insurance, nor does the Conference of Associates for Wards 13, 
14 and 15 over which he presides. Isolated cases should not 
represent wholly all our laboring population. Calls it an 
indictment utterly untenable and hardly to the credit of those 
who instigated it. Says that he and his Conference thinks the 
attempt savors of Class Legislation. 
Mrs. Noyes, Matron of the South Boston Day Nursery. 
Seventy children taken care of. Charitable organization, 
children under three or four years of age left by mothers at 34 
the Nursery in the care of the Matron while they go to work. 
Located in lower part of South Boston, Ward 13. Her 
experience brings her in contact with poor people. She 
knows the effect of insurance on poor children is only good. 
Never knew of any neglect of maternal instincts being dead- 
ened, and says that' “ Insurance is a help towards a decent 
burial which otherwise might be furnished by city.” 
Hon. Robert Howard, of the Mule Spinners Associa- 
tion, of Fall River, formerly Senator, says: “Your Company 
should try and prevent the enactment of such Legislation, as 
it is against the interest of poor men with families. The 
amount of money given for deaths of children under ten 
years of age, though it isn’t much, still is a great help and 
isn’t large enough to tempt heads of families to do wrong.” 
Hugo A. Dubuque, lawyer and member of the School 
Committee of Fall River, speaks of insurance being carried 
on in Fall River for several years. Good thing, many have 
saved money, no evil results, no case of wilful neglect on 
account of it. Is opposed to legislation, and says the general 
sentiment of Fall River is the same. 
The present Mayor Green of Fall River writes that 
his attention has been called to the bill; he speaks of his 
knowledge of the benefits conferred upon a large number of 
deserving persons by means of insurance of children under 
ten years; says no case has arisen where the supposition that 
negligence or foul play has resulted from insurance, and 
records himself in opposition to legislation. Has known 
many cases of the beneficent processes of life insurance 
where parties would be subject to have public or private 
charity in performing the last rites for their children. Said 
he would come and testify if necessary. 
Rev. Rufus B. Tobey, Berkeley Temple. Seven years 
of missionary work, with several paid helpers. No reports 
of any evils such as related in the newspapers ever came to 
him, and on inquiry of his church visitors they had met no 
cases. 
Patrick Doody, President St. Augustine’s Conference 
Society, of St. Vincent de Paul, of South Boston. On behalf 
of the poor families assisted by our Society, I appeal to you 
to recommend no change in existing law in relation to the 35 
insurance of children ; in its present form it has been of great 
benefit to us as well as to the insured. I say to us from the 
fact that if these poor people hadn’t their children insured we 
would have had to pay burial expenses when they died. 
John W. Coughlin, M. D., formerly Mayor of Fall 
River, writes: That after ten years practice among poor 
people in Fall River, he believes that the system of insurance 
now in force has been a great boon to poor families. Speaks 
of the summer months ravages of cholera infantum, and 
hardships, and a great many months of labor required before 
the expense incurred could be defrayed. 
D. D. Sullivan, Postmaster of Fall River, says: It is 
a great blessing for poor people in Fall River. 
Samuel Morriss, Agent of the Board of Health, Fall 
River: Cannot conceive anything that would savor more of 
unwarrantable and unjust discrimination against a class. 
Only guarantee against appeal to public charity. Four years 
a member and agent of the Board of Health, has yet to hear 
of a first case of foul play on the part of parents, guardians or 
other beneficiaries. 
John W. Cummings, Ex-Mayor, formerly Senator, says: 
Class of people insured are as careful of health and children 
as can be ; prevents applying to municipal authorities ; amounts 
not large enough to be a temptation for doing wrong. Great 
comfort to parents not to apply for pauper relief. History of 
people of Fall River who have policies sufficient answer, and 
completely disposes of charge of neglect. 
Rev. O. R. Miller, M. E. Church, East Boston, Pastor 
for several years and engaged in Mission work among the 
poor of Boston: Never knew of a single instance of least 
suspicion of child being ill-treated from neglect by its parents. 
Children insured are loved the most, and taken best care of. 
“I think it a mean, contemptible slander in saying that the 
poor of the North or the West End love their children less 
than the millionaires of Beacon Hill or Back Bay.” 
Rev. James Black, of East Boston, Protestant Minis- 
ter for a long period in East Boston. Never heard of a 
single case in which child insurance was “anything other 
than a grand blessing.” Has had a chance to know evil re- 
sults and never seen any. Thankful that some one even 36 
though from mercenary motives takes interest in very poor 
to get them to make slight provision against a rainy day. 
Viscount da Vala da Costa, Consul for Portugal 
gives his opinion in regard to life insurance among Portu- 
guese people. With any other children parents have difficult- 
ies to bury them. Insurance companies have been consider- 
able help in these cases. Argument that parents neglect 
children purely theoretical, no facts to support it. “ This I 
can assure as to the people I represent.” 
Rev. J. Pimenter, Catholic Priest, St. John the Baptist 
Church, Boston, speaks of Portuguese people having received 
benefit. Says they love their children most tenderly. Out of 
the question to think that life insurance is prejudicial. 
Thomas Lucas, Roxbury, writes that he had $133.35 on 
policy of Mary A. Harrington. Says it will enable him to 
settle all bills, as it is only a few days since they buried the 
poor creature who had been placed in a tomb for want of 
money to buy a grave. 
Rev. E. A. Buck, one of the best known clergymen of 
Fall River; Central Congregational Church for 27 years; 
missionary and associate pastor; Sabbath school of 600 or 
700, infant department from 150 to 200, kindergarten school 
in chapel about 50 (latter all under five years of age) ; has 
christened 1000 children; officiated at 1850 funerals in Fall 
River; married about 1200 couples; ministry chiefly among 
the poor. ‘‘ In all my ministry I haven’t had one case in 
which I had the slightest suspicion that the death of a single 
child had been occasioned by any design on the part of the 
parents or guardian to secure money from any society in 
which the life of the child had been insured.” Speaks of 
benefits of great relief to poor families; giving a respectable 
burial. Formerly called upon to aid the poor in burial; now 
cases very rare. Says embarrassment by weekly payments 
in hard times is from goods bought on instalment principle, 
not from payments on insurance. 
Theresa Murphy, 187 I street, South Boston, says her 
husband is crippled, lost a leg, but is dying with consump- 
tion ; cannot come. Earnestly protests against bill prohib- 
iting insurance under ten years. Speaks of her bereavement 
as follows: “On January 4th, 1S95, my husband’s leg was 37 
cut off by one of the electric cars ; while undergoing treat- 
ment at the Boston City Hospital two of my children died of 
scarlet fever, and another with diphtheria about a week 
before my husband met with the accident. . . Children 
insured in Metropolitan. Claims promptly paid. . . And 
I can just imagine the position I would now be placed in but 
for this little insurance money. . . Again I ask you in 
behalf of the respectable poor to defeat this proposed legisla- 
tion.” 
Rev. George C. Baldwin, Jr., pastor First Baptist 
Church, Springfield; letter indorsed by his deacon, Andrew 
Titus; commends strongly the work of the Metropolitan 
Company. “ It has been, as I have seen it, a veritable 
Providence, and to precisely the ones who most needed such 
work.” Hopes the opposition to work of insurance com- 
panies will not be successful. 
James B. Field, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Health, 
Lowell; practice more than ten years. “ Early in my prac- 
tice I examined 5000 applicants for John Hancock and noticed 
no case of neglect. . . Eight years a member of the 
Board of Health, most of the time Chairman. My duty to 
investigate deaths from natural causes where no physician. 
In no case was there a suspicion that neglect to employ phy- 
sician was cause of death, or negligence in care of children.” 
G. De Tenencourt, editor of UIndependent, says the 
law proposed ‘‘would cast a blur on the fair name of the 
Commonwealth and become a standing insult to every Chris- 
tian mother within its limits.” 
Rev. Herman Page, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 
Fall River; congregation composed almost entirely of parties 
most of whom have infant children insured either in large 
companies or local organizations; says legislation would be 
unfortunate and unjust for his people. In two years’ experi- 
ence failed to discover a single instance of neglect of children 
where insured. Many instances where insurance of children 
was great help. 
John J. Barrows, overseer of weaving of L. W. 
Faxon & Sons, writes: “Parents who place insurance on 
their children are thrifty and industrious, and children are 
well housed and kept. Great benefit to poor people.” 38 
M. J. Courtney, Supt. Pauper Department, Lowell, 
says that among the paupers or public drones, devoid of 
ambition and self-pride, insurance is unknown, and not one 
child in a thousand of such people is insured. Injustice will 
be done to our worthy poor by the bill. 
Read Sister Pamela’s earnest letter. We are told that 
frantic efforts have been made to get her to change it. 
Child’s Hospital, Albany, N. Y. 
March iS, 1895. 
Dr. Willard has asked me in regard to the insuring of 
the lives of young children and its effect on the care taken of 
such children by the parents. 
I beg leave to say that in a rather large experience with 
the very poor, I have always not only advised the insuring of 
the young children but have in a number of instances thought 
it quite a wise and proper expenditure of money given me for 
charitable uses, to apply it towards the starting or keeping up 
of such policies. 
As to the effect, if any, on the parent’s care of such 
children, I may safely say I have never known such a child to 
be neglected by the parents or its death hastened in any way 
in order to receive the insurance. The poor are usually very 
fond of their children and willing to undergo any privation 
themselves in order to save their children from suffering. 
On the other hand, if a child, so insured, dies, the relief 
is often pathetic as the parents realize that there is money 
to bury their dead decently, without calling on the “City” 
for help, and also without (what makes death so terrible to 
the poor), running into debt. And often the doctor’s bill can 
be met too, where otherwise it would probably never be paid. 
I have almost always found that the money received from the 
insurance policy was considered sacred to such uses. 
Very truly, 
Sister Pamela. 
Then here is this striking letter from the Louisville Char- 
ity Organization Society, which I read day before yesterday. 
It is written by the agent of that society, who when he went to 
Louisville and took charge of the missionary work there was 
in the same mind as to child insurance which Minot J. Savage 
and Philip Moxom have expressed, that is, his heart was 39 
strongly against it. He regarded its agents as swindlers and 
frauds, and prepared to pursue them; but after an experience 
which Savage andMoxom have not had, he says that the result 
of his years of investigation is that “ It has enabled great 
numbers (under my own observation) to bury their dead 
without having to call on the public for help, or to have them 
put in the potter’s field, as would have been the case if they 
had to depend on the city authorities. I never have heard of 
a single case where there was the least cause for suspicion or 
foul play in the sickness or death of a child that was insured. 
The people who insure their children, do so that they may be 
able to bury them decently, if they should die. In conclusion 
would again say that I believe the industrial insurance plan is 
a great blessing to the poor, both as to children and adults.” 
PETITIONERS FOR CHILD INSURANCE. 
Then the John Hancock, if you care for petitions, 
gives you petitions in favor of child insurance from 
14,709 policy holders, and 6,195 citizens who are not 
policy holders, 20,904 in all. Among them Dr. Wil- 
liam L. Richardson, Dean of Harvard Medical School; Dr. 
Edward J. Foster, I think he is at the head of your State 
Board of Registration; Rev. John Cuckson, one of the lead- 
ing Unitarian clergymen in Boston, and a director of the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; Dr. Fran- 
cis Minot, late Professor Emeritus at Harvard; Ex-mayor 
Thomas N. Hart, Curtis Guild, Jr., Francis L. Coolidge, 
Alexander S. Porter; Revr William T. Perrin, St. John’s 
M. E. Church ; Rev. M. S. Hartwell, Fourth Presbyterian 
Church; Rev. A. T. Somerby, South Baptist Church ; Rev. 
Olaf R. Miller, East Boston ; George H. Bond, President 
Boston Retail Grocers’ Association : Dr. J. Foster Bush, Dr. 
E. B. Kellogg, Dr. A. Kidder Page, Rev. Stopford W. 
Brooke, Charles A. Welsh, Edwin B. Holmes and others of 
Boston; Mayor Courtney of Lowell; the City Clerk, Asses- 
sors, Superintendent of Water Works, eight members of the 
Board of Aldermen of that city, and the City Physician, mem- 
bers of Common Council, and Overseer of the Poor; Rev. 
Father Ronan, of St. Peter’s Church; Dr. John T. Irish, 
Medical Examiner for Middlesex County, and others. 40 
The Metropolitan Company puts before you petitions from 
18,048 non-policy holders, and 11,146 policy holders, 29,194 
in all. The City Physician of Somerville; the City Physician 
of Cambridge; Dr Clark, Dean of the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons; Dr. McIntyre of Cambridge; Rev. Thomas 
Dickinson, of the Presbyterian Church ; the Chief of Police 
of Somerville, and so on. 
Then you have the results of previous investigations. This 
is not the first investigation. Child insurance has been thor- 
oughly investigated in England in 1846, 1S54, 1874, and 1S91. 
Instead of prohibiting it in England, child insurance is there 
authorized at any age, even under one year of age; and it has 
gone on with constant growth, and the result of every legis- 
lative inquiry has always been to enlarge its field. 
In America, Pennsylvania has investigated child insurance 
and you have read that significant letter written by the Secre- 
tary of the Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Children 
in Pennsylvania, Mr. J. Lewis Crew, who says “ the great 
good this plan of insurance works for the honest and deserv- 
ing poor would certainly forbid the Society contemplating 
such action (its prohibition) as mentioned by this over-zealous 
humanitarian.” Ohio has investigated and refused to pro- 
hibit child insurance. New York has refused to prohibit 
it, and has put on its statute book an act,—you might adopt 
it here,—recognizing child insurance, but limiting the amount, 
just as the companies already limit it. 
The Province of Ontario has thoroughly investigated, and 
refused to prohibit. Connecticut has investigated, and refused 
to prohibit. Illinois has investigated, and refused to prohibit, 
and passed the same act which exists in New York. 
PREVIOUS INVESTIGATIONS. 
The best authorities,— they were read to you,— all sustain 
child insurance. Not one authoritative inquiry has been cited 
against it. Is it not remarkaole that you do not find some 
eminent student of social science on record as condemning it 
on full inquiry ? This very Society in Massachusetts, for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, of which I desire to 
NO DEMAND IN MASSACHUSETTS FOR THE BILL. 41 
speak, always with great respect, reported in 1891 : “We 
have taken pains to inquire into this practice here, but have 
found no evidence of such intent, although many insure their 
children’s lives and use the proceeds, in case of death, to pro- 
vide for funeral expenses.” This very Society, three years 
ago, said that! Why has it changed its attitude ? Indeed 
there is not much reason to believe that it has done so, if we 
may judge from the attitude of many of its members who 
do not agree with its secretary, and especially if we may judge 
even from his last report, dated as recently as Dec. 31, 
1894, which, though touching on every phase of the Socie- 
ty’s work and field, and after reciting in detail a great number 
of cases of suffering children, and enumerating every class of 
work that affects the interests of neglected children, there is 
not from beginning to end a single allusion to child insurance. 
How can it have been such an evil if up to three months ago 
it was an evil unnoticed and therefore unknown, and in fact, 
non-existent ? 
Your own state insurance department has investigated 
child insurance. Insurance Commissioner Clark in 1882 
investigated and approved it. Insurance Commissioner Tar- 
box, coming in as a new broom, not only as a new broom, but 
a Democrat succeeding a Republican incumbent, investi- 
gated and sustained it in 1886. In 1891 Commissioner Merrill 
sustained it. 
Of the other five hundred charities in Boston, not one has 
been here officially. I am informed that the Associated Chari- 
ties met and refused to appear for this petition. At the 
Children’s Helping Society, or whatever it is called, which 
meets Monday, and is called the Monday Club, where Mr. 
Roberts, of the Boston Industrial Home, made a motion for a 
committee of three to investigate the subject, they refused to 
appoint a committee or take action, so that no society, chari- 
table or otherwise, unless it be Mr. Fay, is represented here 
officially ; and yet you are asked to pass this sweeping act, 
denying the right of the industrial citizens to make contracts, 
and making a class discrimination between poor and rich, and 
to wipe out a system as well established as your systems 
for transportation, for lighting or for supplying water. The 
petitioners suggest nothing to take its place. They might 42 
just as well ask you to abolish cities because in cities you have 
crime and corruption, ’which do not exist in rural communities. 
CONCLUSION. 
I ask you, gentlemen, to reject this bill because it deprives 
the poor of a genuine benefit; because it destroys a system 
which is rooted in human nature ; because you leave a vacuum 
with nothing to supply it ; because you deprive the poor man 
of the right to bury his child in something else than a pauper’s 
grave. I ask you to reject this bill, not merely as counsel; I 
ask it as an officer in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
to Children, expressing thus the sentiment of others, also of 
its officers ; I ask it as a citizen ; I ask it in the name of 
humanity, and of equal rights.